The ideographic paintings of the Astecs or Mound-builders preserve traditions of the creation of the world, a universal flood, confusion of tongues and dispersion of men, and that a single man and woman saved themselves in a boat which landed near Mount Colhuacan, and that all their children were born deaf, and remained so till a dove one day, from the top of a tree, taught them each in a different tongue. All Astec traditions, without exception, insist that they came from a far-off island called Aztlan (Atlantis). Dr. Lapham, in his “Antiquities of Wisconsin,” locates “Azatland” in Wisconsin, on account of the large number of _effigy_ mounds found there, and Dr. Foster, in his “Prehistoric Races,” figures these mounds called “Azatland,” but the Astec painting published by Gemellé Carera, in his _Giro del Mondo_, has hieroglyphics representing their departure from Aztlan in canoes and on rafts, after the confusion of tongues, and a teocalli, or temple, by the side of a palm-tree. Now we all know palms do not grow in Wisconsin, but they do grow in Africa. Max Müller, the world’s greatest authority in philology, says, that of all indices to the mysteries of the ancient world, language is the most satisfactory, and the _only_ evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historic periods. If we class the languages of the world into groups according to cognation, we find the Aryan languages comprising the Indian, Persian (Sanskrit), Hellenic, Latin group (Italian, Wallachian, Provencal, French, Portuguese and Spanish), Slavonic (Russian), Teutonic (English), and the Keltic or Welsh, of which the oldest is the Sanskrit and Zend. The Semitic group comprises the Hebrew, Phœnician, Assyrian and Arabic, while the Babylonian and Chinese stand alone. The Aryan and Semitic form a class known as _the inflectional_, and are the only languages of the world that are adapted to and possess a literature, and that have advanced the progress of the world in religion, arts, or sciences.