Now turn to the sculpture in the Flood tablet (on the great
Calendar stone). There you will find represented the Flood, and with
great emphasis, by the accumulation of all those symbols with which the
ancient Mexicans conveyed the idea of water: a tub of standing water,
drops springing out--not two, as heretofore in the symbol for Atl,
water--but four drops; the picture for moisture, a snail; above, a
crocodile, the king of the rivers. In the midst of these symbols you
notice the profile of a man with a fillet, and a smaller one of a woman.
There can be doubt these are the Mexican Noah, Coxcox, and his wife,
Xochiquetzal; and at the same time it is evident (the Calendar stone, we
know, was made in A.D., 1478) that the story of them, and the pictures
representing the story, have not been invented by the Catholic clergy,
but really existed among these nations long before the Conquest."
The above figure represents the Flood tablet on the great Calendar stone.
When we turn to the uncivilized Indians of America, while we still find
legends referring to the Deluge, they are, with one exception, in such
garbled and uncouth forms that we can only see glimpses of the truth
shining through a mass of fable.
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