"--Vol. I. p. 209.
M. de Bourbourg fitly closes his interesting volumes--from which we have
here given a resume of only the opening chapters--with a remarkable
prophecy, made in the court of Yucatan by the high-priest of Mani.
According to the tradition, this pontiff, inspired by a supernatural
vision, betook himself to Mayapan and thus addressed the king:--"At the
end of the Third Period, [A.D. 1518-1542,] a nation, white and bearded,
shall come from the side where the sun rises, bearing with it a sign,
[the cross,] which shall make all the Gods to flee and fall. This nation
shall rule all the earth, giving peace to those who shall receive it in
peace and who will abandon vain images to adore an only God, whom these
bearded men adore." (Vol. II. p. 594.) M. de Bourbourg does not vouch
for the pure origin of the tradition, but suggests that the wise men of
the Quiche empire already saw that it contained in itself the elements
of destruction, and had already heard rumors of the wonderful white race
which was soon to sweep away the last vestiges of the Central American
governments.
[NOTE.--We cannot but think that our correspondent receives the
traditions reported by M. de Bourbourg with too undoubting faith. Some
of them seem to us to bear plain marks of an origin subsequent to the
Spanish Conquest, and we suspect that others have been considerably
modified in passing through the lively fancy of the Abbe.
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