Atlantic Monthly | Page 4

profound,--an ocean without light. The germ that still lay covered in the husk Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat."]
The legend then pictures a council between these "Fathers" and the Supreme Creator; after which, the word is spoken, and the earth bursts forth from the darkness, with its great mountains and forests and animals and birds, as they might to a voyager approaching the shore. An episode occurs, describing a deluge, but still bearing in it the traces of the double tradition,--the one referring to some primeval catastrophe, and the other to a local inundation, which had perhaps surprised the first legislators in the midst of their efforts. The Mexican tradition (Codex Chimalpopoca) shows more distinctly the united action of the Mediator (Quetzalcohuatl) and the Deity:--"From ashes had God created man and animated him, and they say it is Quetzalcohuatl who hath perfected him who had been made, and hath _breathed into him, on the seventh day, the breath of life_."
Another legend, after describing the creation of men of wood, and women of _cibak_, (the marrow of the corn-flag,) tells us that "the fathers and the children, from want of intelligence, did not use the language which they had received to praise the benefaction of their creation, and never thought of raising their eyes to praise Hurakan. Then were they destroyed in an inundation. There descended from heaven a rain of bitumen and resin... And on account of them, the earth was obscured; and it rained night and day. And men went and came, out of themselves, as if struck with madness. They wished to mount upon the roofs, and the houses fell beneath them; when they took refuge in the caves and the grottoes, these closed over them. This was their punishment and destruction."--Vol. I. p. 55.
In the Mexican tradition, instead of the rain we find a violent eruption of the volcanoes, and men are changed into fishes, and again into _chicime_,--which may designate the barbarian tribes that invaded Central America.
In still another tradition, the Deity and his associates are more plainly men of superior intelligence, laboring to civilize savage races; and finally, when they cannot inspire two essential elements of civilization,--a taste for labor, and the religious idea,--a sudden inundation delivers them from the indocile people. Then--so far as the mysterious language of the legend can be interpreted--they appear to have withdrawn themselves to a more teachable race. But with these the difficulty for the new law-givers is that they find nothing corresponding to the productions of the country from which they had come. Fruits are in abundance, but there is no grain which requires culture, and which would give origin to a continued industry. The legend relates, somewhat naively, the hunger and distress of these elevated beings, until at length they discover the maize, and other nutritious fruits and grains in the county of Paxil and Cayala.
Our author places these latter in the state of Chiapas, and the countries watered by the Usumasinta. The provinces of Mexico and the Atlantic border of Central America he supposes to be those where the first legislators of America landed, and where was the cradle of the first American civilization. In these regions, the great city attributed to Votan,--Palenque,--the ruins of whose magnificent temples and palaces even yet astonish the traveller, was one of the first products of this civilization.
With regard to the much-vexed question of the origin of the Indian races, M. de Bourbourg offers no theory. In his view, the evidence from language establishes no certain connection between the Indian tribes and any other race whatever; though, as he justly remarks, the knowledge of the languages of the Northeast of Asia and of the interior of America is yet very limited, and more complete investigations must be waited for before any very satisfactory conclusions can be attained. The similarity of the Indian languages points without doubt to a common origin, while their variety and immense number are indications of a high antiquity; for who can estimate the succession of years necessary to subdivide a common tongue into so many languages, and to give birth out of a savage or nomadic life to a civilization like that of the Aztecs?
In the passage of man from one hemisphere to another he sees no difficulty; as, without considering Behring's Strait, the voyage, from Mantchooria, or Japan, following the chain of the Koorile and the Aleutian Isles, even to the Peninsula of Alaska, would be an enterprise of no great hazard.
The traditions of the Indian tribes, as well as their monumental inscriptions, point to an Eastern origin. From whatever direction the particular tribe may have emigrated, they always speak of their fathers as having come from the rising of the sun. The Quiche, as well as the Chippeway traditions, allude to the