196 
%o be in the attitude of contending with each 
other. We might be led to suppose, that the 
two vases, which we see at the bottom of the 
uicture, one of which is overturned, is the cause 
of this contention. The serpent woman was 
considered at Mexico as the mother of two twin 
children ; these naked figures are perhaps the 
children of Cihuacohualt ; they remind us of the 
Cain and Abel of Hebrew tradition, I doubt 
whether the diiference of colour, which we ob- 
serve in the two figures, indicates a difference of 
race, as in the Egyptian paintings found in the 
tombs of the kings at Thebes, and in the orna- 
ments moulded in earth and stuck on the chests 
which contain the mummies at Sakhara. In 
carefully studying the historical hieroglyphics of 
the Mexicans, we seem to recognize, that the 
heads and hands of the figures are painted as by 
chance, sometimes yellow, sometimes blue, and 
at other times red. 
The cosmogony of the Mexicans ; their tradi- 
tions of the mother of mankind, fallen from her 
first state of happiness and innocence ; the idea 
of a great inundation, in which a single family 
escaped on a raft ; the history of a pyramidical 
edifice raised by the pride of men, and destroyed 
by the anger of the gods ; the ceremonies of ab- 
lution practised at the birth of children ; those 
idols made with the flower of kneaded maize, 
and distributed in morsels to the people assem- 
