APPENDIX. 



531 



in the table of the century which we fliall afterwards 

 fubjoin. 



The Mexican year confifted like ours, of three hun- 

 dred and fixty-five days ; for although it was compofed 

 of eighteen months, each of which contained twenty 

 days, which make up only three hundred and fixty, they 

 added after the laft month five days^ which they called 

 Nemontemi^ or ufelefs ; becaufe in thefe days they did 

 nothing but receive and return vints. The year i, 

 Tochtli, the firfl: of their century, began upon the 

 twenty-fixth day of February (x) ; but every four years 

 the Mexican century anticipated one day, on account of 

 the odd day of our biffextile, or leap-year ; from whence 

 in the lafl years of the Mexican century, the year began 

 on the fourteenth of February, on account of the thir- 

 teen days which intervene in the courfe of fifty-two 

 years. But at the expiration of the century, the com- 

 mencement of the year returned to the twenty-fixth of 

 February. 



The names which they gave their months were taken 

 both from the employments and feftivals which occurred 

 in them, and alfo from the accidents of the feafon which 

 attended them. Thefe names appear differently ar- 

 ranged among authors ; becaufe, in fa(ft their arrange- 

 ment was not only different among different nations, 



but 



•that the Mexican century began always with i. Tochtli. This author fays alfo, 

 ■that in the courfe of four centuries the fame name or character was never re- 

 peated with the fame number; but how is it poffible that this could happen in 

 the period of two hundred and eight years, while the charadlers were only four 

 and the numbers ufed but thirteen, as he himfelf allows. 



(k) Authors differ in opinion refpe6ting the day on which the Mexican year 

 commenced. The reafon of this was unqueftionably the difference which is 

 occafioned by our leap years, to which probably thafe authors did not advert. 

 It may alfo have been the cafe, that fome of them fpoke of the fiftronomicaJl 

 year of the Mexicans, and not of the religious, of wluch we treat. 



