number. It is asserted that, after the conquest by the Spaniards, the Franciscan
monks, alone, destroyed in eight years, more than twenty thousand idols.* Their
temples were in proportion; Torquemada estimated them at forty thousand, and
Clavigero thinks this estimate is much within bounds. They had their fasts,
penances and feasts, their monks, vestals and priests of different orders. But what
is most surprising in a nation possessing any claim to refinement, was their
numberless human sacrifices; men, women and children were put to death by
every possible variety of suffering, and there seems to be no doubt that the blood
of no less than twenty thousand human beings was annually devoted to the gods
of the Mexicans. When to this account we add the appalling. fact that the bodies
of the victims were devoured at the feasts of the people, we are compelled to
acknowledge that no nation on the earth has ever presented such a combination of
revolting enormities.! It is but justice, however, again to remark, that these
abominations were not practised by the Toltecas and the other ancient nations of
Anahuac, but by their successors and perhaps conquerors of the Aztec family.
We pass over other traits of barbarism, which prove, that while the intellectual
character of the Mexicans was far exalted above that of the other nations
of North America, their moral perceptions appear to have been blunted in
proportion: all their institutions, religious and civil, were established and maintained
with bloody rites, which must have constantly operated to deaden and
obliterate the finer feelings of our nature. Familiarity with death leads to
indifference of life, and hence, perhaps, the superior courage of the Mexicans:
for notwithstanding the aspersions of De Pauw and others, these people yielded to
the Spaniards only after a valiant struggle. De Pauw asserts that Mexico was
conquered by Cortez with 450 vagabonds, and fifteen horses, badly armed. This
is a great error; for every reader of American history is aware, that Cortez
enlisted against the doomed empire, the people of various tributary and discontented
provinces; so that in place of attacking Mexico with 450 men, he commenced his
invasion with 200,000. Cortez acknowledges the multitude of his allies, and
admits that at the siege of the capital, they fought against the Mexicans with even
greater ardor than the Spaniards themselves. The siege of the city lasted seventy-
four days, during which time the inhabitants defended themselves with the utmost
bravery; nor did they surrender until 50,000 of their number had been destroyed
by famine and the sword, and seven of the eight parts of their city had fallen into
the hands of the enemy.
* Hist, of Mexico, B. V I,-p. 26. (Cullen.) t Clavigero, Hist, of Mexico, p. 59.
Let us now turn to the more pleasing part of the picture, that which
considers the progress these people had made in the refinements of civilised life.
The state of civilisation among the Mexicans, when they were first known
to the Spaniards, was much superior to that of the Spaniards themselves on their
first intercourse with the Phenicians,tc or that of the Gauls when first known to
the Greeks, or that of the Germans and Britons when first known to the Romans.
—Their understandings are fitted for every kind of science, as experience has
actually shown. Of the Mexicans who have had an opportunity of engagi% in
the pursuit of learning—which is but a small number, as the greater part of the
people are always employed in the public or private works—we have known
some good mathematicians, excellent architects, and learned divines.”*
The architectural taste of the Mexican nation is chiefly seen in the Palace
of Mitla, and the ruins of Palenque. The first of these remains is situated in the
province of Oaxaca, and belongs to the era of the Zapotecas: it embraces five
separate buildings, disposed with great regularity, courts, terraces, columns,
arabesques and subterranean vaults. The columns, which are the only ones
hitherto found in America, are without capitals, and indicate the infancy of this
department of art.f
If we go southward to Guatemala, which was a province of Mexico under
nearly all the dynasties that governed that country, we find other architectural
remains of an elaborate and imposing character, which tend still more strongly to
impress the mind with the genius of the ancient people of Anahuac. “ The cave
of Tibulca,” says Juarros, “ appears like a temple of great size hollowed out of the
base of a hill, and is adorned with columns, having bases, pedestals, capitals and
crowns, all accurately adjusted according to architectural principles.”!: Juarros
also describes the cavern temple at Mixco in yet more extraordinary details;
which remind us, says an ingenious author, of the rock caverns and temples of
Ellora, Elephanta, and other similar monuments of Hindoo workmanship. $ Are
these the works of the Toltecas, or of their cultivated progenitors the Olmecas ?
In the same region of country, near the village of Palenque, are the ruins of
a city of which we have already spoken, in which the massive edifices, the inclined
**Clavigero, u t supra. t Humboldt, Monuments, II, p. 156.
% Hist, of Guatemala, p. 57.
§ M’Culloh, Researches, p. 316.—The monumental treasures of New Spain have been for
centuries hidden from investigation by a singularly selfish policy. It is matter of congratulation,
however, that the time is rapidly approaching when the Anglo Saxon race will control the destinies
of Mexico, and throw open her buried monuments to the scrutiny of art and science.