He had saved himself, together
with his wife Xochiquetzal, in a bark, or, according to other
traditions, on a raft made of cypress-wood (Cupressus disticha).
Paintings retracing the deluge of Coxcox have been discovered among the
Aztecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs, Tlascaltecs, and Mechoacaneses. The tradition
of the latter is still more strikingly in conformity with the story as
we have it in Genesis, and in Chaldean sources. It tells how Tezpi
embarked in a spacious vessel with his wife, his children, and several
animals, and grain, whose preservation was essential to the subsistence
of the human race. When the great god Tezcatlipoca decreed that the
waters should retire, Tezpi sent a vulture from the bark. The bird,
feeding on the carcasses with which the earth was laden, did not return.
Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the humming-bird only came back
with a leafy branch in its beak. Then Tezpi, seeing that the country
began to vegetate, left his bark on the mountain of Colhuacan.
"The document, however, that gives the most valuable information," says
Lenormant, "as to the cosmogony of the Mexicans is one known as 'Codex
Vaticanus,' from the library where it is preserved.
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