NOTES. 
227 
cannot be contested, without placing at some other 
period the beginning of the Mexican year, as many 
authors have done. But you have rendered it certain, 
that, at the renewing of the cycle, this beginning fell 
on the 9th of January, consequently in reckoning 13 
intercalary days, and the complementary days with 
which the festival began, the new fire was kindled at 
the winter solstice. 
It may be asked, why the phenomenon of the di- 
minution of the days affrighted the Mexicans onW 
once every fifty-two years, as if at the end of a cycle 
the Sun descended lower than usual. Was it from, the 
omission of a solemnity, that they did not perceive the 
shortest appearance of the Sun, and that they waited 
the signal to give themselves up to mourning and ter- 
ror .f* I conceive, that, if the festival had taken place 
every year on the same day, they would have lamented 
theretreat of the Sun at the moment when it was visi- 
bly returning ; but in order not to awaken their sor- 
row at an improper time, it was easy to advance the 
festival one day every four years, so that in every fifty- 
two years it would have occupied thirteen different 
days. This is a difficulty, which I cannot solve with 
respect to the Egyptians*. Achilles Tatius does not 
mention the epocha, at which it took place : he makes 
use only of the vague expression a day, nroTS: 
(Uranol. page 146) ; and adds, that it was at the time 
of the festivals of Isis, without saying whether the 
celebration was practised every year. If it had been 
so, we should have seen, in the course of a sothic 
V 
* Gemintis pretends, contrary to the opinion of the Greeks, that the 
festival did not take place on the day of the solstice, and that it ran 
through the whole of the days of the year successively during' a sothic 
period. (Uranol. p. 34). ' 
Q 2 
