Ancient Chinese account of the Grand Canyon, or course of the ColoradoMcAllan, Alexander
History
Ancient Chinese account of the Grand Canyon, or course of the Colorado
McAllan, Alexander
America -- Discovery and exploration -- Chinese; Colorado River (Colo.-Mexico)
Moving to the Vale of Mexico, the Toltecs tried with more or less
success to keep on neighborly terms with the red skinned people. But
thoughtless propagation produced more mouths than could be
filled--except with human flesh. Open war broke out in the 11th century.
The Aztecs or others of the red tribes almost annihilated the Whites;
and Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, the "last" King of the Toltecs fled north
from Chapultepec,--the selfsame Chapultepec which in our own day has
seen the downfall of Maxmillian and the flight of Diaz.
May not the fair and beautiful Princess at Pimo have belonged to the
outcast Mexican royal family? May not her idolized child have inherited
titles absurdly out of place among the deserts of Arizona? And may not
all the elements in our later Yankee nation have been represented in the
pale-faced people that found refuge among the canyons and cliffs of the
Colorado? If so, their remote or ancestral fathers and mothers were
likewise no less our own.
The curtain of history rises and shows the young Queen of the Builders
on a hill top at Pimo. The structures there, according to aboriginal
testimony were reared about the year 1100,--the very time when the
Toltecs disappeared from the Vale of Mexico. And now the ruins are
yielding up forms of the females who once tenanted those cliffs and
contrived to get plaster and paint with which to adorn the now desolate
and trembling walls. And the yellow, brown, or silky black hair on the
heads of those women who sought to make their bleak and dreary homes
attractive, shows unfailingly their race. Even an ostrich might see it!
Mons. Charney declares that the Toltecs expelled from Mexico in the 11th
century were scholars, artists, astronomers, and philosophers. And their
sisters were certainly no less cultured and refined.
Now, the Shan Hai King states that in "the region beyond the Eastern
Sea" there is (or was) a "Country of Refined Gentlemen."
And Charney argues that "a gentle race were the Toltecs, preferring the
arts to war."
Refined and Gentle--men, says Charney.
Refined Gentlemen, says the Shan Hai King.
Certain comments collected by Jin Chin Ngan, and unnoticed in Mr.
Vining's translation (p. 657), connect the Refined Gentlemen with
pyramids (=k'iu=) and even declare that their dwellings were on mounds
(=ling=).
And Charney says: "Now, the first thing that we find at the houses of
Tula is an example of a mode of building entirely new and curious. The
prevailing tendency of the Toltec is to place his dwellings and his
temples likewise upon eminences and pyramids."
They lived upon Mounds, says Charney.
They lived upon Mounds, says the Shan Hai King.
"They are very gentle, and do not quarrel. They have fragrant plants.
They have a flowering-plant which produces blossoms in the morning that
die in the evening.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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