18 
Pedro de los Rios I found the Mexican draw- 
ing represented in plate 26. This historical 
document is so much the more curious, as it 
indicates the duration of each age by signs of 
which we know the meaning. In P. Rios’s 
Commentary, the order in which the catastrophes 
took place is entirely confounded ; the last, 
which is the deluge, is there considered as the 
first. The same error is found in the works of 
Gomara, Clavigero f, and the greater part of 
the Spanish authors ; who, forgetting that the 
Mexicans placed their hieroglyphics from right 
to left, beginning at the bottom of the page, 
necessarily inverted the four destructions of the 
world. I shall point out this order, as it is re- 
presented in the Mexican paintings of the Va- 
tican library, and described in a very curious 
history written in the Azteck tongue, fragments 
of which have been preserved by the Indian 
Fernando de Alvar Ixtlilxochitl:|:. The testi- 
mony of a native writer, and the copy of a 
Mexican painting made on the spot a short time 
after the conquest, merit undoubtedly more con- 
fidence than the recital of the Spanish histo- 
* See vol. 13, p. 191, and 201. 
t Storia Aritica di Messico, tom. 2, p, 57. 
I Gama, § 62, p. 97 : Boturini, Cat. del Musco, § 8. 
n. 13. 
