The Edinburgh Review. ARCHEOLOGY OF NORTH AMERICA.* THE northern continent of America

affords, though it might seem other wise, an extensive field for archæological research and an excellent test of the

*1. Historical and Statistical Information respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. and prepared under the direction of the BuCollected reau of Indian Affairs, by HENRY ROWE SCHOOL CRAFT (COLCRAFT). Illustrated by S. EASTMAN, fat. S. Navy. 6 vols. 4to. Philadelphia:

1851-1860.

2. Antiquities of the State of New York: with & Supplement on the Antiquities of the West (reprinted from the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.) BY EPHRAIM GEORGE SQUIER. 8vo. Buffalo: 1851.

3 Views of Ancient Monuments in Central AmerBy FREDERICK CATHERWOOD. by Chiapas, and Yucatan, with an Introduction.

1844.

Fol.

London:

Old Series Complete in 63 vols.

true value of the theories which have been propounded as to the origin of civilization and of art in the eastern

hemisphere. Historically as well as geographically, the area is almost unbounded, and has been occupied, in all probability, from the remotest antiquity, by different nations, if not by different races of mankind, in various stages of opment. The ancient remains, many of social, political, and intellectual develwhich are in a singularly perfect condition, considering the lapse of so many most stolid beholder with admiration centuries, are calculated to impress the and awe. Unlike the relics of antiquity in the Old World, they have suffered less from the vandalism of man than from the ravages of time. The advancing emigrant and the retreating Indian

4. Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts of North America. Illustrated. EMANUEL DOMENECH. By the Abbé 1860. 2 vols. 8vo. London:

cient and Modern.

5. Anahuac; or Mexico and the Mexicans, Antions. By EDWARD B. TAYLOR. 8vo. London: With a Map and Illustra

1861.

NEW SERIES-Vol. VI., No. 4.

each in his turn-have contributed to their preservation; the one from economical, the other from superstitious motives. Their number is so vast, their distribution so unequal, and their character so diverse as to render any attempt at a classification-in this place at least -a profitless task. From Guatemala

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to Upper Canada, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, the surface is strewn with stupendous ruins of pyramidal temples and tumuli, entrenched camps and fortifications, walled towns and villages, amphitheatres and pictorial grottos, embankments and bridges, towers and obelisks, wells and aqueducts, high roads and causeways, gardens and artificial meadows; the greater part of which were designed, constructed, and maintained by numerous, intelligent, and skilful races of men who have long since disappeared from the several scenes of their labor, bequeathing to posterity no written, nor even a solitary traditional memorial of themselves or of their ancestors. Some portion of their history, nevertheless, may be dimly discerned by the light of analogy. But before speculating on their probable origin, or determining to what particular branch of the human family they belonged, or from whom they derived elementary instruction in the arts and conveniences of life, let us take a glance at their country, as it presented itself to the astonished gaze of the Spaniards at the commencement of the six

teenth century.

come the indisputable inheritance of the United States. Less intelligent and humane than the Acolhuans and Nahuatlacas, the founders respectively of Tezcuco and Tlacopan, but more warlike and ambitious than either, the Aztecas of Mexico assumed the lead in all military and aggressive enterprises, and were gradually extending their dominion, which already reached from the 14th to the 21st degree of north latitude, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, when they were startled by the sudden apparition of the Spaniards. The story of their tragical conquest, as has been remarked,

reads more like a fiction of romance

than a chapter in the annals of mankind. But with that story, excepting so far as concerns the progress which the unfortunate Aztecas had made in civilization and the arts, we have little to do in this place. Their conquerors in penetrating Central America, and reaching the elevated regions of Anahuac were not less astonished by the multitude of stately and populous cities than by the wealth and magnificence of the tropical landscape. Both were a surprise and surpassingly beautiful to the hardy invaders.

"When I beheld the delicious scenery

In that age, the continent of North around me," exclaims that honest old America, so far as relates to its terri- soldier, Bernal Diaz, “I thought we had torial divisions, its political circum- been transported by magic to the terresstances, and the dispersion of its multi- trial paradise... Some of our men, who tudinous families, differed less than had visited both Rome and Constantinomight be supposed from its present con- ple, declared that they had not seen anydition. Then, as now, fixed communi- thing comparable in those cities for conties and nomadic tribes divided the soil venient and regular distribution, or for between them. In their respective numbers of people." Works of public modes of existence, the best of the in- utility, some built of brick and some of habitants exhibited but an imperfect civ- stone, were visible in every direction, ilization, and the worst of them but a many of which in magnitude as well as qualified barbarism; the first were emerin grandeur rivalled the most celebrated ging from, and the second were sinking structures of antiquity in the Old World. into, a state of social decrepitude and The terraced-pyramid of Cholula, in the moral ruin. Nor is this the only in- sacred province of Puebla, which was stance of the verification in the New crowned with an elaborately decorated World of the maxim in the Old, that teocalli, or "house of God," and which history reproduces itself. As in the nine- was built, it has been supposed, upon teenth so in the sixteenth century, one the model of the Temple of Belus, degreat national confederation eclipsed all scribed by Herodotus, covered an area the surrounding principalities or king- double that of the largest of Egyptian The ancient Mexican League, pyramids; but its altitude was greatly including the several sovereignties of disproportioned to the vast extent of its pied that preeminent position, and exer- third only of that of Cheops. The inAnahuac, Tezcuco, and Tlacopan, occu- base, being no more than 177 feet, or a cised that paramount influence, north of terior walls of the teocalli were adorned the Tropic of Cancer, which has since be with curiously wrought plates of silver

doms.

ble to stand still in any spot where there was no relic of Old Mexico within our reach; but this we could not do. Everywhere the ground was full of unglazed pottery and obsifigures that were good enough for a mudian, and we even found arrows and clay seum. (P. 147.)

and gold, profusely studded with gems. A much greater expenditure of wealth and ingenuity was bestowed upon the shrine of the tutelary god, whose statue, larger than life, was graved in the most durable stone, and painted in the most gorgeous colors. There was not a city or populous village within the confines The Aztecas were likewise indefatigaof the Anahuacan territory, or in the ble tillers of the ground; and the East provinces to the south of it, which could and through the East the whole world not boast of a temple more or less con- is indebted to them for the successful spicuous for its magnitude and sumptu- cultivation of the maize and cotton ous embellishments. In fact, storied plants. Their famous floating parterres, palaces of princes and nobles, each elevated on a series of artificial platforms, ness to their singular taste and ingenuity on the great lake of Tezcuco, bore witwith magnificent flights of steps reach- as floriculturists and gardeners. Like ing to the summit; long ranges of the Egyptians, they had contrived a picscarcely inferior terraced buildings, with torial method of recording events, and pillared façades fantastically carved, so of perpetuating amongst themselves, which were exclusively set apart for the if not for the advantage of alien posterMexican priesthood; and gigantic lithic ities, the chief particulars of their hismonuments, bearing the mystical em- tory. It cannot be said with certainty, blems of Sabean, Phallic, and Ophite but the fact is far from improbable, that worship, met the gaze of the Spanish they had invented a phonographical as soldier whithersoever he turned himself. well as a hieroglyphical character. They But architecture was not the only art had even made some advancement in practised by the ancient Mexican. He the physical sciences, especially in astronwas equally skilled in metallurgy. Gold, omy; and had a solar year with intersilver, copper, lead, and tin were the five calations more accurately calculated metals that his country produced, or that than that of the Greeks and Romans. were known to him; and in manipulating But neither the greatest progress in the these he was confessedly not inferior to mechanical arts and physical sciences, the expertest craftsman in Europe. His tools for hewing the toughest timber, as nor the possession of the most ingenious well as for dressing the hardest rock, administration, will compensate for the and equitable code of laws, and its due were made of copper alloyed with a absence of a humanizing, if not spiritusmall proportion of tin. He found in alizing, system of religion. The bloody that composite metal an efficient substi- ritual of the Aztecan priesthood constitute for iron and steel. His sculptured tutes by far the foulest page in the images, cut out of solid blocks of basalt, humiliating register of superstition and are marvellous specimens of manual fanaticism. The rites of Moloch and skill. Swords, knives, and other imple- Astaroth appear merciful when conments, requiring the keenest edge, were made of obsidian, a most difficult and aomiqui, whose abominable altars, from trasted with those of Mexitli and Teoyintractable material of volcanic origin, sunrise to sunset, reeked with the fumes which he split into the desired form with of human gore. The victims were usuamazing dexterity. Long after the sub- ally captives taken on the battle-field. he set little store by that metal the possession of which so many of our modern archæologists persist in making the sole ates; on the contrary, like circles made criterion of a civilized condition. His by the falling of a stone on a pool of skill and industry as a mechanic may be water, they continue to expand with judged from a remarkable passage in Mr. Taylor's "Anahuac”

"In the ploughed fields, in the neighborhood fof Tezcuco], tleman) repeated trials whether it was possiwe made (says that gen

pily, are not to be restricted to the limits of the country within which it origin

irresistible momentum until the area-be it small or be it large, an island or a con

tinent is completely overspread. Thus,

to this day, the baneful effects of the former cruelty in Mexico are still widely