[104] Cod. Vat., Pl. 7-10, Antiq. of Mexico, vols. i., vi.--Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 1.--M. de Humboldt has been at some pains to trace the analogy between the Aztec cosmogony and that of Eastern Asia. He has tried, though in vain, to find a multiple which might serve as the key to the calculations of the former. (Vues des Cordillères, pp. 202-212.) In truth, there seems to be a material discordance in the Mexican statements, both in regard to the number of revolutions and their duration. A manuscript before me, of Ixtlilxochitl, reduces them to three, before the present state of the world, and allows only 4394 years for them (Sumaria Relacion, MS., No. 1); Gama, on the faith of an ancient Indian MS. in Boturini’s Catalogue (viii. 13), reduces the duration still lower (Descripcion de las Dos Piedras, Parte 1, p. 49, et seq.); while the cycles of the Vatican paintings take up near 18,000 years.--It is interesting to observe how the wild _conjectures_ of an ignorant age have been confirmed by the more recent _discoveries_ in geology, making it probable that the earth has experienced a number of convulsions, possibly thousands of years distant from each other, which have swept away the races then existing, and given a new aspect to the globe. [105] Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 3, Apend.--Cod. Vat., ap. Antiq. of Mexico, Pl. 1-5.--Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 48.--The last writer assures us “that, as to what the Aztecs said of their going to hell, they were right; for, as they died in ignorance of the true faith, they have, without question, all gone there to suffer everlasting punishment”! Ubi supra. [106] It conveys but a poor idea of these pleasures, that the shade of Achilles can say “he had rather be the slave of the meanest man on earth, than sovereign among the dead.” (Odyss., A. 488-490.) The Mahometans believe that the souls of martyrs pass, after death, into the bodies of birds, that haunt the sweet waters and bowers of Paradise. (Sale’s Koran (London, 1825), vol. i. p. 106.)--The Mexican heaven may remind one of Dante’s, in its _material_ enjoyments; which, in both, are made up of light, music, and motion. The sun, it must also be remembered, was a spiritual conception with the Aztec: “He sees with other eyes than theirs; where they Behold a sun, he spies a deity.” [107] It is singular that the Tuscan bard, while exhausting his invention in devising modes of bodily torture, in his “Inferno,” should have made so little use of the _moral_ sources of misery. That he has not done so might be reckoned a strong proof of the rudeness of time, did we not meet with examples of it in a later day; in which a serious and sublime writer, like Dr. Watts, does not disdain to employ the same coarse machinery for moving the conscience of the reader.