Page:Myths of Mexico and Peru.djvu/29

 These vague intimations that the seas separated them from a great continent where dwelt beings like themselves seem to have been common to white and red men alike. And who shall say by what strange magic of telepathy they were inspired in the minds of the daring explorers and the ascetic priests who gave expression to them in act and utterance? The discovery of America was much more than a mere scientific process, and romance rather than the cold speculations of mediæval geography urged men to tempt the dim seas of the West in quest of golden islands seen in dreams.

The Type of Mexican Civilisation The first civilised American people with whom the discoverers came into contact were those of the Nahua or ancient Mexican race. We use the term "civilised" advisedly, for although several authorities of standing have refused to regard the Mexicans as a people who had achieved such a state of culture as would entitle them to be classed among civilised communities, there is no doubt that they had advanced nearly as far as it was possible for them to proceed when their environment and the nature of the circumstances which handicapped them are taken into consideration. In architecture they had evolved a type of building, solid yet wonderfully graceful, which, if not so massive as the Egyptian and Assyrian, was yet more highly decorative. Their artistic outlook as expressed in their painting and pottery was more versatile and less conventional than that of the ancient people of the Orient, their social system was of a more advanced type, and a less rigorous attitude was evinced by the ruling caste toward the subject classes. Yet, on the other hand, the picture is darkened by the terrible if picturesque 9