220 



HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



The beautiful colours which they employed both in 

 their paintings and in their dyes, were obtained from 

 wood, from leaves, and the flowers of different plants, 

 and various animals. White they obtained from the 

 ftone Ch'wialtizatl, which, on calcination, becomes like 

 a fine plafler, or from the Tizatlalli, another mineral, 

 which after being made into a pafte, worked like clay, 

 and formed into fmall balls, takes in the fire a white co- 

 lour refemhling Spanifli white. Black they got from 

 another mineral, which, on account of its (linking fmell, 

 was called Tlalihijac, or from the foot of the OcotI, 

 which is a certain aromatic fpecies of pine, collected in 

 little earthen veffels. Blue and azure colours were ob- 

 tained from the flower of the Matlalxihuitl, and the 

 Xiuhquilipitzahuac, which is indigo (/), although their 

 mode of making them was very different from the way 

 of the moderns. They put the branches of this plant 

 into hot, or rather lukewarm water ; and after having 

 ftirred them about for a fufficient time with a flick or 

 ladle, they palTed the water when impregnated with the 

 dye into certain pots or cups, in which they let it re- 

 main until the folid part of the dye was depofited, and 

 then they poured off the water. This lee or fediment 

 was dried in the fun, and afterwards it was placed be- 

 tween two plates near a fire, until it grew hard. The 



Mexicans 



(/) The defcriptlon of the indigo plant is found in many authors, particu- 

 larly in Hernandez, lib. iv. cap. ia. which is totally different from that de- 

 fer ibed by Raynal, in the fixth book of his Philofophical and Political Hiftory. 

 This author affirms, that Indigo was tranfplanted from the Eaft Indies to Ame- 

 rica, and that experiments having been made of it in feveral countries, the cul- 

 ture of it was eftablilhed in Carolina, Hifpaniola, and Mexico. This however 

 is one of the many miftakes of that philolbpher. It is certain, from the tefti- 

 mony of Ferdinand Columbus, in cap. Ixi. of the life of his famous parent 

 Chriftopher Columbus, that one of the plants, native to the ifland of Hifpa- 

 niola, was the Indigo. We know alfo from the hiftorians of Mexico, and par- 

 ticularly Hernandez, that the ancient Mexicans made ufe of indigo. 



