| [114] Professor Rau in his memoir upon the Palenque tablet, states | | that it is his belief that the Maya language, or a kindred | | dialect, was spoken by the builders of Palenque. | | | | With regard to this subject it has to be observed that when the | | Toltec tribes, or the tribe that built the temples, settled at | | Palenque they had possibly forgotten their own original language, | | which may have been a Pawnee or Dakota dialect. | | | | It would naturally happen after their wives had been taken from | | among the aboriginal race, that the children would speak the | | dialects of their mothers. It has been mentioned by an early | | Spanish writer that the Aztecs, when they settled in Mexico, | | endeavoured to establish their own language, but without success. | | | | [115] Vol. iv., p. 333. | | | | [116] According to Gibbon, the Goths under the command of King | | Roderick, were defeated by the Saracens on the plains of Xeres in | | the neighbourhood of Cadiz, upon July 19–26, A.D. 711. This great | | battle decided the fate of Spain. It was supposed that Roderick | | was drowned in the river but it was not known with certainty what | | became of him as his body was never found. | | | | Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. li. | | | | The subject of the flight of the bishops, was afterwards brought | | into notice by a report of the discovery of the island where they | | had settled. This fabulous report was believed, in the fifteenth | | century, to be true. An historian states that:— | | | | “In this yeare also, 1447, it happened that there came a Portugal | | ship through the Streight of Gibraltar; and being taken with a | | great tempest, was forced to runne westward more than willingly | | the men would, and at last they fell vpon an island which had | | seuen cities, and the people spake the Portugall toong, and they | | demanded if the Moores did yet trouble Spaine, whence they had | | fled for the loss which they had received by the death of the King | | of Spain, Don Roderigo. | | | | The boatswaine of the ship brought home a little of the sand, and |