"I cannot fail to remark that one of the arguments which persuades me to believe that this nation descends from the Hebrews is to see the knowledge they have of the book of Genesis. . . . . "It is impossible on reading what Mexican Mythology records of the war in heaven, and the fall of Zontemoque and other rebellious spirits; of the creation of light by the word of Toncatlecuti, and of the division of the waters; of the sin of Yzclacolinhqui, and his blindness and his nakedness; and of the temptation of Suchequecal and her disobedience in gathering roses from a tree, and the consequent misery and disgrace of herself and all her posterity, not to recognize scriptural analogies. But the Mexican tradition of the deluge is that which bears the most unequivocal marks of having been derived from a Hebrew source. This tradition records that a few persons escaped in the Ahuchueti, or ark of fir, when the earth was swallowed up by the deluge, the chief of whom was named Palecath of Cipaquetona: and he invented the art of making wine; that Xelua, one of his descendants, or at least one of those who escaped in the ark, was present at the building of a high tower, which the succeeding generation constructed with a view of escaping from the deluge, should it {277} again occur: the Toncatlecutli, incensed at their presumption, destroyed the tower by lightning, confounded their language and dispersed them; and that Xelua led a colony to the new World."--Mexican _Antiquities_, Vol. VI, p. 401. TRADITION OF MOSES. The same writer also makes the following statement respecting the ancient Americans' knowledge of the story of Moses: "A very remarkable representation of the ten plagues which God sent on Egypt, occurs in the eleventh and twelfth pages of the Borgian Ms. Moses is there painted, holding up in his left hand his rod, which became a serpent; and, with a furious gesture, calling down the plagues upon the Egyptians. These plagues were frogs, locusts, lice, flies, etc., all of which are represented in the pages referred to; but the last and most dreadful were the thick darkness which overspread Egypt for three days, and the death of the firstborn of the Egyptians. "The curious symbol of one serpent swallowing up others, likewise occurs in the nineteenth page of the same Ms. It is not extraordinary that the Mexicans, who were acquainted with one portion of the exodus--that relating to the children of Israel journeying from Egypt--should also not have been ignorant of another." TRADITION OF EVE. Bernardino de Sahagun, a Franciscan missionary and historian of the sixteenth century, author of "Historia Universal de Nueva Españia," says concerning the Aztec tradition of Eve: