Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/326

318 I produce here fragments of two of the pictures, showing them as having in the caves of Chicamoztoc, their subsequent migration, and their barbarous nomadic life, when they subsisted entirely upon the chase and the wild plants of the field. The second series pictures them as having settled at Tezcoco, and engaged in the pursuits of agriculture, being surrounded by figures of the maguey, cultivated cactus, and other plants. The third gives us a glimpse of their later life, after they had assimilated the remnant of the Toltecs remaining in the valley, and had learned from them the arts for which the latter people had been distinguished, such as the casting of metals, the manufacture of jewelry, copper utensils, etc. The most valuable of the series is called "Map Tepechpan," also one of the Boturini collection, and consists of synchronous annals of the principalities of Tepechpan and Mexico, commencing with the year 1298, and ending at the conquest; subsequently extended by less skilful hands to 1596. Like the two manuscripts before spoken of, these go back to the savage era of the Chichimecs, but give the leading events in the Tepanec and Mexican tribes until the establishment of the Mexican empire, thence relating exclusively to the latter. Wars, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, inundations, etc., are all accurately recorded under the date of their occurrence. The coming of Cortés, the death of Montezuma and his nephew, and the accession of Guatemotzin, are all intelligibly set down here in unmistakable characters.

Among the many attractive articles in the Museum is Montezuma's feather-covered shield, below and beyond which are cases of carved stone, in every shape the fertile Indian imagination could suggest; to describe them would require a catalogue.

That rare volcanic glass, obsidian, was early used by the Mexican aborigines in the manufacture of arrow and spear heads, and even mirrors and curious masks are shown here, carved and polished. Vases of clay, black, and painted in many colors, with grotesque figures wrought, we also find, of which the finest, perhaps, is that bearing the image and symbols of the goddess Centeotl, the Mexican Ceres. Of the thousand and one gods possessed by the Aztecs, there were thirteen which held