mples, and
the housetops.... Couriers, with torches lighted at the blazing
beacon, rapidly bore them over every part of the country.... A new
cycle had commenced its march.

The following thirteen days were given up to festivity. ... The
people, dressed in their gayest apparel, and crowned with garlands
and chaplets of flowers, thronged in joyous procession to offer up
their oblations and thanksgivings in the temples. Dances and games
were instituted emblematical of the regeneration of the world.

[Footnote 11: A famous group of seven small stars in the Bull
constellation. The "seven sisters" appear as only _six_ to ordinary
eyesight: to make out the seventh is a test of a practised eye and
excellent vision.]

Prescott compares this carnival of the Aztecs to the great secular
festival of the Romans or ancient Etruscans, which (as Suetonius
remarked) "few alive had witnessed before, or could expect to witness
again." The _ludi saeculares_ or secular games of Rome were held only at
very long intervals and lasted for three days and nights.

The poet Southey thus refers to the ceremony of opening the new Aztec
cycle, or Circle of the Years.

On his bare breast the cedar boughs are laid,
On his bare breast, dry sedge and odorous gums,
Laid ready to receive the sacred spark,
And blaze, to herald the ascending sun,
Upon his living altar. Round the wretch
The inhuman ministers of rites accurst
Stand, and expect the signal when to strike
The seed of fire. Their Chief, apart from all,
... eastward turns his eyes;
For now the hour draws nigh, and speedily
He look's to see the first faint dawn of day
Break through the orient sky.

_Madoc_, ii, 26.

CHAPTER IV

AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGY

Long before the time of Columbus and the Spanish conquest there existed
on the table-land of Mexico two great races or nations, as has already
been shown, both highly civilized, and both akin in language, art, and
religion. Ethnologists and antiquaries are not agreed as to their origin
or the development of their civilization. Many recent critics have held
the theory that there had been a previous people from whom both races
inherited their extinct civilization, this previous race being the
"Toltecs," whom we have repeatedly mentioned in the preceding chapter.
To that previous race some attribute the colossal stonework around
Lake Titicaca, as well as other survi