prepared a larger expedition, choosing as leader or commander an officer
who was destined henceforth to fill a much larger place in history than
himself, one who presently appeared capable of becoming a general in the
foremost rank, Hernando Cortes, greatest of all Spanish explorers.

CHAPTER III

THE EXTINCT CIVILIZATION OF THE AZTECS

In the Extinct Civilizations of the East it was shown that the cosmogony
of the Chaldeans closely resembles that of the Hebrews and the
Phenicians, and that the account of the deluge in Genesis exactly
reproduces the much earlier one found on one of the Babylonian tablets.

Traces of a deluge legend also existed among the early Aztecs. They
believed

that two persons survived the Deluge, a man named Koksoz and his
wife. Their heads are represented in ancient paintings together
with a boat floating on the waters at the foot of a mountain. A
dove is also depicted, with a hieroglyphical emblem of languages in
his mouth.... Tezpi, the Noah of a neighboring people, also escaped
in a boat, which was filled with various kinds of animals and
birds. After some time a vulture was sent out from it, but remained
feeding on the dead bodies of the giants, which had been left on
the earth as the waters subsided. The little humming-bird was then
sent forth and returned with the branch of a tree in its mouth.

Another Aztec tradition of the deluge is that the pyramidal mound, the
temple of Cholula (a sacred city on the way between the capital and the
seaport), was built by the giants to escape drowning. Like the tower of
Babel, it was intended to reach the clouds, till the gods looked down
and, by destroying the pyramid by fires from heaven, compelled the
builders to abandon the attempt.

The hieroglyphics used in the Aztec calendar correspond curiously with
the zodiacal signs of the Mongols of eastern Asia. "The symbols in the
Mongolian calendar are borrowed from animals, and four of the twelve are
the same as the Aztec."

The antiquity of most of the monuments is proved--e. g., by the growth
of trees in the midst of the buildings in Yucatan. Many have had time to
attain a diameter of from six to nine feet. In a courtyard at Uxmal, the
figures of tortoises sculptured in relief upon the granite pavement are
so worn away by the feet of countless generations of the natives that
the design of the artist is scarcely recognizable.

The Span