taught them, &c. p. 283. But,' adds the commentator, if our surprize is justly excited at being informed by Torquemeda that the Devil had imitated among the Indians the Jews' feasts of Passover and the New Moon, what shall we think of the Fast of Atamal, which the Mexicans kept every eighth year (the flint) as a Sabbatical year! eight was a number highly esteemed by the Christians, and as they have not scrupled to change the Sabbath from the seventh day, (on which day it was kept by the Jews,) to the eighth day, Sunday, on account of the resurrection of Christ having occurred on that day, we must not reject a striking analogy because it is open to an answerable objection, since the Mexicans also have had their reasons for preferring the eighth to the seventh."1

Torquemeda, taking for granted St. Isadore's "excellencies" to be scriptural, seems to consider them more than sufficient to transfer the attributes of the seventh to the first day of the week. "Saint Isadore saith, the eighth day is the first," &c. "On it were formed the elements! on it were created the angels! on it God bestowed manna upon his people!"

"Our BEGINNING and our END," "2 were names characteristic of the Festival of Tutzen, "since Eve was the beginning and termination of man's existence." She is a Suchequacal represented in the forty-eighth page of the Vatican painting, with two children who appear to have been combating, and one of them to have been killed." "Is it not more probable, since the beginning and ending signs of the calendar are dedicated as symbols of Quetzalcoatl, that this allusion is to Him rather than to Eve, except

1 "The faithful of the dark ages," observes Basnage, “were informed that after his resurrection, Jesus (having neglected to institute a new day) sent Elias to the church with an express order from him to effect this change."-See Basnage. 2 It is probable that this title had a more profound allusion.

as she is the mother of the promised Seed of the Woman?" It is not unfrequent that the first and the second Adam are contrasted in the Mexican paintings, the following passage from the Antiq. of Mex. is in point-" Opposite Cantico they placed Quetzalcoatl in a golden House, arrayed in precious gems, and seated as a Priest, with a bag of incense in his haud that as the former had been punished for his appetite, so He was honoured for His self-denial and sacrifice. p. 213. A note here says, "the Mexicans believed that Quetzalcoatl united in his own person the character of Prophet, Priest, and King."

"Some authors forgetting that the Mexicans in representing a periodical series of signs wrote from right to left, have taken the last month for the first."-p. 289.

1 The following are the names of the eighteen months-First, Titil, to glean, Itzcalli (to renew houses) from the ninth to the twenty-eighth of January, in the first year of the indiction of the cycle Xeuihmolpili. Second, Hochilhuitl, from twenty-ninth January to seventeenth of February. Third, XilomanaliztliFourth, Atalcahualca, (wants rain.) Fifth, Quachuitlihua, (month of trees buding.) Sixth, Cihualhuitl, (woman's Festival,) from the eighteenth of February to the ninth of March. Seventh, Iacaxipehualiztli, (feast of the snake's skin.) Eighth. Tozoztontli (month of watching, because the ministers of the temple were obliged to watch during the Festival celebrated on this month.) From thirteenth of March to eighteenth of April. Huey Tozozlli (grand watching the grand penitence.) From nineteenth of April to eighteenth of May. Ninth, Toxcatl, (garlands of maize were tied round the necks of the priests.) Tenth, Tezopachuiliztli, a censer,) from ninth to twenty-eighth of May. (It was in this month Toxcatl that the fellow soldier of Cortez Alvarado, that ferocious warrior, made a horrible slaughter of the Mexican nobility assembled within the enclosure of the Teo calli (house of God.) This attack was the signal of the civil dissensions that caused the death of the unfortunate Montezuma.)

From May 29 to June 17. Tehuil-huitztli (festival of the young warriors). From June 18 to July 2. Maccailhuitzintli, (festival of the departed or dead). From July 28 to August 16. Huey-miccailhuitl, (Grand festival to the memory of illustrious dead). From August 28 to September 5. Ochpanzitli, (besom renewing month). From September 6 to 25. Pachtli, name of a wild clinging vine which is supported and cherished on the trunk or stock of great trees, which begins to bud this month. From September 26 to October 15. Ezoztli Tɛotlico, (come from the gods), and also the maturity or perfection of the plant pachtli. From October 16 to November 4. Tepechuitl, (feast of the mountains). From November 5 to December 14. Quecholli, (month in which the Phoenicoptorus, (Flamingo), which, on account of its peculiarities is called by the Mexicans TEOquechol, (Divine visitor) arrives on the borders of the lake. From December 15 to January 3. Atemoztec the descent of renovating showers." No one acquainted with the metaphoric genius of the Mexicans, will doubt that all these allusions are replete with prophetic expectation. See Clavegero and Antiq. Mex.

Dr. Beatty thus describes a Festival at which he was present on the Ohio. "Before they use any of the first fruits,' twelve of their elders meet, when a deer is divided into twelve parts, and the corn beaten in a mortar and prepared for use by boiling or baking under the ashes. (Of course unleavened.) This is also divided into twelve parts. These men hold up the venison and bread, and with their faces toward the East acknowledge the bounty of God to them. It is then eaten. They have at evening another feast which looks like the Passover. A great quantity of venison is provided with other things dressed in the usual way, and distributed among the guests; that which is left is thrown into the fire and burned: none of it may remain till sunrise, nor must a bone of the venison be broken. Exod. xii. 46. They also purify themselves with bitter herbs and roots."

Beltrami, a literary traveller, thus writes to the Countess Compagnoni, with reference to the same Feast among a tribe west of the Mississippi-" Women and old men station themselves behind the performers, and join chorus in the Canticle. To give you an idea of the clatter and hubbub of music thus produced, it would be necessary to be either an Indian or a Jew. Public sacrifices are considered indispensable by the Indians, when they hold their grand assemblies for deliberating on the question of peace or war. Here also we trace the resemblance to antiquity. I have been present at one of their feasts; as there was a mystic solemnity connected with it, every individual was obliged to eat or make some other eat the portion set before him; to leave a single morsel on the bark trencher on which the repast was served, would have been an insufferable insult to the divinity to whom it was consecrated."

149

MODE OF RECKONING.

"They count time," observes Dr. Boudinot, "after the manner of the Hebrews. They divide the year into spring, summer, autumn and winter. They number their year from any of those four periods, for they have no name for a year; and they subdivide these, and count the year by lunar months, like the Israelites, who counted by moons as their name sufficiently testifies. The number and regular periods of the Indians' religious feasts, is a good historical proof, that they counted time by, and observed a weekly sabbath, long after their arrival on the American continent. They began the year at the first appearance of the first new moon of the vernal equinox, according to the ecclesiastical year of Moses."-Star in the West.

1 'The Otahietans count by ten and then turn back as the Hurons and Algonquins do; when they come to twenty, they have a new word. They afterwards proceed by scores, and so on to ten score-and ten times ten score. Dr. Parsons has published the names of several American Indian tribes who do the same, viz. the Mohawks, the Onondagoes, the Wyandots, the Shawnese, Delawares, and Carribees."-See Astle's Origin and Progress of Printing.

This is precisely the manner of counting used by the Israelitish people: having got to ten, they begin ten one, ten two, ten three, ten four, and so on to twenty, which has a new name, &c.

"The mode of reckoning time," says Hunter, "is very simple. Their year begins at the vernal equinox, their diurnal reckoning is from “evening to evening" beginning at sunset."

150

MEXICAN CALENDAR.

"THIS plate, (writes the interpreter of the Indian records,) represents the first age of the world, which was destroyed by water. The world had been peopled by two persons whom the triune God placed there at first.

“The world had been subsequently peopled by three, (names not mentioned.) They (the tribes) were descended from,1 or of the race of Quetzalcoatl, and for this reason they hold lineage in great account, and wherever they chanced to be, they said, I am of such a lineage. Before His image, which they called the HEART of the people, wood and incense were always burning.

The third age is characterized as "the holding up of roses and flint knives, partly covered with branches of rose tree, which denote the suffering of Quetzalcoatl. From this

1 The learned Arias Montanos was convinced that the primitive people of the Western Hemisphere were of the race of Shem..

It is not surprising that Sigunenza, who in knowing only the religion of the Spanish ecclesiastics, might have been led to suppose his people of the race of Cham. His reason for this opinion, we are informed by Clavegero, was the similarity which he found between their pyramidal monuments, and the appellative Teotl which he thought bore a strong affinity to the Egyptian Teuth. The commentator on the Antiq. Mex. observes, "The learned Siguenza, conversant with the drawings of his people, believed that they had arrived in the Western continent soon after the dispersion of Babel. But if, as he supposed, they were of the race of Cham, why did they not observe the Egyptian modes of idolatry? And how came they to the knowledge of the Hebrew ritual?"

The Egyptian pyramids were places of sepulture; whereas those of the Indians were neither hollow, subterraneous, nor (with the exception of the small ones, dedicated to the planets) places of interment.

The word Teotl is not more analogous to the Teuth of Egypt, than to the Theos of Greece. Those who build theories on a solitary and dubious sound, have only contributed to create those clouds by which the fair face of this luminous subject has been obscured." Drake observes of the Rev. Mr. Mortimer, a New England divine--"That the Indians have a Latin origin, he thinks evident, because he fancied he heard among their words Pasco pan, and hence thinks without doubt, their ancestors were acquainted with the god Pan!-History of North Caro lina, 1. 216, in Drake's book of the Indians, p. 5.