Conquest of Mexico
also, have discerned in crania disinterred from the mounds, and in those of the inhabitants of the high plains of the Cordilleras, an obvious difference from those of the more barbarous tribes. This is seen especially in the ampler forehead, intimating a decided intellectual superiority.1 These characteristics are found to bear a close resemblance to those of the Mongolian family, and especially to the people of Eastern Tartary;2 so that, notwithstanding certain differences recognised by physiologists, the skulls of the two races could not be readily distinguished from one another by a common observer. No inference can be surely drawn, however, without a wide range of comparison. That hitherto made has been chiefly founded on specimens from the barbarous tribes.3 Perhaps a closer comparison with the more civilised may supply still stronger evidence of affinity.4
In seeking for analogies with the Old World, we should not pass by in silence the architectural remains of the country, which, indeed, from their resemblance to the pyramidal structures of the East, have suggested to more than one antiquary the idea of a common origin.5 The Spanish invaders, it is true, assailed the Indian buildings, especially those of a religious character, with all the fury of fanaticism. The same spirit survived in the generations which succeeded. The war has never ceased against the monuments of the country; and the few that fanaticism has spared have been nearly all demolished to serve the purposes of utility. Of all the stately edifices, so much extolled by the Spaniards who first visited the country, there are scarcely more vestiges at the present day than are to be found in some of those regions of Europe and Asia, which once swarmed with populous cities, the great marts of luxury and commerce.6 Yet some of these remains, like the temple of Xochicalco,7 the palaces of Tezcotzinco, the colossal calendar-stone in the capital,8 are of sufficient magnitude, and wrought with sufficient skill, to attest mechanical powers in the Aztecs not unworthy to be compared with those of the ancient Egyptians.
But, if the remains on the Mexican soil are so scanty, they multiply as we descend the south-eastern slope of the Cordilleras, traverse the rich Valley of Oaxaca, and penetrate the forests of Chiapa and Yucatan. In the midst of these lonely regions, we met with the ruins, recently discovered, of several ancient cities, Mitla, Palenque, and Itzalana or Uxmal,9 which argue a higher civilisation than anything yet found on the American continent; and, although it was not the
394
