monks in this pious effort. He lived in their cabins, became familiar with the various dialects and gained the confidence of the people, and thus obtained a knowledge of their history and traditions better than that of any other European. After making a great collection of maps and manuscripts, he started with his treasure for Spain. But the authorities took alarm at these signs of sympathy with the Indians. Boturini was arrested before he could get out of Mexico; all his papers were taken from him and stored in a damp room in the viceroy's palace. Some of them were stolen, some became so mouldy that they fell to pieces; and in time the collection which had cost so much time and labor was entirely lost. Sahagan, a Franciscan monk, wrote a long history of the people among whom he labored, but it was deemed a dangerous enterprise tending to perpetuate the heathenism which was still wrought into the warp and woof of Mexican Christianity. Sahagan dared not publish his book, and for nearly three hundred years it was as much lost to the public as was one of the picture-writings of which he spoke.
The world lost the best history of Mexico ever written when the bigot Zurramaga emptied the great library of Tezcuco into the town market-place and burned it there; the smoke he raised seemed ever after to linger cloudlike over the vanquished race. What remained of their early records was hidden away, like their lost cities, until their very memory perished, and none were left to read the mouldy fragments which here and there have come to light.
The Aztec manuscripts were folded in a curious zigzag manner, something like a fan, and stiffened at each end
