264 MEXICO. 
ishing with their original laws, customs, towns, and temples, among the 
folds of the distant mountains in the bosom of our unexplored Continent !* 
NoTK.— The Mexican Cosmogony has four periods, when, it is alleged, that all mankind, with the exception of 
two or three individuals, perished. 
The 1st period was terminated by famine at the end of. 5206 years. 
" 2nd " " fire " " 4804 " 
" 3rd '■ " hurricane " " 4010 " 
" 4th " " deluge " " 4008 " 
In this deluge all perished, with the exception of Coxcox, and his wife Xochiquetial, who escaped in a canoe. 
I have already, at page 28, presented you an account of a Toltec legend, showing how one of the giants, 
called Xelhua, and his six brethren, were saved from the deluge on the mountain of Tlaloc, while all the rest of 
mankind perished in the waters or were transformed into fish. 
Josephus, quoting from the 96th book of JVicholas of Damascus, says " there is a great mountain in Armenia, 
over Mingas, called Baris, upon which, it is reported, that many who fled at the time of the deluge were saved ; 
and that one who was carried in an ark came on shore on the top of it ; and that the remains of the timber were 
a great while preserved. This might be the man about whom Moses, the legislator of the Jews, wrote " 
In the construction, form, and object of the Mexican teocallis, there is a striking analogy to tlie tumuK and 
pyramids of the old world. According to Herodotus, the temple of Belus was a pyramid, built of brick and 
asphaltum, solid throughout, (xvpyoi arepos,) and it had eight stories. A temple (vaoj) was erected on its 
top, and another at its base. In like manner, in the Mexican teocallis, the tower, (voo j) was distinguished from 
the temple on the platform ; a distinction clearly pomted out in the letters of Corfez. Diodorus Siculus states, 
that the Babylonian temple served as an observatory to the Chaldeans ; so, the Mexican priests, says Humboldt, 
made observations on the stars from the summit of the teocallis, and announced to the people, by the sound of 
the horn, the hour of the night. The pyramid of Belus was at once a temple and a tomb. In like manner, the 
tumulus (x'^jxa) of Calisto in Arcadia, described by Pausanias as a cone, made by the hands of man, but cov- 
ered with vegetation, bore on its top the temple of Diana. The teocallis were also both temples and tombs; 
and tlie plain in which are built the houses of the sun and moon at Teotihuacan, is called the path of the dead. 
The group of pyramids at Gheeza and Sakkara in Egypt ; the triangular pyramid of the queen of the Scyth- 
ians, mentioned by Diodorus ; the fourteen Etruscan, pyramids which are said to have been inclosed in the 
labyrynth of King Porsenna at Clusiura : the tumulus of Alyattes at Lydia {see Modern Traveller, Syria and 
Asia Minor, vol. ii. p. 153 ;) the sepulchres of the Scandinavian king Gormus and his queen Daneboda ; and the 
tumuli found in Virginia, Canada, and Peru, in which numerous galleries, built with stone and communicating 
with each by shafts, fill up the interior of artificial hills;— are referred to by the learned Traveller as sepulchral 
monuments of a similar character, but differing from the teocallis in not being, at the same time, surmounted 
with temples. It is perhaps too hastUy assumed, however, that none of these were destined to serve as buses for 
altars ; and the assertion is much too unqualified, that " the pagodas of Hindostan have nothing in common 
with the Mexican temples. That of Tanjore, notwithstanding that the altar is not at the top, bears a striking 
analogy in other respects to the teocallis."— See Humboldt's Researches, vol. i. pp. 81—107 ; Pol. Essay, voL 
ii. pp. 146—149 ; Mod. Traveller, vol. vi. p. 241. 
• Vide Appendix No. 3, at page 382, for a very interesting letter ftom Horatio Hale, Esq., on the connection 
of Indian languages. 
