Whether sorrow or pleasure her sympathy try; Through the range of man's dominion Terror is the ruling word And the standard of opinion Woman commands with a milder control- MEXICAN ANTIQUITIES OF PALENQUE AND MITLAN, IN THE PROVINCES OF CHIAPA AND OAXACA. THE continent of America has, by common consent, received and retained the appellation of the New World. Applied to the discovery of the Genoese navigator, the distinction may be appropriate; but, as is indicated by the title of this article, it ceases to be correct when predicated of the country itself. The advances of the first conquerors into the newly discovered territory, revealed at each step striking evidences of a system of polity manifestly the result of civilization and time. Through the shadowy mists of the story of Anahuac could be traced the tradition of a long line of powerful kings. To the inherent obscurity which wraps the cunabula gentium—the cradle of nations at their birth, was added the two-fold darkness of ignorance and superstition. The missionaries who followed in the rear of invasion, urged by a misguiding enthusiasm in the cause of religion and the service of God, laid a barbarian hand on the annals of the primitive population, and doomed them, ir the blindness of their zeal, to irrevocable destruction. The tradi tions of the pilgrimage of the Chichimecas, the memory of the gorgeous rulers of Anahuac, and the records of the migrations of the Aztecs, were fading in the shadows of the past; the last vestiges of their passage and dwelling-place on the earth were fast wearing away; when, in the middle of the last century, a caravan of travellers, lost in the vast solitudes of Yucatan, alighted on the deserted ruins of an immense city near the town of Palenque. The discovery of these ruins, covering an area of twenty miles in length and six in breadth, immediately roused the attention of the scholar and the antiquarian. Antonio del Rio, commissioned by a decree of the king of Spain, commenced the exploration of the remains of the Palencian city; but the interest of science, yielding to weightier matters, the fruits of his investigations remained, for a long period, buried in the archives of Mexico. In the years 1805, 1806, and 1807, the king of Spain ordered a second exploring expedition on a more extensive and generous scale. These interesting ruins, revisited and described by Dupaix, and sketched by Castaneda, present singularly striking analogies with the oldest remains of Phoenician arts and Egyptian architecture. Approximative calculations, amounting to all but certainty, and based principally on the age of the gigantic trees that have overgrown the ruins, and stricken their roots into the wrecks of this nameless and perished population, would carry its origin as far back as twenty centuries at least. Independently of these mere inferential proofs, there are others, drawn from a great number of ancient monuments, restored to light in the course of the exploration; almost all of which are of direct importance as collateral evidences of remote antiquity and comparative civilization. Among these, the drawings exhibit workman-like aqueducts-cyclopean bridges-pyramids of brick and stone, of a peculiar character-tumuli of the most varied and imposing forms-subterranean sepulchres, arched and vaulted with architectural precision-idols of granite and porphyry-colossal bassi-rilievi, sculptured in marble, granite, and stone, or skilfully modelled in stucco-fragments of zodiacs, accompanied by glyphs, different from the hieratic writings of Egypt, though evidently similar in their origin and intent. These monuments-unknown to Europe and to our own country, until a comparatively recent period—prove, in their crumbling state, an antiquity much anterior to the people of Moctezuma. They are worthy of the speculations of the learned world, as impressive testimonials of the existence and disappearance of once flourishing nations, whose unrecorded annals have left a vast and deplorable chasm in the history of mankind. It is true, that we possess many an erudite dissertation, both in Europe and America, on the probable knowledge which the ancients might have had of this continent; but we recollect no where to have seen a complete enumeration of the texts, or other original documents, calculated, if not to insure a solution, to facilitate, at least, the investigation of this highly interesting question. Though it be impossible to examine, within the narrow compass of this article, and with the necessary fullness of development, so momentous a problem of history and ethnography, still these pages will be found as a not untimely introduction to the great collection of Mexican antiquities with which the world of science has lately been enriched, by the persevering energy and ingenious researches of a trinity of savans, among whom we are proud to number our own countryman, Warden, late American Consul-general for France. To point out, among the preliminary data which may enhance the interest of the work, those most deserving of the attention of the scholar, seems to us, and it is intended, to be an indirect homage to the devotedness with which they have assumed and completed their arduous task. We might open our investigations with the Antichthones of the Pythagorean school; but so limited and uncertain is our knowledge of that system, especially in its bearing on the doctrine of the antipodes, that it were better to leave the exposition of the opinions of Philolaus, on that subject, undisfigured by any modern and fruitless attempt to explain them. It is scarcely necessary, for a contrary reason, to refer to Plato's Atlantis-that Egyptian tradition, which has given birth to many a learned volume. It is sufficient for our purpose to mention that he relates, in the Timæus, (*) that the kings of that vast island, lying opposite to the columns of Hercules, after crossing the Atlantic sea, the waters of which were then navigable, possessed themselves of a portion of Europe and Africa, and progressed unchecked in the invasion until repelled by the Athenians, whom the prince of philosophers hails as the saviours of the other nations of Greece, charging the latter with forgetful ingratitude. "The course of ages," adds Critias, "brought on the inevitable hour, the disastrous night, when, amid the quakings of the earth, and the swellings of the sea, all the warriors of Athens were swallowed up by the earth; and the billows covered the Atlantic isle forever more. To this day that part of the ocean is inaccessible, and cannot be explored; and the mud of the sunken continent checks the mariner that would visit its shores." (†) This is the narrative that old Critias had by tradition from Solon, who held it from the priests of Sais. We learn from Proclus, in his scholia on the Timaus, that Plato himself had read this account in the hieroglyphics of the Egyptian columns; and Iamblichus adds that they were consecrated to Hermes Trismegistus. (†) It is generally admitted that this tradition may not be entirely fabulous; that the sunken island which Critias describes may have stood in the Atlantic (*) Plat. Tim. p. 25, sec. a, Ed. Steph. (+) Ibid, p. 26, sec. a. (*) Proclus in Timaum, quoted by Cousin, in his exposition of the Platonic system. ocean; and that the group of the Canaries is the only memorial of its existence. When, in connexion with this testimony of ancient days, we read in the histories of Christoval Colon that the companions of his first voyage seeing, at a distance of twelve hundred miles westward of the Azores, the ocean mantled with thick weeds, and various plants, which overlaid the deep like a liquid prairie, and even arrested the progress of their ships, fancied that they had reached the farthest bourne of the navigable waters, and that the green and moving shoals concealed a great extent of immersed lands; we cannot but instinctively recur to Plato's pages, and institute a comparison between the masses of sea-weed that appalled the second discoverer and the ruins of the absorbed island, which so long barred the course of the early navigators. With the various systems devised to explain the existence of the Atlantis of Plato, from the theories of Rudbeck down to those of Bory St. Vincent, many of our readers are, no doubt, familiar. Instead, therefore, of rehearsing the clashing conjectures of authors, we will advert to one or two points of contact which they seem to have overlooked. In the first place, the name of the Atlantis is to be traced in America, without straining at an etymology, in the country called Aztlan, one of the earliest resting-places of the primitive Mexicans. (*) But there is certainly one fact connected with the topography of Mexico which we do not recollect ever to have seen insisted upon by any of the writers who have consecrated their labors to the traditions of the land of Anahuac. The ancient city of Mexico, as described by Solis, De la Vega, and Clavigero, its lakes, its admirable causeways, its channels of communication with the main land, the sluices, arranged at equal distances, and crossed by moveable bridges, the wealth and splendor which dazzled the conquistadores, bear a strong character of identity with the capital of the Atlanta, mentioned in Plato's Critias. "The city of Mexico," says Nuñez de la Vega, (†) "is situated on a plain surrounded by mountains. The waters, rushing from the heights, collect into sundry lakes, the two largest of which have an intercommunication. On the margin of one of those lakes, and resting on some neighboring islands, the capital of Mexico was built. The city was reached by causeways of earth and stone, some thirty feet in breadth. As the lake waters overflowed the plain in the rainy season, these causeways had a considerable extent. On the eastern side there was no (*) This is an appellation of the latter days, affixed by the conquistadores to the inhabitants of that portion of the new world. The migrations of the Mexicans, properly so called, may be traced with accuracy after their defeat by the Toltecas. Chichimecas, Toltecas, Anahuacs, and Aztecs, are the older and more common names of the tribes that originally inhabited the continent. (+) Teatro Critico de las Antiguedades, &c. &c. Constit Dioces. Francisco Nuñez de la Vega, Bishop of Chiapa. dyke, and the city could be approached in canoes only. On each dyke there were openings, from distance to distance, and over these openings, or sluices, boards covered with earth were thrown, in the shape of bridges." Let us now turn to the Critias, and read his description. We find the golden roofs of the temples, the inlaid ornaments of silver, the ritual pomp, and all the storied magnificence of the early record of the conquest, prefigured in the gorgeous pages of Plato. We cannot stop to translate the whole of the passage; but the following portions of the dialogue will suffice to exhibit an idea of the correspondence between the two. "Neptune, being allotted the Atlantic island, settled in that part of it which lay towards the sea. (*) In the middle of the island was a plain which is said to have been the most beautiful of all plains, distinguished by the fertility of its soil. Near this plain, at the distance of fifty stadia, was a low mountain. Neptune, having been captivated by the charms of the daughter of Evenor, enclosed the hill on which she dwelt with winding streams of water-the water and land alternating at the same time, and forming lesser and larger zones about each other. Those, who resided about the ancient metropolis, united by bridges the zones of the sea, which we before mentioned, and made a road both to the external parts and to the royal abode. They likewise divided by bridges those zones of the earth which separated the zones of the sea, so that with a three-benched galley they might sail from one zone to another; and the upper part of the zone they covered in such manner that they might sail under them. The trench received the streams running from the mountains, and which, flowing round the plain towards the city, were gathered together from different parts, and at length poured themselves from the trench into the sea." We do not mean that old Critias ever had a plan of Anahuac, the "place of many waters," before his eye; and the resemblance of both pictures may be entirely fortuitous; but the bare analogy seems sufficiently striking to recommend it to those who may henceforth devote their attention to American archæology. It is certainly not improbable that some Phoenician traveller, some forgotten Votan, returning to the Valum Chivim, may have disseminated through Egypt the notion of another hemisphere; and that out of such vague data Plato may have wrought the poetical description of a continent and of a people which he deemed no longer in existence. Indeed, it seems unquestionable that the Critias is the only dialogue which Plato has left unfinished-discouraged, as it were, by the darkness which mantled this new world from his prophetic look; and desirous to hand over its exploration, and the perfection of its description, to the energies of future and better informed ages. (*) Critias, p. 49, ed. Bipont, sec. c d. |