Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/360

 

different tribes or nations of Anáhuac came, according to their several traditions, from the north-west, in a series of migrations, but of their original starting point they preserved no clear record. M. de Guigne presents proofs to show that the Chinese visited Mexico as early as 458 Horn (de originibus Americanis, 1699), Scherer (Recherches Hist.), Humboldt (Essai Polit.) and other authorities, without a dissentient voice, assign an Asiatic origin to the Toltecs and other Mexican peoples. That Mexico received settlers from other parts of the world seems also certain. Aristotle (De Admirandis in natura) relates that Carthaginian sailors passed the Pillars of Hercules, and, after sailing sixty days to the west, reached a beautiful and fertile country, and that so many began to go thither that the Senate of Carthage passed a law suppressing such emigration, to prevent the depopulation of the city. The theory of the submerged Atlantis, and the arguments on which it rests, are too well known to require explanation.

The efforts to graft Mexican civilisation on to an Asiatic or African stock have not been entirely successful, for, while there tindoubtedly exist points of striking similarity, these seem to be counterbalanced by still more important divergencies. The paucity of positive data or even coherent traditions has left a wide field open to speculation, of which many learned and ingenious seekers have availed themselves to the fullest extent, but without achieving results commensurate with their labours. Without attempting a thorough search into the racial origin of the tribes which Cortes found in the valley of Mexico, it may be briefly stated that the best evidence before us points to Yucatan as the centre of the highest American civilisation, from whence a knowledge of law, arts, and manufactures, and the influence of an organised religious system, spread northwards. The splendid ruins of Yucatan and Central America attest the existence of a race of people, which, whatever its origin, was isolated from European and Asiatic influence alike since an epoch which it is impossible to fix, but which was certainly very remote. This race—the Maya—possessed a civilisation, sui generis, and entirely unique on the North American continent, the focus of which had already shifted to the high valley of Mexico long before the Spaniards first visited the country in the sixteenth century