“On his bare breast the cedar boughs are laid; On his bare breast, dry sedge and odorous gums, Laid ready to receive the sacred spark, And blaze, to herald the ascending Sun, Upon his living altar.” SOUTHEY’S Madoc, part 2, canto 26. [209] I borrow the words of the summons by which the people were called to the _ludi seculares_, the secular games of ancient Rome, “_quos nec spectâsset quisquam, nec spectaturus esset_.” (Suetonius, Vita Tib. Claudii, lib. 5.) The old Mexican chroniclers warm into something like eloquence in their descriptions of the Aztec festival. (Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 10, cap. 33.--Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 5.--Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 7, cap. 9-12. See, also, Gama, Descripcion, Parte 1, pp. 52-54,--Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 84-86.) The English reader will find a more brilliant coloring of the same scene in the canto of Madoc above cited,--“On the Close of the Century.” [210] _E.g._, gunpowder and the compass.--M. [211] This latter grain, according to Humboldt, was found by the Europeans in the New World, from the South of Chili to Pennsylvania (Essai politique, tom. ii. p. 408); he might have added, to the St. Lawrence. Our Puritan fathers found it in abundance on the New England coast, wherever they landed. See Morton, New England’s Memorial (Boston, 1826), p. 68.--Gookin, Massachusetts Historical Collections, chap. 3. [212] Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 31.--“Admirable example for our times,” exclaims the good father, “when women are not only unfit for the labors of the field, but have too much levity to attend to their own household!” [213] A striking contrast also to the Egyptians, with whom some antiquaries are disposed to identify the ancient Mexicans. Sophocles notices the effeminacy of the men in Egypt, who stayed at home tending the loom, while their wives were employed in severe labors out of doors: “ΟΙ. ὦ πάντʹ ἐκείνω τοῖς ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ νόμοις φύσιν κατεικασθέντε καὶ βίου τροφάς· ἐκεῖ γὰρ οἱ μὲν ἄρσενες κατὰ στέγας θακοῦσιν ἱστουργοῦντες, αἱ δὲ σύννομοι τἄξω βίου τροφεῖα πορσύνουσʹ ἀεί.” SOPHOCL., Œdip. Col. v. 337-341. [214] Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 32.--Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 153-155.--“Jamas padeciéron hambre,” says the former writer, “sino en pocas ocasiones.” If these famines were rare, they were very distressing, however, and lasted very long. Comp. Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 41, 71, et alibi.