indications of commercial intercourse between the two countries, such as the discovery of Mexican obsidian in the mounds of the Ohio Valley, and the probability that both worshipped the sun and offered human sacrifices.[395] With the Toltec annals proper we have nothing to do; only the most primitive period of the growth of this people concerns us here, and that period is conceded to have closed with the establishment of the great capital at Tollan, on the site of the present village of Tula, thirty miles north-west of the city of Mexico. Seven years after the arrival of the Toltecs in Tollan, the government was a theocratic republic, with the seven chiefs who had conducted them thither acting as their rulers, under the advice of the venerable Huemen. Finally, in the beginning of the eighth century, somewhere between 710 and 720 A. D., the republic was changed into a monarchy and the throne given to the son of their dreaded enemies and former neighbors, the warlike Chichimecs, as a peace-offering, on condition that the Toltecs should always be a free people and in no way tributary to the Chichimecs. The history of the Toltec monarchy during the three and a half centuries of its duration to the final overthrow of Tollan (1062 A. D.) as well as the power of the remarkable people who built the ancient capital, has often been sketched, and for us to repeat what has been recorded in almost every language of modern Europe, would add nothing to the cause of science. This part of ancient American history, so replete with the romantic and marvellous, so confusing at times, because of our ignorance of many geographic and archæologic features entering into it (which, in time, will probably be brought to light), so saddening because of its stories of wholesale misfortunes to a people whose civilization rivalled that of Europe in the middle ages; and yet, after all, so fresh and novel, must continue to receive increased attention, if only as a means of recreation to the student of history, wearied with the beaten paths from Rome to Greece, and from Greece to Rome. Mr. Bancroft has given an excellent _resumé_ of the annals of the Toltec period, accompanying it with an ample literary apparatus in the notes. During the last century of the Toltec power, Anahuac was overrun by the incursions of a fierce and dreaded people—the Chichimecs. These semi-barbarians, taking advantage of the internal dissensions in the Toltec monarchy, became a powerful factor, either on their own part or in the hands of the enemies of Tollan, in the overthrow of the empire. In the Toltec traditions we read of the Chichimecs being their neighbors in Hue hue Tlapalan.[396] In the annals as given in Ixtlilxochitl, Torquemada and many writers, the Chichimecs are represented as having pursued and annoyed the Toltecs, to have followed them up in their wanderings. This probably is not literally true, but their arrival upon the borders of Anahuac, soon after its occupation