163 
the use of skins, tanned and prepared, preceded 
that of paper : the Toltecks, at least, seem al- 
ready to have employed hierogiyphical painting 
at that remote era, when they inhabited the 
northern provinces, the climate of which is un- 
fit for the cultivation of the agave. 
Among the Mexican people, the figures and 
symbolic characters were not traced on separate 
leaves. Whatever was the substance employed 
for manuscripts, they were seldom destined to 
form rolls ; but were almost always folded in 
zigzag, in a particular manner, like the mounts 
of our fans. Two tablets of light wood were 
pasted at the ends, one at top, the other at bot- 
tom, so that, before the painting was unfolded, 
the manuscript had the most perfect resem- 
blance with our bound books. By this arrange- 
ment, on opening a Mexican manuscript as we 
open our books, we can see only half of the cha- 
racters at one time, those v/hich are painted on 
the same side of the skin, or paper of maguey : 
to examine the whole of the pages, if the different 
folds of a band, which is often twelve or fifteen 
metres in length, can be called pages, we must 
extend the whole manuscript first from the left to 
the right, and then from the right to the left. In 
this respect the Mexican paintings are perfectly 
similar to the Siamese manuscripts, preserved in 
the public library at Paris, which are also folded 
in zigzag. 
M 2 
