with that of those languages rich in words^ and 
in grammatical forms^ which we find among 
nations, whose actual mass of ideas is not cor- 
respondent to the multiplicity of signs adapted 
to explain them. Those languages so rich and 
flexible, those modes of intercalation which sup- 
pose an accurate knowledge of the duration of 
the astronomical year, are perhaps only the re- 
mains of an inheritance, transmitted to them by 
nations heretofore civilized, 'but since relapsed 
into barbarism. 
The monks and other Spanish writers, who 
visited Mexico a short time after the conquest, 
gave but vague and often contradictory notions 
of the different calendars in use among the na- 
tions of the Tolteck and Azteck race. We find 
these notions in the works of Gomara, Vaiades, 
Acosta, and Torquemada. This last writer, not- 
withstanding bis superstition, has transmitted to 
us in his Monarquia Indiana^ a collection of im- 
portant facts, which discovers an accurate know- 
ledge of local circumstances. He lived fifty years 
among the Mexicans : he arrived at the city of 
Tenochtitlan at a period, when the natives were 
yet in possession of a great number of historical 
paintings ; and when, before the house of the 
Marquis del Valle in the Plaza Mayor, were 
^ See page 7, plate 3d, folio edition. 
