f time, by transmission, its influence might travel to a region too
remote perhaps for direct contact to have taken place.

If I have indulged in the foregoing line of conjecture and surmise, it is
because it is my purpose also to demonstrate, by absolute proof, that the
dominion of the above set of ideas extended over Yucatan, Honduras,
Guatemala and even reached Peru, where its influence is distinctly
visible.

It also extended far to the north in prehistoric times, for certain carved
shell-gorgets which have been found in prehistoric graves in Illinois,
Missouri and Tennessee exhibit emblems which have definite meanings in the
Maya language, spoken in Yucatan.

In order to maintain this assertion I must make a slight digression from
the main subject and revert to the myth already cited, recording the
casting down from heaven of Tezcatlipoca who arose and ascended again in
the form of an ocelot. There are interesting native pictures of this
combat and the fall of the ocelot in the Vatican Codex II, p. 34, the
Fejervary Codex, p. 56, and others equally important, representing the
fall or descent of an eagle from the sky, to which I shall revert.

It is moreover recorded by Mendieta (p. 82) that Tezcatlipoca likewise
descended or let himself down from the sky by a spider's thread, and in
the Bodleian MS. (p. 12) there are two curious pictures one of an ocelot
and a cobweb, the other of an ocelot, descending head foremost from stars.
The same incident is also pictured in the Vienna Codex (p. 9) where the
ocelot, attached by the tail, is connected by a cord with star-emblems.

There are two facts of special interest in regard to the above descent of
Tezcatlipoca by a spider's thread. The first is that the title
Tzontemoc="he who descends head foremost" is recorded in the Codex
Fuenleal immediately after the name Mictlantecuhtli. The second is that
the spider is figured on the manta of Mictlantecuhtli in the B. N. MS. and
is sculptured in the centre, above his forehead, in his sculptured image,
identified as such by Senor Sanchez (Anales del Museo Nacional III, p.
299) and reproduced here (fig. 19). It represents "the lord of the North
or Underworld" descending, head foremost, with a tecpatl or flint knife
issuing from his mouth and with outspread limbs, the outlines of which are
almost lost under the multitude of symbols which are grouped around him.
These symbols are carefully analyzed in my commentary on the B. N. MS