[154] According to Boturini, the ancient Mexicans were acquainted with the Peruvian method of recording events by means of the _quippus_,--knotted strings of various colors,--which were afterwards superseded by hieroglyphical painting. (Idea, p. 86.) He could discover, however, but a single specimen, which he met with in Tlascala, and that had nearly fallen to pieces with age. McCulloh suggests that it may have been only a wampum belt, such as is common among our North American Indians. (Researches, p. 201.) The conjecture is plausible enough. Strings of wampum, of various colors, were used by the latter people for the similar purpose of registering events. The insulated fact, recorded by Boturini, is hardly sufficient--unsupported, so far as I know, by any other testimony--to establish the existence of _quippus_ among the Aztecs, who had but little in common with the Peruvians. [155] Pliny, who gives a minute account of the _papyrus_ reed of Egypt, notices the various manufactures obtained from it, as ropes, cloth, paper, etc. It also served as a thatch for the roofs of houses, and as food and drink for the natives. (Hist. Nat., lib. 11, cap. 20-22.) It is singular that the American _agave_, a plant so totally different, should also have been applied to all these various uses. [156] Lorenzana, Hist. de Nueva-España, p. 8.--Boturini, Idea, p. 96.--Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 52.--Peter Martyr Anglerius, De Orbe Novo (Compluti, 1530), dec. 3, cap. 8; dec. 5, cap 10.--Martyr has given a minute description of the Indian maps sent home soon after the invasion of New Spain. His inquisitive mind was struck with the evidence they afforded of a positive civilization. Ribera, the friend of Cortés, brought back a story that the paintings were designed as patterns for embroiderers and jewellers. But Martyr had been in Egypt, and he felt little hesitation in placing the Indian drawings in the same class with those he had seen on the obelisks and temples of that country. [157] Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., Prólogo.--Idem, Sum. Relac., MS.--[“The name of Zumárraga,” says Señor Alaman, “has other and very different titles to immortality from that mentioned by Mr. Prescott,--titles founded on his virtues and apostolic labors, especially on the fervid zeal with which he defended the natives and the manifold benefits he secured to them. The loss that history suffered by the destruction of the Indian manuscripts by the missionaries has been in a great measure repaired by the writings of the missionaries themselves.” Conquista de Méjico (trad. de Vega), tom. i. p. 60.]--Writers are not agreed whether the conflagration took place in the square of Tlatelolco or Tezcuco. Comp. Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 188, and Bustamante’s Pref. to Ixtlilxochitl, Cruautés des Conquérans, trad. de Ternaux, p. xvii.