347 
tlon. The names given to the cities which they 
built were the names of places which their an- 
cestors inhabited ; their laws, their annals, their 
chronology, the order of their sacrifices, were 
modelled on the knowledge they had acquired 
in their primitive country. But the apes and 
the tigers, which figure among the hieroglyphics 
of the days, and in the Mexican tradition of the 
four ages or destructions of the Sun, do not in- 
habit the northern part of New-Spain, and the 
north-west coast of America. Consequently the 
signs ozomatli and ocelotl render it singularly 
probable, that the zodiacs of the Toltecks, the 
Aztecks, the Mongols, the Thibetans^ and so 
many other nations now separated by a vast ex- 
tent of country, originated on one and the same 
point of the ancient continent. 
The lunar mansions of the Hindoos, in which 
we also find an ape, a serpent, a tail of a dog, 
and the head of an antelope, or of a sea-monster, 
exhibit still other signs, the names of which re- 
mind us of the calli, acatl, tecpatl, and ollin, of 
the Mexican calendar. 
