"The braver of the two, coming to the vicinity of Tilantongo, armed with buckler and bow, was _much vexed and oppressed by the ardent rays of the sun_, which he took to be the lord of that district, striving to prevent his entrance therein. Then the young man strung his bow, and advanced his buckler before him, and drew shafts from his quiver. He shot these against the great light even till the going down of the same; then he took possession of all that land, seeing that he had _grievously wounded the sun_ and forced him to hide behind the mountains. Upon this story is founded the lordship of all the caciques of Mizteca, and upon their descent from this mighty archer, their ancestor. Even to this day, the chiefs of the Miztecs blazon as their arms a plumed chief with bow and arrows and shield, and the sun in front of him setting behind gray clouds."[1] Are these two young men, one of whom attacks and injures the sun, the two wolves of the Gothic legends, the two comets, who devoured the sun and moon? And did the Miztec barbarians, in their vanity, claim descent from these monstrous creatures of the sky? Why not, when the historical heroes of antiquity traced their pedigree back to the gods; and the rulers of Peru, Egypt, and China pretended to be the lineal offspring of the sun? And there are not wanting those, even in Europe, who [1. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 73.] {p. 186} yet believe that the blood-royal differs in some of its constituents from the blood of the common people "What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster Sink in the ground? " In the Aztec legends there were four ages, or suns, as they were termed. The first terminated, according to Gama, in a destruction of the people of the world by hunger; the second ended in a destruction by winds; in the third, _the human race was swept away by fire_, and the fourth destruction was by water. And in the Hindoo legends we find the same series of great cycles, or ages: one of the Shastas teaches that the human race has been destroyed four times--first by water, secondly by winds, thirdly the earth swallowed them, and _lastly fire consumed them_.[1] I come now to a most extraordinary record: In the prayer of the Aztecs to the great god Tezcatlipoca, "the supreme, invisible god," a prayer offered up in time of pestilence, we have the most remarkable references to the destruction of the people by stones and fire. It would almost seem as if this great prayer, noble and sublime in its language, was first poured out in the very midst of the Age of Fire, wrung from the human heart by the most appalling calamity that ever overtook the race; and that it was transmitted from age to age, as the hymns of the Vedas and the prayers of the Hebrews have been preserved, for thousands of years, down to our own times, when it was carefully transcribed by a missionary priest. It is as follows: