ich I shall speak afterwards. The
particular Toltec king to whom the Mexican historians ascribe the
building of Xochicalco was called Nauhyotl, that is to say, "Four
Bells," and died A.D. 945.

We are further told that just about the time of our Norman Conquest,
the Toltecs were driven out from the Mexican plateau by famine and
pestilence, and migrated again southward. Only a few families remained,
and from them the Aztecs, Chichemecs, and other barbarous tribes by
whom the country was re-peopled, derived that knowledge of the arts and
sciences upon which their own civilization was founded. It was by this
Toltec nation--say the Mexican writers--that the monuments of
Xochichalco, Teotihuacan, and Cholula were built. In their architecture
the Aztecs did little more than copy the works left by their
predecessors; and, to this day, the Mexican Indians call a builder a
_toltecatl_ or _Toltec_.

If we consider this circumstantial account to be anything but a mere
tissue of fables, the question naturally arises--what became of the
remains of the Toltecs when they left the high plains of Mexico? A
theory has been propounded to answer this question, that they settled
in Chiapas and Yucatan, and built Palenque, Copan, and Uxmal, and the
other cities, the ruins of which lie imbedded in the tropical forest.

At the time that Prescott wrote his History of the Conquest, such a
theory was quite tenable; but the new historic matter lately made known
by the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg has given a different aspect to the
question. Without attempting to maintain the credibility of this
writer's history as a whole, I cannot but think that he has given us
satisfactory grounds for believing that the ruined cities of Central
America were built by a race which flourished long before the Toltecs;
that they were already declining in power and civilization in the
seventh century, when the Toltecs began to flourish in Mexico; and that
the present Mayas of Yucatan are their degenerate descendants.

What I have seen of Central American and Mexican antiquities, and of
drawings of them in books, tends to support the Abbe Brasseur de
Bourbourg's view of the history of these countries. Traces of
communication between the two peoples are to be found in abundance, but
nothing to warrant our holding that either people took its civilization
bodily from the other. My excuse for entering into these details must
be that some of the facts I have to offer are