Note 563 — Chapter II

A good deal of labor has been bestowed to prove this identity of Fusang with Mexico. It is held to be found in the myths and legends of the two people by Charency in his Mythe de Votan, étude sur les origines asiatiques de la civilisation américaine (Alençon, 1871), drawn from the Actes de la Soc. philologique (vol. ii.); and he has enforced similar views in the Revue des questions historiques (vi. 283), and in his Djemschid et Quetzalcohuatl. L’histoire légendaire de la Nouvelle-Espagne rapprochée de la source indo-européenne (Alençon, 1874). Humboldt thought it strange, considering other affinities,—as for instance in the Mexican calendars,—that he could find no Mexican use of phallic symbols; but Bancroft says they exist. Cf. Native Races, iii. 501; also see v. 40, 232; Brasseur’s Quatre Lettres, p. 202; and John Campbell’s paper on the traditions of Mexico and Peru as establishing such connections, in the Compte Rendu, Congrès des Amér. (Nancy, 1875), i. 348. Dr. Hamy saw in a monument found at Copan an inscription which he thought was the Taë-kai of the Chinese, the symbol of the essence of all things (Bull. de la Soc. de Géog., 1886, and Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xvi. 242, with a cut of the stone). Dall controverts this point (Science, viii. 402).