Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/114

104 by Quetzatcoatl, whatever part of Europe he may have belonged to. The probability of St. Brendan designing such a voyage is supported alike by the renown of the saint as a "navigator," and by the known maritime enterprises and enthusiastic missionary spirit of the Irish of his time; the supposition that he succeeded in his design is countenanced by the ample preparations he is said to have made for the voyage.

There is a disagreement between the Mexican tradition and the Irish narrative in respect to the stay of the white man in Mexico. Quetzatcoatl is said to have remained twenty years in the country, but only seven years—seven Easters—are assigned to the absence of St. Brendan from his monastery. Either period would probably suffice for laying the foundations of the Christianity the remnants of which the Spaniards found in the beginning of the sixteenth century. On this point the Irish record is more likely to be correct. The Mexican tradition was already very ancient when the Spaniards became acquainted with it as ancient as the sway of the vanquished Toltecs. For centuries it had been handed down from generation to generation, and not always through generations of the same people. It is, therefore, conceivable that it may have undergone variations in some minor particulars, and that a stay of seven years became exaggerated into one of twenty. The discrepancy is not a serious one, and is in no sense a touchstone of the soundness of the theory that Quetzatcoatl and St. Brendan may have been one and the same person.

A curious feature of the Mexican tradition is its apparently needless insistency upon the point that Quetzatcoatl sailed away from Mexico in a vessel of serpents' skins. There seems no special reason for attributing this extraordinary mode of navigation to him. If the design were to enhance his supernatural attributes, some more strikingly miraculous mode of exit could easily have been invented. The first impulse, accordingly, is to reject this part of the tradition as hopelessly inexplicable—as possibly allegorical in some obscure way, or as originating in a misnomer, or in the mistranslation of an ancient term. But further consideration suggests the possibility of there being more truth in the "serpents' skins" than appears at first sight. In the absence of large quadrupeds in their country the ancient Mexicans made use of serpents' skins as a substitute for hides. The great drums on the top of their temple-crowned pyramids were, Cortes states, made of the skins of a large species of serpent, and when beaten for alarm could be heard for miles around. It may, therefore, be that Quetzatcoatl, in preparing for his return voyage across the Atlantic, made use of this material to cover the hull of his vessel and render it water-tight. The Mexicans were not boat-builders, and were unacquainted with the use of tar or pitch, employing