Page:Vol 6 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/662

642 treatise on comets. He was also the editor of the Mercurio Volante, and was a man of sound judgment and high attainments. Pedro Alarcon and others afterward distinguished themselves in mathematics and astronomy.

It is wonderful how both government and people neglected the relics of New Spain, superior, in many directions, to those of Egypt, and worthy of comparison with those of the middle epoch of Greece. Indeed, they were looked on as devices of the devil, and devoted to extermination. — A few papers and figures were, however, sent to Spain, and roused a spirit of inquiry, which, in modern times, has had brilliant results. The follies of vandalism, such as Zumárraga's, Sahagun redeemed by collecting from Indians of the conquest data on their manners and customs, modes of education, and knowledge. Much of his work was mutilated by narrow-mindedness, but Torquemada, in his Monarquía, saved much of it. The mestizo Father Duran's work met with the same fate as Sahagun's. Acosta brought the result of his labors at an earlier date before the world.

Collections of original documents, in the hands of native nobles, like Ixtlilxochitl, were allowed to be scattered, and only remnants escaped destruction, through the more enlightened care of Sigüenza, Veytia, Ortega, Pichardo, and a few others. Boturini spent six years in gathering several hundred papers and curiosities, which are partly preserved in Kingsborough's great work. Mariano Veytia, a learned