Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/224

Rh 214 MEXICO Plate I. are too insufficient or too erroneous to serve for any general decipher ment. Most of what lias been written on this enticing subject is worthless, but a promising attempt has been made by E. S. Holden, who has analysed the combined figures into their elementary lines (First Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Insti tution, Washington, 1881 ; see also Charencey, Melanges de Philologie ct de Paliographie Americaines, Paris, 1883). One point as to the Central- American characters is clear, that part of them are calendar- signs recording dates. From the accounts given by Landa and other writers it is plain that the Central -American calendar, reckoning the year in twenty-eight periods of thirteen days, was the same in its principle of combining signs as that of Mexico here mentioned at page 212. The four leading Maya signs called kan, muluc, ix, cauac corresponded in their position to the four Aztec signs rabbit, reed, flint, house, but the meanings of the Maya signs are, unlike the Aztec, very obscure. A remarkable feature of the Central-American ruins is the frequency of truncated pyramids built of hewn stone, with flights of steps up to the temple built on the platform at top. The resemblance of these structures to the old descriptions and pic tures of the Mexican teocallis is so striking that this name is habitu ally given to them. The teocallis built by the Nahtia or Mexican nations have been mostly destroyed, but two remain at Huatusco and Tusapan (figured in Bancroft, vol. iv. pp. 443, 45(5), which bear a strong resemblance to those of Palenque. On the whole it is not too much to say that, in spite of differences in style, the best means of judging what the temples and palaces of Mexico were like is to be gained from the actual ruins in Central America. On the other hand, there are features in Central-American architecture which scarcely appear in Mexican. Thus at Uxmal there stands on a terraced mound the long narrow building known as the governor s house (Casa del Gobernador), 322 feet long, 39 feet wide, 26 feet high, built of rubble stone and mortar faced with square blocks of stone, the interior of the chambers rising into a sloping roof formed by courses of stonework gradually overlapping in a &quot; false arch. 1 The same construction is seen in the buildings forming the sides of a quadrangle and bearing the equally imaginary name of the nunnery (Casa de Monjas); the resemblance of the interior of one of its apartments to an Etruscan tomb has often been noticed (see Fergusson, History of Architecture, vol. i. ; Viollet-le-Duc, in Charnay). Attempts to trace the architecture of Central America to direct derivation from Old-World types have not been successful, while on the other hand its decoration shows proof of original inven tion, especially in the imitations of woodwork which, as the above- mentioned architects have pointed out, passed into sculptured ornament when the material of construction became stone instead of wood. Thus the architectural remains, though they fail actually to solve the historical problem of the high culture of the nations round the Gulf of Mexico, throw much light on it when their evidence is added to that of religion and customs. Whether Mexican civilization was a barbaric copy of that which flourished in the now deserted Central-American cities, or whether the nations who built these cities themselves raised to a higher level a civilization derived from Mexico, two things seem probable, first, that the civilizations of Mexico and Central America were pervaded by a common influence in religion, art, and custom ; second, that this common element shows traces of the importation of Asiatic ideas into America. Among works of reference on the ancient history and civilization of Mexico and Central America may be mentioned H. H. Bancroft, The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America, London, 1875-6 (contains the most complete summary, with references to original authorities) ; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des Nations Civi/ise es du Mexique. et de I Amerique dmtrale. Paris, 1857-59 (a valuable collection of materials, but the author s own views are mostly fanciful); Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico; Clavigero, Storia Antica del Messico, Ceseua, 1780 (contains the substance of earlier writers, such as Gomara, Torquemada, Acosta, Boturini, &c.). For special topics : Lord Kings- borough, Antiquities of Mexico, London, 1831-48 (contains facsimiles and inter pretations of picture-writings, the native chronicles of Ixtlilxoehitl and Tezozo- moc, a reprint of Sahagun, Ac.); A. von Humboldt, Vues des Cordilleres, et Monument des Peuples Indigenes de I Amerique, Paris, 1816 (Mexican civilization, picture-writing, calendar, Ac.). Travels and descriptions of antiquities, &e.: Dupaix (in Kingsborough); C Nebel, Viaje Pintoresco y Arqueo/ogico sobre la Republica Mejicana. Paris, 1839; F. de Waldeck, Voyage Pittoresque et Arche o- logique dans la Province d Yucatan, Paris, 1838, and Palenque et Autres Raines, Paris, I860 ; D. Charnay, Cites el Ruines A mericaines, avec texte par Viollet-le-Uuc, Paris, 1863; J. L. Stephens, Incidents oj Travel in Central America, &c.. New York, 1841; Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, New York, 1858; Brantz Mayer, Mexico, New Yoik, 1854; Tylor, Anahuac, or Mexico and the Mexicans, London, 1861, &amp;lt;fec. ( E . B . T.) II. THE REPUBLIC OF MEXICO. Mexico, Aztec Mexitli l (Estados Unidos de Mexico), is a federal republic in North America, bounded N. by the United States (California, Arizona, and New Mexico), E. by Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, S. by Guatemala and 1 In this, as in all other Aztec names, the x (or j) represents the English sound sh; hence Mexitli and Mexico should be properly pronounced Meshitli, Meshito. But they do not appear to have ever been so pro nounced by the Spaniards, who naturally gave to the x its ordinary Spanish sound of the German ch. British Honduras, where the boundary lines are still partly undetermined, W. by the Pacific Ocean. Lying between 33 and 15 N. lat. and 87 and 117 W. long., Mexico stretches about 1950 miles north-north-west and south- south-east, with a mean breadth of 400 miles, varying from about 1000 in 26 N. to 130 at the narrowest part of the Tehuantepec isthmus. It has a coast-line of nearly 6000 miles, about 4200 on the Pacific and 1600 on the Atlantic. The seaboard is little varied either by deep inlets, bold headlands, broad estuaries, or large islands. On the west side are the vast Gulf of California, in outline somewhat resembling the Red Sea, and so named by some of the early navigators, and the open Bay of Tehuantepec, besides the smaller inlets of Acapulco and San Bias, forming two of the finest harbours in the world, and almost the only safe ones in the republic. On the east side the coast is mostly beset by lagoons and sand banks, with no good havens, Campe&quot;che, Vera Cruz, Tampico, and Matamoras being all little better than open roadsteads exposed to the fierce &quot; nortes,&quot; or north-easterly gales, that sweep the Gulf of Mexico for a great part of the year. Of headlands the most prominent are Capes S. Lucas and Palmas at the south extremity of Lower California, Cor- rientes south from San Bias, and Catoche in the north east of Yucatan. Besides this peninsula, which projects north-north-east, the only other is that of Lower California, which projects south-south-east parallel to the mainland. The islands are few in number, and all of insignificant size, the most noteworthy being Tiburon and Angel de la Guarda in the Gulf of California, the uninhabited Eevillagigedo group in the Pacific, and Cozumel off the Yucatan coast. Mexico comprises altogether twenty-seven confederate states, one territory, and the Federal District, with areas, populations, and chief towns as under : 2 States. Area in Square Miles. Popula tion (1880). Capital. Popula tion (1877-80). i 1 i &amp;lt; i. i 7? o ISonorn 81,022 105 JH5 139,140 180 758 Ures 9,700 12,116 11,340 15,300 7,800 12,400 6,800 1.5,190 32,000 7,878 78,600 23,572 20,400 3,800 26,228 8,500 27,119 32,000 31,872 34,300 56,112 27,560 12,500 12.700 16,320 64,588 4,300 241,110 2,396 01,050 14,363 28,659 27,4:i3 12,716 26,083 32, 6.58 25,927 48,967 2,39:3 21,609 24 22G 104,131 194,861 144,747 504,970 93,387 86,299 285,384 167,0!I3 .194,900 6-5,827 048,857 308 716 Saltillo Nuevo-Leon ITainaulipas Monterey Ciudad Victoria .. . Jalapa San Juan Bautisti. Campe che Merida Culiacim Vera Cruz Campechu Yucatan [Sinaloa Jalisco Guadalajara Colima Morelia Colima Bi avos Oajaca 27,389 718,194 Oajaca Chiapas 16,769 42,6*3 2(1 58,5 210,735 190,846 413 603 San Cristobal Durango Aguas Calienti-s San Luis Potosi Guanajuato 2,216 28,889 11,130 140,430 506,799 788,202 Aguas Calientes San Luis Potosi .... Guanajuato Quere taro Hidalgo 3,429 8,480 9,598 1,898 11 7fil 179,915 434,096 696,038 154,946 704 372 Queidtaro Pachuca Mexico Morelos Puebla Toluca Cuernavaca Puebla Tlaxcala 1,498 85 59,033 133,498 354,340 23,195 Tlaxcala Mexico La Paz Federal District Lower California &amp;gt; (Territory) .) 763,804 |9,577,279 Since the appearance of A. von Humboldt s classic Physica work on New Spain, as Mexico was called in the colonial features, times, this region has continued to be regarded as forming Plateau: a main link in the vast chain supposed to stretch across ar the entire length of the American continent from Cape tains. 2 These figures, in the absence of scientific surveys and a trust worthy census, are necessarily more or less approximate. The areas are those of Ripley and Dana, based on A. Garcia Cuba s Carta geo- graftca (Mexico, 1874); the populations of the states and capitals are the estimates of Einiliano Busto in his Estadistica de la JRepublica Mcxicana (Mexico, 1880). A writer in the Times of December 7, 1882, estimates the whole population at 12,000,000, much too high a figure.