Note I-62 — Chapter I · ON THE ORIGIN OF THE AMERICANS.

Following are a few points of Lord Kingsborough's elaborate argument: 'How truly surprising it is to find that the Mexicans, who seem to have been quite unacquainted with the doctrines of the migration of the soul and the metempsychosis, should have believed in the incarnation of the only son of their supreme god Tonacatecutle. For Mexican mythology speaking of no other son of that god except Quecalcoatle, who was born of Chimalman the Virgin of Tula, without connection with man, and by his breath alone, (by which may be signified his word or his will, announced to Chimalman by word of mouth of the celestial messenger, whom he dispatched to inform her that she should conceive a son,) it must be presumed that Quecalcoatle was his only son. Other arguments might be adduced to show, that the Mexicans believed that Quecalcoatle was both god and man, that he had previously to his incarnation existed from all eternity, that he had created both the world and man, that he descended from heaven to reform the world by penance, that he was born with the perfect use of reason, that he preached a new law, and, being king of Tula, was crucified for the sins of mankind, as is obscurely insinuated by the interpreter of the Vatican Codex, plainly declared in the traditions of Yucatan, and mysteriously represented in the Mexican paintings.' If the promise of the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary,—The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God—be couched in the language of ancient prophecy, 'it is not improbable that the head of the dragon which forms the crest of three of the female figures (in one of the Mexican pieces of sculpture), as it may also be presumed it did of the fourth when entire, (if it be not a symbol which Chimalman borrowed from her son's name,) was intended to denote that she had been overshadowed by the power of Huitzilopuchtli, whose device, as we are informed by Sahagun in the first chapter of the first book of his History of New Spain, was the head of a dragon.' Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. vi., pp. 507-8. See, more especially, his elaborate discussion of Quetzalcoatl's crucifixion and identity with the Messiah, vol. viii., pp. 5-51. As we have seen in a preceding volume, Quetzalcoatl is compared with the heathen deities of the old world, as well as with the Messiah of the Christians. See vol. iii., chap. vii.