172 
with those of the Mexicans* ; they indicated the 
names of the persons they meant to represent^ 
by employing' the same means, which we have 
already mentioned in the description of a genea- 
logical painting. The natives of Virginia had 
paintings called saghohok, which represented in 
symbolical characters the events, that had taken 
place during the space of sixty years : these were 
great wheels divided by sixty spokes, or into as 
many equal parts. Lederer ■f' relates having 
seen, in the Indian village of Pommacomek, 
one of these hieroglyphical cycles, in which the 
epocha of the arrival of the Whites on the coasts 
of Virginia was marked by the figure of a swan 
vomiting fire ; to indicate at the same time the 
colour of the Europeans, their passage by water, 
and the destruction which their fire-arms had 
poured on the Red men. 
At Mexico the use of painting and of paper of 
maguey was extended far beyond the limits of 
the empire of Montezuma, to the borders of the 
lake of Nicaragua, whither the Toltecks in their 
migrations had carried their language and their 
arts. In the kingdom of Gnatimala, the inhabi- 
tants of Teochiapan had preserved traditions, 
* Lafitau, vol. 2, p. 43, 225, 410. La Honlan, Voyage 
clans I’Amerique septentrionale, vol. 2, p. 193. 
t Journal des Savans, 1681, p. 75. 
