while a branch of them, traversing the whole length of Cuba and the great archi of the Caribbean islands, descended finally to the banks of the Oronoco. This fraction of the migratory population may, of course, have been small and its impetus inconsiderable, since the necessity of maritime transport, though only from island to islaud, would naturally impair its force. In the opinion of others, and among them Humboldt, even the Rocky mountains in their extension northward may have led similar branches of emigrants to adopt a different path in their progress towards the south. Whether these branches originally issued from the lake regions, though it is not impossible, is difficult to determine. They must at any rate, in departing from their homes, have taken a directly west or at least southwest direction. Although no substantial reasons can be assigned why any race of those latitudes should have given a preference to the toilsome defiles of the Rocky mountains, when the fair and commodious plains and prairies of the south lay before them, yet too many points of apparent connexion present themselves to admit of our consigning their adoption of such a route to the category of impossibilities.

It is from the Rio Gila onwards that we are first enabled to perceive definite traces of the course of the migration into the regions of the south; the indications of the different stages of its progress increase with its entrance upon Mexi can territory, but we yet possess only sparingly the means of identification. The first immigrants who appeared in the north of Mexico brought with them the so-called Toltecatl civilization, the work of the races of the great Nahoa family. The space which this mode of culture gradually occupied is shown by the two great casas on the Rio Gilat and in Chihuahua, by el Zape in Da rango and la Quemada in Zacatecas. Whether all these tribes maintained at the same time a separate or subordinate condition cannot now be ascertained; but in proportion to the genera growth and improvement would be the provection of their boundaries to the south and the inducements offered to further migrations.‡

By the term immigration of a race we are not generally to understand a single immigration only; we should rather comprehend under the common name, for example, of the Nahoa immigration, all expeditions of the branches belonging to that family. These expeditions took place successively at intervals, and therefore, from first to last, suppose a considerable length of time, within which a large number of these branches successively arrived on the banks of the Rio Grande and Rio Gila. This consideration is of the more weight, since, through an improper conception of such terms, which involve, as we see, an idea of multitude, a source of confusion is introduced into the already sufficiently obscure history of the American migration.

Over the Nahoas floats still much mystical obscurity; the epoch of their appearance in the northern parts of Mexico admits as yet of no accurate de termination; it must have taken place, however, at a much earlier time than the commencement of our Christian era. Our knowledge respecting these partially mythical people amounts to little more than enough to justify us in regarding them as perhaps the founders of the stone-works in northern Mexico. If we admit that the age of the civilization indicated in the region of the Missis sippi reaches back 2,000 years, it is not impossible that the Nahoas were also the builders of the earth-mounds in North America, or at least belonged to the race from which these works proceeded. As regards the stone structures of the

*The first volume of the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg's Histoire des Nations Civilizées du Mexique et de l'Amerique Centrale, (Paris 1857-'59, 4 vols.,) treats at length of the Nahous This work is very full and authoritative, though scarcely written with all the discrimination and clearness which was desirable.

At the confluence of the Rio San Pedro with the Rio Gila, which is itself an affluent of the Rio Colorado, emptying into the Gulf of California, (Mar Vermeio.)

Orozco y Berra; Geogr. d. las leng. de Mexico, p. 125.

great casas of el Zape and la Quemada, we cannot but infer that their builders must have been long permanently settled in those districts, which accords much better with later researches than the assumption of many that the immigrating tribes had merely halted in the places for a few years, perhaps a quarter of a century, and in that time had erected these monuments.*

With the appearance of the Toltecs some light begins to dawn on the history of the migration. This cultivated people, kindred also to the Nahoa family, entered Mexico in the seventh century of our era. The year 648 is generally reckoned that of their appearance; only Clavigero carries it back to the year 596. But here, likewise, is to be understood not merely a single immigration, but several of the same family. This plurality of migrations presents no light difficulties to the historian as well as the geographer. Orozco y Berra, whose linguistic and historical labors merit our highest consideration, has exerted himself to thorw some light on the perplexities of the Toltec immigration. In the hieroglyphic aunals relating to this subject we find the record of several itineraries, which all adapt themselves to the immigration in question. These itineraries, partially provided with chronological notices, correspond in some points, but disagree in others, and thus prove that they do not belong to one and the same expedition. It has already been shown that the routes of such migrations are always essentially influenced by the geographical conformation of the country Hence, at least three different routes of immigration are distiguishable on Mexican soil. The first and most important lies in the western part of the country, and may be traced from Sinaloa to Nicaragua along the coast of the Pacific ocean. The mountain chain which separates Sinaloa from Durango, and stretches to the banks of the Rio Tololotlan, marks the direction of this route for many leagues. First, the course of the Rio Grande de Santiago,§ then that of the Zacatula,|| diverted a part of the wanderers from the direct route and led them to the lake of Chapala,¶ where they established themselves, while others, following in like manner the valleys of water-courses advanced to Guerrero. and gradually made their progress to the fertile table land of Cuernavaca,** and still later to Puebla and Tlaxcalla.ft

The monuments of both the grand casas, el Zape and la Quemada, plainly show the second and middle route which led, on the east of the above-mentioned mountain chain, directly through Chihuahua, Durango and Zacatecas, to Jalisco,

*I had myself long held this opinion till a closer consideration of the facts satisfied me that the space of a quarter of a century could not have sufficed for the erection of monuments which are in fact the scanty remains of extensive settlements, probably of whole cities. It is hardly consistent with the logic of migration that a people in such circumstances should find it expedient to found cities, only to abandon them in so short a time.

The populations which were settled in Mexico before the arrival of the Toltecs might also be possessed of an ancient native civilization; among these pre-Toltec races are to be numbered the Olmecs, the Otomi, whose monosyllabic speech forms an exception to the polysynthetic idioms of America, the Totonacks on the eastern terraces of the Cordilleras, the Mixtecs on the coast of the Pacific ocean, the Tarasks in the greater part of Michoacan, and the Zapotecs in Oaxaca.

Mountain ranges, river courses and sea-coasts prescribe limitations; while for half civ ilized, pastoral and agricultural tribes, the fertility, streams, lakes, and dales of new countries offer special attractions.

This river, called also the Tololotlan, which is formed at Salamanca by the junction of the Rio Hondo de Lerma and the Rio Laxa, flows through the lake of Chapala and empties into the Pacific ocean.

The same name was borne by a city at the mouth of the Rio de las Balzas, on the Pacific, which was long the capital of a flourishing and to the end of the fifteenth century independent state.

The lake of Chapala is the most considerable of those of the whole elevated plateau, and is distant forty miles in a northwestwardly direction from the capital.

** The ancient Quanhnahuac.

Tlaxcalla wa sonce called Chalchinhapan; also Texcalticpac, (i. e., end of the stone houses,) still later Texcallan, (Rock city,) and finally Tlaxcallan, (Breadland, from Tlaxcall-maizebread,) on account of the fruitfulness of its situation.

on the shore of lake Chapala, whence the immigrants would easily attain the Mexican table land.

On the east we discern along the Rio Grande del Norte the traces of a third route of immigration which, according to Orozco, seems not to have touched upon New Leon and Tamaulipas. Whether the widely strewn ruins of an ancient city on the banks of the Rio Panuco in the territory of the warlik Huaxtecs, are associated with this route, I am not able to determine. Further to the south the traces again come to view, and may be followed to their junetion with the rest on the high lands of Anahuac.

From these facts it results, in conformity with the accurate indications of Orozco, that, while heretofore but one Toltec immigration into Mexico has been admitted, several have in reality taken place at different times and by different lines of advance. To determine how many there may have been is at present impossible. It is certain, however, that through the supposition of a singl immigration of a single migratory race it has been necessary to reconcile expe ditions, facts, and discoveries, with unconformable names, with incoherent and contradictory conclusions, with a chronology in the highest degree perplexed. resulting, of course, in the most inextricable confusion. When we come, on the other hand, to analyze the phenomena so as to refer them to the facts as they really occurred, the difficulties vanish, riddles are solved, and all falls in the natural order, which from the first should never have been lost sight of. After it had lasted four centuries, famine, pestilence, and civil war put an end, about the year 1018, to the Toltec monarchy in Mexico. The larger re nant of those Toltecs who had been spared by the calamities of the times le their country, and, according to the historian Don Fernando d'Alvarado Ixtla xochitl, took refuge in southern Guatemala and Nicaragua, but few families re maining in their desolated land. Soon thereafter, but in the opinion of others a century later, the barbarous Chichimecs made their appearance on the high lands of Anahuac. Just as the Toltecs had occupied the sites in northers Mexico, abandoned by the Nahoas, in their progress southward, so had the Chichimees who followed been long established upon the deserted lands ¢ the Toltecs after the withdrawal of the latter to Anahuac. When now again the Toltecs abandoned the land which they had inhabited for four hundre years, the Chichimecs still followed at their heels; nor was it necessary tha they should enter as conquerors, since it needed only to take possession of the deserted homes of the Toltecs. These Chichimecs in the mean time, w had so long lived adjacent to the Toltecs, had, through their intercourse wh the latter, in some degree discarded the rudeness of their manners at the date of their appearance on the elevated plateau of Mexico; as had been the cas with the barbarians who overthrew Rome, but at the same time imbibed the culture of the civilized Romans.

The races which had thus far appeared in Mexico had pertained to one grea branch of languages, the Naboa, a dialect of which was also spoken by the T tecs; and this, till very recently, was supposed to have been the case likewise with the Chichimees, although the Mexican historians Ixtlilxochitl and Torquema

* Americanische Altenthümer, (Westland, edited by Dr. C. Andree, Bremen, 1851, ve p. 129-139,) a very interesting article.

They inhabit the district known by the name of Huaxteca in the north of Mexico, a on the Gulf from Tuxpan to Tampico, a tract which embraces the northern part of the Na of Vera Cruz and a part of San Luis Potosi bordering thereon.

It is impracticable to enter here into the history of the separate countries: the inge will find further and accurate information in the works of Don José de Acosta, H. Be Benaduci Boturini, Brasseur, Brownell, T. de Bussière, Carlier, M. Chevalier, Fr. Clar Epinosa, Gallatin, Greg. Garcia, Gomara, Humboldt, Ixtlilxochitl, Kingsborough, Las sas, Mayer, Moke, Motolinia, Munoz, Oviedo y Valdez, Man. Payno, Prescott, Ra Ruxton, Sahagun, Ant. de Solis, Solorzano, Ternaux-Compans, Tezozomoc, Torqu Tyler, Uhde, Ulloa, Veytis.

had contested the fact. But Don Francisco Pimentel has lately vindicated the opinion of these two writers, and proved that the Chichimees possessed an entirely peculiar language;† consequently they could not have belonged to the Toltec family. In view of this now admitted fact, I can but deem it highly improbable that the Chichimecs arrived in northern Mexico by the same route with the other immigrating tribes, which were all related to one another, being members of the same race, and having probably inhabited a common land of nativity. But if the home of the Chichimecs was a different one from that of the other wandering populations, this circumstance would have naturally prescribed to them a different path to the south. Perhaps they constitute the branch which, in the opinion of many, advanced, as has been already mentioned, on the further side of the Rocky mountains to the banks of the Gila.

The Chichimecs had scarcely established themselves in Mexico when the immigration of those seven tribes took place, which are known by the common name of Nahuatlacas, and which spoke the same tongue as the Toltecs, to whose family also they belonged. Of these seven tribes, six first made their appearance, following closely on one another, namely, the Xochimilcos, Chalcas, Tepanecas, Tlahuicas, Colhuas, and Tlaxcaltecas; while the seventh, the celebrated Aztecs, arrived after a longer interval. In the mean time the Acolhuas also had appeared upon the theatre, but had soon become intermingled with the Chichimecs, who already possessed the country, forming by this union the kingdom of Acolhuacan.

It was in 1090 that the Aztecs, the seventh of the Nahuatlaca race, and speaking the Nahuatl tongue,‡ issued from Aztlan, their original but unknown home, which, as above stated, is to be sought in the region of the great American lakes. The Aztec annals which have come down to us enable us partially to trace this family in its wanderings, even if it be not possible for us to identify the geographical sites to which tradition gives a name. The year 1091 finds the Aztecs at Quahuitl-Icacan. In 1116 they are at Quinehuayan-Oztotl and Quinehuayan Chicomoztoc. Hence they made their way to Teo-Culhuacan, though it is impossible to distinguish the intermediate places which they visited. Their history begins to clear up with their arrival in Acahualtzinco, where they sojourned nine years, (1143.) Their onward march brought them into the province of Cohuatlycamac, not far from the ancient Tollan, then to Coatepec, which they reached in 1174, and where they settled for some time. Finally, between the years 1186 and 1194, about a century after they had issued from their home of Aztlan, the Aztecs appeared on the table land of Anahuac, never more to forsake it. It falls not within the scope of this essay, which deals merely with the migration, to speak of the further history of the Aztec kingdom, whose splendor and power are otherwise well known.§

In the south of Mexico, as before remarked, there existed an ancient civilization, which we would designate as the palencan, and which, agreeably to the latest researches, is to be regarded as the oldest in America. The regions

*In his valuable work, Cuadro descriptivo y comparativo de las lenguas indigenas de Mexico, (Mexico 1862-65,) of which two volumes have appeared.

A grammar of the Chichimec language was composed by the monk Diego Diaz Pangua, who was born in Durango, and died in the year 1631; it was entitled Arte de la lengua Chichimeca. He was the author also of a Chichimec dictionary, and a catechism in the same language; his works, however, have remained in manuscript.

Brasseur notices the similarity of sound between the words Nahuatl and the English Know-all, their signification, moreover, being the same.

Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. de Nations Civ. du Mexique, vol. I. Since the study of the remains of Mexican constructions is of the highest importance for the history of the country, I enumerate the following places where the most remarkable ruins of this kind occur: The districts of Papantla, Cholula, and Teotihuacan, where terraced pyramids are found; Mapilca, Tusapan, Isla de Sacrificios, Puente Nacional, Misantla, in the State of Vera Cruz, Tezcuco, Tezcocingo, Xochicalco in the State of Mexico, Quiotepec, Zachila, Coyula, S.Juan de los Cués, Mitla in Oaxaca.

where its monuments occur, Chiapas, Guatemala, and Yucatan,* are inhabited by the family which use the Maya-Quiché dialect, which some suppose to be derived from the Toltecs.f But Orozco y Berra contests this supposition, and justly, because the Quiché, with its two related idioms, the Cachiquel and Zultuhi, belongs to a family of languages wholly different from the Nahoa; and the Maya was limited to the little-known peninsula of Yucatan and some contiguous territories. It is impossible to determine the time at which the immi gration of the Maya tribes commenced, or which of them first appeared in the country. From the multiplicity of the dialects of this group of languages, we are justified in concluding that Mayas and Quiches had, at a very early epoch. separated from one another, the language of the former changing less than that of the latter, who, at a later period, came into contact with the Toltecs, living north of them. Of the primitive population which erected the numerous monuments of the region in question, history has no further knowledge than that they were the possessors of a civilization far in advance of that of the races which we are inclined to regard as the aboriginal people of Mexico, though it bore no resemblance to that of the northern Nahoas.

As the Toltecs, after the fall of their dominion in Mexico, migrated to Guatemala and Nicaragua, they probably pressed further south the populations which then occupied those countries, and finally founded in Central America itself several small kingdoms, traces of which are not yet extinct. By late and very competent inquirers the hypothesis has been advanced that the surprising constructions of Central America and Yucatan belong not to so early a period as is commonly assumed, but are the work of later times, perhaps even of the civilized Indian races which inhabited the land at the arrival of the Spaniards, or at least of their immediate predecessors. The traveller, Stephens, and the skilful observer, Brantz Mayer, have advanced, in support of this view, many weighty and ingenious considerations; and I was myself inclined to adopt the opinion that at least the migrating Toltecs, who had already earned so much distinction as architects in their own country, should be regarded as the builders of these remarkable monuments, thus assigning to them an age not more remote than the twelfth century. But a more careful comparison of these remains with those of undoubted Toltec origin, added to the recently ascertained fact that the hierglyphic characters found on them bear not the least resemblance to the rest of the picture-writing of Mexico, place it beyond all doubt that these monuments belong to an earlier and, indeed, very ancient epoch.§ The traces of the mi

On the history of Yucatan, see Cogolludo, Historia de l' Yucatan, Madrid, 1688, fol. Fancourt, History of Yucatan from us discovery to the close of the 17th century, London, The distinguished archeologist, G. E. Squier, goes so far as to derive the Toltees f Central America.

In Yucatan alone, thanks to the diligent researches of MM. Norman and Stephens, may now be counted the ruins of fifty-four cities. The most remarkable are Uxmal. ChichenItza, Maxcanu, Sacbey, Xampon, Sanacte, Chunhuhu, Labpakh, Iturbide, Mayapan. Tic. Nochacab, Xoch, Kabah, Sabatsche, Labna, Kenick, İzamal, Saccacal, Tekax, Åkıl, Mari Macoba, Becanchen, Peto in the interior. Tulloom, Tancan, and the island Cozumel in he east; in Chiapas, Palenqué, Utlatan, Ococingo; in Guatemala, the ancient ruins of the Quichés in the districts of Totonicam and Quesaltenango; in Honduras, the monolitre pyramids of Copan; and quite in the east of the country, the old city of Olancho.

For the history of Central America recourse may be had to the following writers: Aviles: Historia de Guatemala, 1866.-Pelaez: Memoria para la Historia del Antique Regno it Guatemala, 1852, 3 vols.-Villagutierre: Historia de la Conquista y Rendicion de rarit Provincias del Reyno de Guatemala. Madrid, 1701, fol. --Ximenes: Las Historias à Origen de los Indios de esta Provincia de Guatemala, Traducidas de la lengua Quiche, Vieraa 1857; an excellent and most important work of my highly honored benefactor, Dr. C.N. Scherzer. Oersted, l'Amerique Centrale, Kopenhague, 1863.-Reichard: Nicaragua, Br schweig, 1854.-Reichard: Centro America, 1851.-Scherzer: Wanderungen Dusch dị Hồ telamericanischen Freistaaten, Nicaragua, Honduras, und S. Salvador, Braunschweig. 157 Squier: Nicaragua, its People, Scenery, Monuments, New York, 1852, 2 vols.—Sque Notes on Central America, New York, 1855.-Squier: The Archeology and Ethnogrāpu Nicaragua, (Transact. American Ethnol. Society, vol. III, 1852.)—Wagner and Schri Die Republik Costa Rica, Le:psig, 1856.