The Mexican century began on the 26th of February, and the 26th of February was celebrated from the time of Nabonassor, 747 B.C., because the Egyptian priests, conformably to their astronomical observations, had fixed the beginning of the month Toth, and the commencement of their year, at noon on that day. The five intercalated days to make up the three hundred and sixty-five days were called by the Mexicans Nemontemi, or useless, and on them they transacted no business; while the Egyptians, during that epoch, celebrated the festival of the birth of their gods, as attested by Plutarch and others. It will be conceded that a considerable degree of astronomical knowledge must have been necessary to reach the conclusion that the true year consisted of three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours (modern science has demonstrated that it consists of three hundred and sixty-five days and five hours, less ten seconds); and a high degree of civilization was requisite to insist that the year must be brought around, by the intercalation of a certain number of days in a certain period of time, to its true relation to the seasons. Both were the outgrowth of a vast, ancient civilization of the highest order, which transmitted some part of its astronomical knowledge to its colonies through their respective priesthoods. Can we, in the presence of such facts, doubt the statements of the Egyptian priests to Solon, as to the glory and greatness of Atlantis, its monuments, its sculpture, its laws, its religion, its civilization? In Egypt we have the oldest of the Old World children of Atlantis; in her magnificence we have a testimony to the development attained by the parent country; by that country whose kings were the gods of succeeding nations, and whose kingdom extended to the uttermost ends of the earth. The Egyptian historian, Manetho, referred to a period of thirteen thousand nine hundred years as "the reign of the gods," and placed this period at the very beginning of Egyptian history. These thirteen thousand nine hundred years were probably a recollection of Atlantis. Such a lapse of time, vast as it may appear, is but as a day compared with some of our recognized geological epochs. CHAPTER III. THE COLONIES OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY