If we accept the date given by the _Codex Ramirez_ for the departure of the Aztecs from the Coatepetl—A. D. 1168—then it is quite possible that they might have controlled the site for a couple of centuries or longer, and that the number of successive chieftains named by Ixtlilxochitl should not be far wrong. The destructive battles of which he speaks as preceding their departure—battles resulting in the slaughter of more than five million souls—we may regard as the grossly overstated account of some really desperate conflicts. That the warriors of the Azteca, on leaving Tula, scattered over Mexico, Yucatan and Central America, is directly contrary to the assertion of the high authorities I have quoted, and also to most of the mythical descriptions of the event, which declare they were all, or nearly all, massacred.[105] The above I claim to be the real history of Tula and its Serpent-Hill, of the Toltecs and their dynasty. Now comes the question, if we accept this view, how did this ancient town and its inhabitants come to have so wide a celebrity, not merely in the myths of the Nahuas of Mexico, but in the sacred stories of Yucatan and Guatemala as well—which was unquestionably the case? To explain this, I must have recourse to some of those curious principles of language which have had such influence in building the fabric of mythology. In such inquiries we have more to do with words than with things, with names than with persons, with phrases than with facts. First about these names, Tula, Tollan, Toltec—what do they mean? They are evidently from the same root. What idea did it convey? We are first struck with the fact that the Tula I have been describing was not the only one in the Nahuatl district of Mexico. There are other Tulas and Tollans, one near Ococingo, another, now San Pedro Tula, in the State of Mexico, one in Guerrero, San Antonio Tula in Potosi,[106] etc. The name must have been one of common import. Herrera, who spells it _Tulo_, by an error, is just as erroneous in his suggestion of a meaning. He says it means “place of the tuna,” this being a term used for the prickly pear.[107] But _tuna_ was not a Nahuatl word; it belongs to the dialect of Haiti, and was introduced into Mexico by the Spaniards. Therefore Herrera’s derivation must be ruled out. Ixtlilxochitl pretends that the name Tollan was that of the first chieftain of the Toltecs, and that they were named after him; but elsewhere himself contradicts this assertion.[108] Most writers follow the _Codex Ramirez_, and maintain that Tollan—of which Tula is but an abbreviation—is from _tolin_, the Nahuatl word for rush, the kind of which they made mats, and means “the place of rushes,” or where they grow. The respectable authority of Buschmann is in favor of this derivation; but according to the analogy of the Nahuatl language, the “place of rushes” should be _Toltitlan_ or _Tolinan_, and there are localities with these names.[109]