act that they did not know the use of
iron. Had they known the use of this metal, they would surely have gone
to work and dug into their mountains, which are abundantly filled with
ore, and made use of it.

[542:4] The Aztecs were preceded by the Toltecs, Chichimecks, and the
Nahualtecs. (Humboldt's New Spain, p. 133, vol. i.)

"The races of barbarians which successively followed each other from the
north to the south always murdered, hunted down, and subdued the
previous inhabitants, and formed in course of time a new social and
political life upon the ruins of the old system, to be again destroyed
and renewed in a few centuries, by a new invasion of barbarians. The
later native conquerors in the New World can, of course, no more be
considered in the light of original inhabitants than the present races
of men in the Old World."

[543:1] Fusang, p. 56.

[543:2] Quoted in Fusang, p. 71.

[543:3] Science of Religion, p. 121.

[543:4] Mexican Antiq., vol. vi. p. 161.

[543:5] Early Hist. Mankind, p. 307.

APPENDIX B.

Commencing at the farthest East we shall find the ancient religion of
_China_ the same as that which was universal in all quarters of the
globe, viz., an adoration of the Sun, Moon, Stars and elements.[544:1]
That the Chinese religion was in one respect the same as that of India,
is seen from the fact that they named successive days for the same seven
planets that the Hindoos did.[544:2] The ancient books of the Chinese
show that astronomy was not only understood by them at a very early
period, but that it formed an important branch of state policy, and the
basis of public ceremonies. Eclipses are accurately recorded which
occurred twenty centuries before Jesus; and the Confucian books refer
continually to observations of the heavenly bodies and the rectification
of the calendar. The ancient Chinese astronomers seem to have known
precisely the excess of the solar year beyond 365 days. The _religion_
of China, under the emperors who preceded the first dynasty, is an
enigma. The notices in the only authentic works, the _King_, are on this
point scanty, vague, and obscure. It is difficult to separate what is
spoken with reference to the science of _astronomy_ from that which may
relate to _religion_, properly so called. The terms of reverence and
respect, with which the _heavenly bodies_ are spoken of in the
_Shoo-King_, seem to warrant the inference that those terms have more
than a mere ast