Ixtlilxochitl and all the early writers to the contrary. Supposing that the sweeping assumption of the northern origin so persistently adhered to by native and Spanish writers is nothing but a priestly fabrication, be admitted, simply that our attention may be turned to other testimony, still the evidence is against the southern origin theory. The material relics of Honduras and Nicaragua absolutely disprove the positive supposition that they were ever the work of the people who figured in Anahuac, and no transition from one style of sculpture to the other has ever been discovered, nor could be imagined. An examination of the first few chapters of Mr. Bancroft’s fourth volume and the works from which it has been drawn will fully satisfy the reader of this fact. The evidence from the linguistic standpoint is even more satisfactory, since the Nahua language as spoken in Central America, in the states of San Salvador and Nicaragua, is dialectic, indicating a fragmentary migration southward.[392] It has been the common custom of Spanish writers and those who followed them down to the middle of this century, to locate Hue hue Tlapalan on the Californian coast. Vater and Humboldt from their standpoints of investigation fell in with this view. The former, basing his convictions on seeming linguistic affinities in the north-west, which, while they are quite significant, indicative of Nahua influences if not of Nahua residence, are too few to prove any lengthy sojourn. Humboldt based his opinion chiefly on the traditions and certain ethnological and geographical facts. Buschmann[393] has completely overthrown the arguments of Vater in his series of works on American languages, while Mr. Bancroft has shown conclusively that there are no material remains assignable to the Toltecs to be found on the Californian coast or the adjoining region.[394] When he asserts, however, that there are no remains farther north than California, he overlooks a well-known fact. We refer to the mounds of Oregon and their extension eastward into the Yellowstone and North Missouri River region. The most reasonable conjecture as to the locality of Hue hue Tlapalan is that which places it in the Mississippi Valley, and assigns the works of our Mound-builders to the Nahua nations. In previous chapters we have shown the close resemblance of the mound crania to the ancient Mexican, and have pointed out the gradual transition from the rude and simple mounds of the north to the truncated pyramid of the south, constructed on strict geometrical principles, having one or more graded ways, and so closely resembling the Mexican teocallis. Besides the testimony of Sahagun that the first settlers of Mexico came from towards Florida, and the universal report of a northern origin prevalent among the Aztecs at the time of the conquest, there are other evidences of a racial identity common to Mound-builders and Mexicans, such as pottery, sculptured portraitures of the facial type,