ruin of its power, the only one whose institutions have survived its own
existence,--the Xahoa, or Toltec.

Of all the American languages, the Nahuatl holds the highest place, for
its richness of expression and its sonorous tone,--adapting itself with
equal flexibility to the most sublime and analytic terms of metaphysics,
and to the uses of ordinary life, so that even at this day the
Englishman and the Spaniard employ its vocabulary for natural objects.

The traditions of the Nahoas describe their life in the distant Oriental
country from which they came:--"There they multiplied to a considerable
degree, and lived without civilization. They had not then acquired the
habit of separating themselves from the places which had seen them born;
they paid no tributes; and all spoke a single language. They worshipped
neither wood nor stone; they contented themselves with raising their
eyes to heaven and observing the law of the Creator. They waited with
respect for the rising of the sun, saluting with their invocations the
morning star."

This is their prayer, handed down in Indian tradition,--the oldest piece
extant of American liturgy:--"Hail, Creator and Former! Regard us!
Listen to us! Heart of Heaven! Heart of the Earth! do not leave us! Do
not abandon us, God of Heaven and Earth!... Grant us repose, a glorious
repose, peace and prosperity! the perfection of life and of our being
grant to us, O Hurakan!"

What country and what sun nourished this worship and gave origin to this
great people is as uncertain as all other facts of the early American
history. They came from the East, the tradition says; they landed, it
seems certain, at Panuco, near the present port of Tampico, from seven