NOTES. 
oqc2 
After speaking of the Mexican hieroglyphics, P. Gar- 
cia adds ; At the beginning of the conquest, the In- 
dians of Peru made their confessions by paintings and 
characters, which indicated the ten commandments, 
and the sins committed against these commandments.” 
Hence we may conclude, that the Peruvians made use 
of symbolical paintings ; but that these were more gro- 
tesque than the hieroglyphics of the Mexicans, and 
that the people generally made use of knots, or quip- 
pus, See also Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las 
Indias, book 5, chap. 8, p. 267. 
Page 276. The word atl, or atel, is met with in 
the east of Europe. According to the observation of 
Mr. Frederick Schlegel, the country inhabited by the 
Madjares, before the conquest of Hungary, bore the 
name of atelkusu. Under this denomination were com- 
prised Moldavia, Bessarabia, and Walachia, three 
provinces bordering on the mouths of the Danube ; 
which, like the Wolga, bore the name of the great 
water, atel. (See vol. xiii, p. 349). The Mexican 
hieroglyphic of water, atl, indicated, by the undula- 
tion of several parallel lines, the motion of the waves ; 
and recalls to mind the Phenician character of water, 
mem, which has passed into the Greek alphabet, and 
by degrees into that of all the western nations. See 
the ingenious work of Mr. Hug, on the Invention of 
Letters, iSOl, p. 30. 
The Chevalier Boturini has transmitted to us the 
names of the twenty da vs of a Tolteck month, from 
the calendar of the inhabitants of Chiapa arid Soconus- 
co. The following are the signs, with those corres- 
ponding to them in the Azteck Calendar. , 
Mox. Cipactli. 
Igh. EhecatL 
Voltan. Cain. 
Ghanan. Cuetzpalin. 
