Note 978 — Chapter III

When we consider that Rome, Constantinople, and Jerusalem, in spite of rapine, siege and fire, still retain numerous traces of their earliest times, and that not a vestige of the Aztec capital remains to us except its site, we must assume, in Wilson’s opinion (Prehistoric Man, i. 331), that its edifices and causeways must have been for the most part more slight and fragile than the descriptions of the conquerors implied. Morgan instances as a proof of the flimsy character of their masonry, that Cortes in seventeen days levelled three fourths of the city of Mexico. But, adds Wilson, “so far as an indigenous American civilization is concerned, no doubt can be entertained, and there is little room for questioning, that among races who had carried civilization so far, there existed the capacity for its further development, independently of all borrowed aid” (p. 336). The Baron Nordenskjöld informs me that there is in the library at Upsala a MS. map of Mexico by Santa Cruz (d. 1572) which contains numerous ethnographical details, not to be found in printed maps of that day.