164 
The volumes^ which the first missionaries of 
New Spain improperly called Mexican books, 
contained notions on a great number of very 
different subjects ; they consisted of historical 
annals of the Mexican empire, rituals indicating 
the month and the day on which sacrifices were 
to be made to particular divinities, cosmogonical 
and astrological representations, papers relating 
to lawsuits, documents respecting the divisions 
of property in a district, lists of tributes payable 
at certain periods of the year, genealogical tables 
according to which inheritances or the rule of 
succession in families was regulated, calendars 
showing the intercalations of the civil year and 
religious year, and paintings indicating the pains 
and penalties, which the judges were to inflict 
for crimes. My travels in different parts of 
America and Europe procured me the advantage 
of examining a greater number of Mexican ma- 
nuscripts, than Zoega, Clavigero, Gama, the 
Abbe Hervas, the ingenious author of the Let- 
ter e Americane, Count Kinaldo Carli, and other 
learned persons, who, since Boturini, have writ- 
ten on these monuments of the ancient civiliza- 
tion of America. In the valuable collection pre- 
served in the palace of the Viceroy at Mexico, I 
saw fragments of paintings relative to each of the 
subjects I have just enumerated. 
We cannot avoid being struck with the great 
resemblance, which we observe between the 
