Chief of the wonders of that place of wonders, Prichard himself not excepted.* It stands, a huge monument of American deterioration, more resembling a human habitation than a tree, being upwards of 30 feet in circumference, and capable of admitting 30 or 40 men within its spacious interior, which has been fitted up as a saloon, and makes a most interesting retreat. Its exterior is still coated with bark, as when in its native forest. No mortal can tell how large it would have been, had it not been cut down, for it was still growing at the time. Take it, however, as it is, and we are willing to compare it with friend Johnny's little shrubs. We hope that after Americans have had a fair opportunity of seeing it, it will be transported to Europe, for the purpose of convincing the Trollopes beyond the seas that America is not the pigmy concern which some have represented. And if a vessel or an ark of sufficient burden can be found to convey the two Mammoths together, it would perfectly astonish the natives, and be a most wonderful coincidence.

In conclusion we have only to add, that those who wish to be gratified with a sight of this great curiosity, should lose no time in paying a visit to the Museum, as we understand it is to be removed on the first of April.

ANTIQUITIES.

ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS.

[Continued.]

Returning to the history of Votan and the seven families of the Tzequiles, which he found blended with the seven that he had brought from Hispaniola, and in which he recognised the Culebra origin, there remains but little more to say than that we are warranted in concluding, from the strongest evidence, they were Carthagenians. The illustrious Huet, bishop of Avranches, in his Evangelical Demonstrations, Alexis Venegas in his work on the Variation of Books, and several other writers, after careful examination, accord with this opinion, supposing them to have been a colony of Tyrians, consequently Hivites; therefore the truth of Votan's narrative remains clearly substantiated by many conclusive evidences.

After bestowing some consideration upon the meanledge of the before-mentioned don Ramon Ordonez, I ing of the word Tzequil, and confiding in the knowshall assert that Tzequil, in the Zendal language, means an upper petticoat, (Enagua, Basquina) and the same word means Nahuatlacas in the Mexican idiom; at the present time the natives of Chiapa call the Mexicans Tzequiles. Don Ramon affirms that the town of Tzequil, founded by these seven families of which Votan speaks, is the suburb called the Mexican, and joins the city of Ciudad Real (but for this I will not vouch ;) and that they were named Tzequils or Nahuatlacas, not only from having introduced the use of petticoats, for the greater propriety and decency of the women, but also, from having tolerated the sect or superstition of Nagualism. Votan alludes to this when he says, the Tzequiles gave him the first notions of a God and of his worship.

To conclude this discourse in the manner I propose, there still remains to investigate the origin of Huitzilopochtli, the tyrannical deity of the Mexicans, who is said to have destroyed so many hundred thousands of human victims during his empire over them, that they stood in need of arithmetical terms to enumerate them. For the better solution of this historical problem, I will transcribe the description of this personage literally from Clavigero, vol. 2, book 6.

"Huitzilopochtli is a name composed of two words, Huitzilin, the beautiful bird we call Chupalflores, (the Humming bird,) and Opochtli, to the left; this name was given because the idol has feathers of the Humming bird placed on its left foot. Boturini, who understood but little of the Mexican idiom, derives this name from Huitziton, the chief of the Mexicans during their peregrination, and supposes the deity to represent this chief; this is a forced etymology, and the supposed identity is entirely unknown among the Mexicans, for they worshipped this god of war from time immemorial, before they commenced their wandering life under the guidance of Huitziton. Some say this divinity was a pure spirit, and others represent him as having been born of a woman, without a father, and relate the circumstance in this way. There lived, say they, at Coatepec, a place not far distant from the ancient city of Tula, a woman called Coatlicue, mother of Centzonthuiznahui, and she devoted herself to the worship of the gods. One day, according to her custom, being employed in sweeping the temple, she saw a ball of different coloured feathers fall through the air to the ground; she took it up and put it in her bosom, intending to make use of the feathers to decorate the altar; but looking for them as soon as she had finished her employment, they were not to be found. This excited her surprise, and she was still more astonished on finding herself from that moment pregnant, and the circumstance in due time became visible to her sons, who, although they did not suspect their mother's virtue, yet feared such a birth might bring disgrace upon them, and determined to prevent

POETRY.

APOSTROPHE TO THE SUN.-J. G. PERCIVAL.

CENTRE of light and energy, thy way

Is through the unknown void; thou hast thy throne, Morning, and evening, and at noon of day,

Far in the blue, untended and alone:

Ere the first-wakened airs of earth had blown, On didst thou march, triumphant in thy light;,

Then didst thou send thy glance, which still hath flown Wide through the never-ending worlds of night,

And yet thy full orb burns with flash unquenched and bright.

Thy path is high in heaven;-we cannot gaze
On the intense of light that girds thy car;
There is a crown of glory in thy rays,

Which bears thy pure divinity afar,

To mingle with the equal light of star; For thou, so vast to us, art, in the whole,

One of the sparks of night that fire the air; And, as around thy centre planets roll,

So thou, too, hast thy path around the central soul.

Thou lookest on the earth, and then it smiles;

Thy light is hid,-and all things droop and mourn; Laughs the wide sea around her budding isles,

When through their heaven thy changing car is borne ; Thou wheel'st away thy flight,-the woods are shorn Of all their waving locks, and storms awake;

All that was once so beautiful is torn

By the wild winds which plough the lonely lake,

And, in their maddening rush, the crested mountains shake.

The earth lies buried in a shroud of snow;

Life lingers, and would die, but thy return Gives to their gladdened hearts an overflow Of all the power that brooded in the urn

Of their chilled frames, and then they proudly spurn All bands that would confine, and give to air

Hues, fragrance, shapes of beauty till they burn,
When, on a dewy morn, thou dartest there
Rich waves of gold to wreath with fairer light the fair.

The vales are thine -and when the touch of spring
Thrills them, and gives them gladness, in thy light
They glitter, as the glancing swallow's wing

Dashes the water in his winding flight,

And leaves behind a wave, that crinkles bright, And widens outward to the pebbled shore ;

The vales are thine; and, when they wake from night,
The dews that bend the grass tips, twinkling o'er
Their soft and oozy beds, look upward and adore.

The hills are thine :-they catch thy newest beam,
And gladden in thy parting, where the wood
Flames out in every leaf, and drinks the stream,
That flows from out thy fulness, as a flood
Bursts from an unknown land, and rolls the food
Of nations in its waters; so thy rays

Flow, and give brighter tints than ever bud,
When a clear sheet of ice reflects a blaze

Of many twinkling gems, as every glossed bough plays.

Thine are the mountains,-where they purely lift
Snows that have never wasted, in a sky
Which hath no stain; below, the storm may drift
Its darkness, and the thunder-gust roar by ;-
Aloft, in thy eternal smile, they lie,

Dazzling, but cold ;-thy farewell glance looks there,
And when below thy hues of beauty die,
Girt round them, as a rosy belt, they bear,
Into the high, dark vault, a brow that still is fair.

The clouds are thine; and all their magic hues
Are pencilled by thee; when thou bendest low,
Or comest in thy strength, thy hand imbues

Their waving folds with such a perfect glow
Of all pure tints, the fairy pictures throw
Shame on the proudest art;

These are thy trophies, and thou bend'st thine arch, The sign of triumph, in a seven-fold twine, Where the spent storm is hasting on its march; And there the glories of thy light combine, And form, with perfect curve, a lifted line Striding the earth and air ;-man looks and tells How peace and mercy in its beauty shine, And how the heavenly messenger impels Her glad wings on the path that thus in other swells.

The ocean is thy vassal :-thou dost sway

His waves to thy dominion, and they go Where thou, in heaven, dost guide them on their way, Rising and falling in eternal flow;

Thou lookest on the waters, and they glow, And take them wings and spring aloft in air,

And change to clouds, and then, dissolving, throw Their treasures back to earth, and, rushing, tear The mountain and the vale, as proudly on they bear.

In thee, first light, the bounding ocean smiles,
When the quick winds uprear it in a swell,
That rolls in glittering green around the isles,
Where ever-springing fruits and blossoms dwell.
O, with a joy no gifted tongue can tell,

I hurry o'er the waters when the sail

Swells tensely, and the light keel glances well Over the curling billow, and the gale

Comes off from spicy groves to tell its winning tale.

THE MENAGERIE.

We advise all who have a relish for natural history, to make a visit to the Menagerie in the Bowery, nearly opposite the theatre, where they can learn more on the subject in an hour, than by reading a week. They can there see the animals themselves, which books can only describe, and represent by cuts. There they can see the majestic lion, the huge elephant, the ferocious tiger, and so on to the end of the chapter. The following is a list of the animals in this establishment. An Asiatic lion and lioness, a male and female elephant, a rhinoceros, four male and female tigers, a pair of leopards, a panther, a caracal, an ounce, a cougar, a jaguar, an ocelot, a pair of striped hyenas, a pair of spotted hyenas, a gray wolf, a wild cat, a Bactrian camel, a white bear, a pair of kangaroos, a zebra, a mico, a Barbary ape, a striated monkey, a pig-tailed baboon, and a small rib-nosed baboon, together with a variety of the monkey tribe. Really, here is a splendid collection indeed, and those who take the pains to pay the establishment a visit, will not regret it. We understand that it is to be removed on the 1st of April.

TO THE READERS OF THE MAGAZINE. The Editor considers it due to himself to say, that from the commencement of this publication up to No. 46, he has been unable, in consequence of having all the business concerns of the establishment on his hands, to devote to it that Editorial attention which is requisite to a work of the kind. But having now obtained a partner, by whom he is essentially relieved in the business department, he is at length enabled to bestow his undivided attention on its Editorial interests. And if he should not henceforward furnish a paper well worthy of perusal, the public are welcome to attribute the deficiency to incompetency, and not to a want of opportunity.

OUR MYTHOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT. We desire our readers to keep constantly in view the plan on which our paper is established. We are furnishing a systematic course of general knowledge, which will require years for its completion. Mythology is one branch of the system, and an indispensable one. Without a knowledge of this, it is utterly impossible to relish the beauties of classic style, of painting, engraving, and statuary, or even to understand their import. Mythology, therefore, although of no intrinsic value, is of great relative importance; and it would be an unpardonable neglect indeed, in a work professing to furnish a system of general knowledge, to omit it. But it has its limits, which we are now rapidly approaching. And when completed, it will be completed once for all. There will be no additions, no new discoveries; and the humblest ploughboy who follows us patiently through, will then be as classic as those who have heretofore monopolized all these marvellous affairs at college. We hope, therefore, that our readers will bear with us some time longer, seeing they are becoming so learned, in so easy and cheap a manner.

extended the whole way to the Nile. Thus the gradual invasion of Egypt by the sands of the desert, becomes a chronometer of our globe."

The third and last species of evidence to be presented in relation to the Deluge, is history and tradition.

"The Hon. Daines Barrington, also, from a wide induction of historical facts concluded, 'that the seasons have become infinitely more mild in the northern latitudes, than they were sixteen or seventeen centuries ago.'-Phil. Trans. 1768.

"Cæsar says the vine could not be cultivated in Gaul on account of the severity of winter; though that country now affords the highest flavoured wines. The rein-deer was in his time an inhabitant of the Pyrenees; whereas, the Highlands of Scotland are at this day too warm for it. The Tiber was sometimes frozen over, and the ground about Rome covered with snow, for several weeks together. The Romans never experience such intense winter weather in our times.

"This progress of heat and desiccation has produced remarkable changes on the land of Egypt. For many generations after the Flood, it was a hot-bed of vegetation, and swarmed with the animal tribes. Even in the time of Augustus, the granaries of Rome were filled from the corn-fields of Egypt. But the soil of the greater portion of it growing progressively more arid, has now become a mass of incoherent sand, drifted every season closer to the valley of the Nile by the western winds, circumscribing the fields, and blasting the hopes of the husbandman. No lands capable of tillage now remain on any portion of the banks of that river, where they are unsheltered by a mountain-ridge. "M. Denon informs us that nothing any longer appears above these sands, but the summits of ruined cities that lie overwhelmed beneath them. 'How melancholy to walk over villages swallowed up by the flying dust of the desert, to trample their roofs under our feet, to strike against the very pinnacles of their minarets, and to reflect that yonder were cultivated fields, that here grew trees, and there stood the dwelling of men, but all have vanished for ever.'

"Had our continents been as ancient as some have surmised, this scourge of the desert, which has committed such ravages since the days of Cleopatra, should long before that period have effaced every vestige of human habitation from the western banks of the Nile. The relative condition of such monuments attests the progressive encroachment of the sand; for the fertility and populousness of Egypt have declined visibly with the exhaustion of the diluvian moisture. Had that great cataclysm been more ancient than the epoch assigned by Moses, Egypt ought to have reached its ultimate desolation very long ago. Not an oasis should now remain, no green island in the wilderness, to remind the traveller of those fruitful plains which once V I.-No. 50

"Now all the writers of the barbarian histories make mention of this flood, and of this ark; among whom is Berosus the Chaldean. For when he was describing the circumstances of the flood, he goes on thus: 'It is said, there is still some part of this ship in Armenia, at the mountain of the Cordyæans; and that some people carry off pieces of the bitumen, which they take away, and use chiefly as amulets, for the averting of mischiefs.'-Hieronymus the Egyptian also, who wrote the Phenician antiquities, and Mnaseas, and a great many more, make mention of the same. Nay, Nicholas of Damascus, in his ninety-sixth book, hath a particular relation about them; where he speaks thus: There is a great mountain in Armenia, over Minyas, called Baris, upon which it is reported, that many who fled at the time of the Deluge were saved; and that one who was carried in an ark, came on shore upon the top of it; and that the remains of the timber were a great while preserved. This might be the man about whom Moses, the legislator of the Jews wrote.""

Berosus, the Chaldean historian, who wrote at Babylon, in the time of Alexander, writes as follows: "And after the death of Ardates, his son Xisuthrus succeeded, and reigned eighteen sari. In his time happened the great Deluge; the history of which is given in this manner. The Deity, Cronus, appeared to him in a vision, and gave him notice that upon the fifteenth day of the month Dæsia there would be a flood, by which mankind would be destroyed. He therefore enjoined him to commit to writing a history of the beginning, procedure, and final conclusion of all things, down to the present time; and to bury these accounts securely in the city of the Sun at Sippara; and to build a vessel, and to take with him into it his friends and relations; and to convey on board every thing necessary to sustain life, and to take in also all species of animals, that either fly or rove upon the earth; and trust himself to the deep. Having asked the Deity whither he was to sail? he was answered, To the Gods:' upon which he offered up a prayer for the good of mankind. And he obeyed the divine admonition: and built a vessel five stadia in length, and in breadth two. Into this he put every thing which he had got ready; and last of all conveyed into it his wife, children, and friends. After the flood had been upon the earth, and was in time abated, Xisuthrus sent out some birds from the vessel; which not finding any food, nor any place to rest their feet, returned to him again.