Our author places these latter in the state of Chiapas, and the countries watered by the Usumasinta. The provinces of Mexico and the Atlantic border of Central America he supposes to be those where the first legislators of America landed, and where was the cradle of the first American civilization. In these regions, the great city attributed to Votan,Palenque,the ruins of whose magnificent temples and palaces even yet astonish the traveller, was one of the first products of this civilization.
With regard to the much-vexed question of the origin of the Indian races, M. de Bourbourg offers no theory. In his view, the evidence from language establishes no certain connection between the Indian tribes and any other race whatever; though, as he justly remarks, the knowledge of the languages of the Northeast of Asia and of the interior of America is yet very limited, and more complete investigations must be waited for before any very satisfactory conclusions can be attained. The similarity of the Indian languages points without doubt to a common origin, while their variety and immense number are indications of a high antiquity; for who can estimate the succession of years necessary to subdivide a common tongue into so many languages, and to give birth out of a savage or nomadic life to a civilization like that of the Aztecs?
In the passage of man from one hemisphere to another he sees no difficulty; as, without considering Behring's Strait, the voyage, from Mantchooria, or Japan, following the chain of the Koorile and the Aleutian Isles, even to the Peninsula of Alaska, would be an enterprise of no great hazard.
The traditions of the Indian tribes, as well as their monumental inscriptions, point to an Eastern origin. From whatever direction the particular tribe may have emigrated, they always speak of their fathers as having come from the rising of the sun. The Quiche, as well as the Chippeway traditions, allude to the voyages of their fathers from the East, from a cold and icy region, through a cloudy and wintry sea, to countries as cold and gloomy, from which they again turned towards the South.
Without committing himself to a theory, M. de Bourbourg supposes that one racethe Quichehas passed through the whole North American continent, erecting at different stages of its civilization those gigantic and mysterious pyramids, the tumuli of the Mississippi Valley,of whose origin the present Northern Indian tribes have preserved no trace, and for whose erection no single American tribe now would have the wealth or the superfluous labor. This race was continually driven towards the South by more savage tribes, and it at length reached its favorite seats and the height of its civilization in Central America. In comparing the similar monuments of Southern Siberia, and the dates of the immigration to the Aztec plateau, with those of the first movements of the Huns and the great revolutions in Asia, an indication is given, worthy of being followed up by the ethnologist, of the Asiatic origin of the Central American tribes. The traditions, monuments, customs, mythology, and astronomic systems all point to a similar source.
The thorough study of the aboriginal races reveals the fact, that the whole continent, from the Arctic regions to the Southern Pole, was divided irregularly between two distinct families;one nomadic and savage, the other agricultural and semi-civilized; one with no institutions or polity or organized religion, the other with regular forms of government and hierarchical and religious systems. Though differing so widely, and little associated with each other, they possessed an analogous physical constitution, analogous customs, idioms, and grammatical forms, many of which were entirely different from those of the Old World.
At the period of the discovery of America, not a single tribe west of the Rocky Mountains possessed the least agricultural skill. Whether the superiority of the Central American and Mexican tribes was due to more favorable circumstances and a more genial climate, or to the instructions of foreign legislators, as their traditions relate, our author does not decide. In his view, American agriculture originated in Central America, and was not one of the sciences brought over by the tribes who first emigrated from Asia.
Of the architectural ruins found in Central America M. de Bourbourg says: "Among the edifices forgotten by Time in the forests of Mexico and Central America are found architectural characteristics so different from one another, that it is as impossible to attribute their construction to one and the same people, as it is to suppose that they were built at the same epoch. The ruins that are the most ancient and that have the most resemblance to one another are those which have been discovered in the country of the Lacandous, the foundations of the city of Mayapan, some buildings of Tulha, and the greater part of those of Palenque; it is probable that they belong to the first period of American civilization."Vol. I. p. 85.
The truly historical records of Central America go back to a period but little before the Christian era. Beyond that epoch, we behold through the mists of legends, and in the defaced pictures and sculptures, a hierarchical despotism sustained by the successors of the mysterious Votan. The empire of the Votanides is at length ruined by its own vices and by the attacks of a vigorous race, whose records and language have come down even to our day,the only race on the American continent whose name has been preserved in the memory of the peoples after the ruin of its power, the only one whose institutions have survived its own existence,the Xahoa, or Toltec.
Of all the American languages, the Nahuatl holds the highest place, for its richness of expression and its sonorous tone,adapting itself with equal flexibility to the most sublime and analytic terms of metaphysics, and to the uses of ordinary life, so that even at this day the Englishman and the Spaniard employ its vocabulary for natural objects.
The traditions of the Nahoas describe their life in the distant Oriental country from which they came:"There they multiplied to a considerable degree, and lived without civilization. They had not then acquired the habit of separating themselves from the places which had seen them born; they paid no tributes; and all spoke a single language. They worshipped neither wood nor stone; they contented themselves with raising their eyes to heaven and observing the law of the Creator. They waited with respect for the rising of the sun, saluting with their invocations the morning star."
This is their prayer, handed down in Indian tradition,the oldest piece extant of American liturgy:"Hail, Creator and Former! Regard us! Listen to us! Heart of Heaven! Heart of the Earth! do not leave us! Do not abandon us, God of Heaven and Earth! Grant us repose, a glorious repose, peace and prosperity! the perfection of life and of our being grant to us, O Hurakan!"
What country and what sun nourished this worship and gave origin to this great people is as uncertain as all other facts of the early American history. They came from the East, the tradition says; they landed, it seems certain, at Panuco, near the present port of Tampico, from seven barks or ships. Other traditions represent them as accompanied by sages with venerable beards and flowing robes. They finally settled somewhere on the coast between Campeachy and the river Tabasco, and founded the ancient city of Xicalanco. Their chief, who in the reverent affection of the nation became afterwards their Deity, was Quetzalcohuatl. The myths which surround his name reveal to us a wise legislator and noble benefactor. He is seen instructing them in the arts, in religion, and finally in agriculture, by introducing the cultivation of maize and other cereals.
Whether he had become the object of envy among the people, or whether he felt that his work was done, it appears, so far as the vague traditions can be understood, that he at length determined to return to the unknown country whence he had come. He gathered his brethren around him and thus addressed them:"Know," said he, "that the Lord your God commands you to dwell in these lands which he hath subjected to you this day. For him, he returns whence he has come. But he goes only to return later; for he will visit you again, when the time shall have arrived in which the world shall have come to an end.3 In the mean while wait, ye others, in these countries, with the hope of seeing him again!Thus farewell, while we depart with our God!"
We will not follow the interesting narrative of the destruction of the ancient empire of the Votanides by the Nahoas or Toltecs; nor the account of the dispersion of these latter over Guatemala, Yucatan, and even among the mountains of California. This last revolution presents the first precise date which scholars have yet been able to assign to early American history; it probably occurred A.D. 174.
With the account of the invasion of the Aztec plateau by the Chichemees, a barbarian tribe of the Toltec family, in the middle of the seventh century, or of the establishment of the Toltec monarchy in Anahuac, we will not delay our readers, as these events bring us down to the period of authentic history, on which we have information from other sources.
"From the moment," says M. de Bourbourg, "in which we see the supremacy of the cities of Culhuacan and Tollan rise over the cities of the Aztec plateau dates the true history of this country; but this history is, to speak the truth, only a grand episode in the annals of this powerful race [the Toltec]. In the course of a wandering of seven or eight centuries, it overturns and destroys everything in order to build on the ruins of ancient kingdoms its own civilization, science, and arts; it traverses all the provinces of Mexico and Central America, leaving everywhere traces of its superstitions, its culture, and its laws, sowing on its passage kingdoms and cities, whose names are forgotten to-day, but whose mysterious memorials are found again in the monuments scattered under the forest vegetation of ages and in the different languages of all the peoples of these countries."Vol. I. p. 209.
M. de Bourbourg fitly closes his interesting volumesfrom which we have here given a résumé of only the opening chapterswith a remarkable prophecy, made in the court of Yucatan by the high-priest of Mani. According to the tradition, this pontiff, inspired by a supernatural vision, betook himself to Mayapan and thus addressed the king:"At the end of the Third Period, [A.D. 1518-1542,] a nation, white and bearded, shall come from the side where the sun rises, bearing with it a sign, [the cross,] which shall make all the Gods to flee and fall. This nation shall rule all the earth, giving peace to those who shall receive it in peace and who will abandon vain images to adore an only God, whom these bearded men adore." (Vol. II. p. 594.) M. de Bourbourg does not vouch for the pure origin of the tradition, but suggests that the wise men of the Quiche empire already saw that it contained in itself the elements of destruction, and had already heard rumors of the wonderful white race which was soon to sweep away the last vestiges of the Central American governments.
[NOTE.We cannot but think that our correspondent receives the traditions reported by M. de Bourbourg with too undoubting faith. Some of them seem to us to bear plain marks of an origin subsequent to the Spanish Conquest, and we suspect that others have been considerably modified in passing through the lively fancy of the Abbé. Even Ixtlilxochitl, who, as a native and of royal race, must have had access to all sources of information, and who had the advantage of writing more than three centuries ago, seems to have looked on the native traditions as extremely untrustworthy. See Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico, Vol. I. p. 12, note.EDD.]
* * * * *ROGER PIERCE
The Man With Two Shadows.
"There is ever a black spot in our sunshine." Carlyle.
The sky is gray with unfallen sleet; the wind howls bitterly about the house; relentless in its desperate speed, it whirls by green crosses from the fir-boughs in the wood,dry russet oak-leaves,tiny cones from the larch, that were once rose-red with the blood of Spring, but now rattle on the leafless branches, black and bare as they. No leaf remains on any bough of the forest, no scarlet streamer of brier flaunts from the steadfast rocks that underlie all verdure, and now stand out, bleak and barren, the truths and foundations of life, when its ornate glories are fled away. The river flows past, a languid stream of lead; a single crow, screaming for its mate, flaps heavily against the north-east gale, that enters here also and lifts the carpet in long waves across the floor, whiffles light eddies of ashes in the chimney-corner, and vainly presses on door and window, like a houseless spirit shrieking and pining for a shelter from its bodiless and helpless unrest in the elements.
The whole air,although, within, my fire crackles and leaps with steady cheer, and the red rose on my window is warm and sanguine with bloom,yet this whole air is full of tiny sparks of chill to my sensitive and morbid nature; it is at once electric and cold, the very atmosphere of spirits.What a shadow passed that pane! Roger, was it you?The storm bursts, in one fierce rush of sleet and roaring wind; the little spaniel crouched at my feet whimpers and nestles closer; the house is silent,silent as my thoughts,silent as he is who walked these rooms once, with a face likest to the sky that darkens them now, and lonelier, lonelier than I, though at his side forever trod a companion.
This valley of the Moosic is narrow and thinly settled. Here and there the mad river, leaping from some wooded gorge to rest among the hemlock-covered islands that break its smoother path between the soft meadows, is crossed by a strong dam; and a white village, with its church and graveyard, clusters against the hill-side, sweeping upward from the huge mills that stand along the shore just below the bridge. Here and there, too, out of sight of mill or village, a quiet farmer's house, trimly painted, with barns and hay-stacks and wood-piles drawn up in goodly array, stands in its old orchard, and offers the front of a fortress against want and misery. Idle aspect! fortress of vain front! there are intangible foes that no man may conquer! In such a stronghold was born Roger Pierce, the Man with two Shadows.
He was the son of good and upright parents. Before he came into their arms, three tiny shapes had lain there, one after another, for a few brief weeks, smiled, moaned, and fallen asleep,to sleep, forever children, under the daisies and golden-rods. For this reason they cling to little Roger with passionate apprehension; they fought with the Angel of Death, and overcame; and, as it ever is to the blind nature of man, the conquest was greater to them than any gift.
The boy grew up into childhood as other children grow, a daily miracle to see. Only for him incessant care watched and waited; unwearied as the angel that looked from him to the face of God, so to gather ever fresh strength and guidance for the wayward child, his mother's tender eyes overlooked him all day, followed his tottering steps from room to room, kept far away from him all fear and pain, shone upon him in the depths of night, woke and wept for him always. Never could he know the hardy self-reliance of those whom life casts upon their own strength and care; the wisdom and the love that lived for him lived in him, and he grew to be a boy as the tropic blossom of a hot-house grows, without thought or toil.