opped out of it and fell
with a jingling sound upon the stone floor. When I examined eagerly this
fresh treasure I found that it was a disk of gold, about the size and
thickness of a Mexican silver dollar, on which a curious figure was
rudely engraved. The engraving obviously represented an Aztec
name-device, the like of which, in the ancient picture-writings,
distinguish one from another the several generations of a line of kings.
This name-device was strange to me; but, as I have said, I had not at
that time studied carefully the Aztec picture-writings, and there were
many names of kings which I would not then have recognized. But that the
gold disk was the token concerning the meaning of which the dying
Cacique had given so strange a hint, I felt assured.

Being still further gladdened by this fresh discovery, I carried my
treasures at once to the Museo; and Don Rafael's enthusiasm over them
was as hearty as I could desire. Being so deeply learned in such
matters, he was able in the course of a single afternoon to arrive at
much of the meaning of my codex; and his rendering of it showed that it
possessed a very extraordinary historical value. In the Codex Boturini,
as is well known, are several important lapses that neither that eminent
scholar, nor any other archaeologist whose conclusions can be considered
trustworthy, has been able to supply. All that reasonably can be
imagined concerning these breaks is that the historian of the Aztec
migration deliberately omitted certain facts from his pictured history.
The astonishing discovery that Don Rafael made in regard to my codex was
that it unquestionably supplied the facts concealed in one of the
longest of these unaccountable blanks. This was not a mere guess on his
part, but a demonstrable certainty. On a fac-simile of the Codex
Boturini he bade me observe attentively the pictures which preceded and
which followed the break in question; and then he showed me that these
same pictures were the beginning and the ending of my own
codex--obviously put there so that this secret record might be inserted
accurately into the public record of the wanderings of the Aztec tribe.

Further, the geographical facts set forth in the Codex Boturini having
been very solidly established, it was easy to determine approximately
the part of Mexico to which the beginning and the end of my codex
referred. But the migration here recorded was a very long one, and all
that Don Rafael could sa