Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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30 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. stood the polar Pillar, which upheld the world. Roads with such finger-posts, all lead to Thule. Not less striking and significant are the difiiculties encoun- tered by the learned Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, in his at- tempt to demonstrate the true location of the cradle of the human race from the traditions and literature of' the Mexican and Central American aborigincs. First, a word respecting the man. Even before his life-work was finished, and before the publication of what he considered his crowning literary monument, it was said of him, by as good an authority in his own field as Daniel G. Brinton, M.D., The Abbe is the most learned living writer concerning the ancient things of America. 1 The praise was none too high. In Europe his works were welcomed and reviewed by such schol- ars as Professor Max Miiller, and others of the very first rank. His private collection of books, manuscripts, hieroglyph-copies, maps, relics, etc., relating to Indian mythology, tradition, and 1 From an article on the Abbe, by Dr. Brinton, published in Lryapincotfs Magazine, vol. i., Phil. 1868. Charles Edward Brasseur was born in 1814, in the Flemish village of Bourbourg, near Dunkirk. NVhen a boy of ten a stray copy of the Journal des Savanls fell in his way. In it there was a brief sketch of some of the ruins of Palenque in Central America, with speculations as to their origin. This was to his boyish soul what the lays of Horner were to the youthful Schliemann. He cherished the wild dream that it was for him to unlock the mystery of those wonderful works of an unknown past. Just at this thne all Europe was in joyous excitement over Champollion's success in deciphering.the long battling hieroglyphs of Egypt, and this roused his ambition the more. His powers and scholar- ship attracted the attention of his teachcrsg he was called into the service of the Church, and thoroughly educated. In 1845, after induction into holy orders, he was sent to Quebec, and was allowed to advance himself in English and other studies in Boston. Here, the perusal of l'rescott's new work on the Conquest of Mexico fired his zeal afresh. The next year he returned to Europe, went to Rome, and then gave himself to diligent studies until the outbreak of the revolution in 1848. Then, as alxncner of the French legatlon, he again visited the United States, and commenced those explorations and studies of Mexico and Central America and their antiquities which became his life-work. As administrator of the Indians at Rablnal, he resided for several years in Guatemala, learning meantime, in a. thorough manner, the Nahualt and other aboriginal languages. In the former he was taught by a University professor, who was a descendant of a brother of Montezuma. For fuller details of his active life, the reader is referred to the chatty autobiographic prefaces prefixed to his diffei-eng works. '

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ALL ROADS LEAD T0 TIIULE. 29 each people, like all other ancient nations, had preserved in their traditions indistinct but unmistakable reminiscences of that earlier and happier abode. In no part of his exposition is M. Beauvois any more success- ful in establishing his view. Granting all that he claims as to the long voyages ot' Keltic navigators in thehmiddle agesg granting their discovery and colonization of America, before Columbus was born 5 1 granting that his citations from Irish, Gaelic, Kym- ric, and other Keltic sources, are all correct representations of Keltic ideas, - after every concession, there is not tl1e slightest proof given, or attempted to be given, that these tribes either originally came from America, or that they had even visited America before they formed their Iirst ideas ol' an Earthly Para- dise. On the other hand, a believer in the polar origin of man- kind ean ask no better reading than these elaborate papers present. Everywhere shimmering through the fanciful but transparent adornments of the traditions, he sees the unmistak- able landmarks of that primitive polar Paradise. In page after page he meets the ever-recurring ideas that this enchanting land is at H the extremity of the earth, that it is the navel ot' the seag that there 4' one day is a year or an ageg that it is the land in which is the world-tree, around which the sun- bird circles 3 that it is the region where stands the H colossal Silver Pillar, whose head is lost in the clouds, and which is noth- ing less than that great axis ot' the world which Plato calls the H Spindle of Necessity, 4' brighter than the rainbow, and which Scyrnnos ot' Chios, long before thc Christian era, said was called the ' Bom-:AL Cor.UMN,' and was located at the extremity ot' the country of the Kelts. 2 Evidently all these indices point, not to our American Atlantic coast, but to Plato's Arctic kingdom of Atlas, in the centre of Atlas's Sea, where 1 La decozwerte du. Nouveau-Monde par les Irlandais et les premieres traces du Cltristianismc en Amdrique avant Fan 1,000. Par E. Beauvois. Nancy, 1875. Also Les colonies Em'upe'ennes du Murklund et de l'E.-:cociland Cllomina-i tion Canadiennel au :tive sierle, et les vestiges qui en. subsisterentjusqu am: Mia ct xviiv stecles. Par E. Beauvois. Nancy, 1877. Both may be found in the Compte-rendu du. fhmgres international des Amc'1'ic'anistes. 2Pe1-iegesis, verses 188 E. in Geographt Groeci Mtnores. Ed. Miiller. Paris, 1855. Vol. 1. p. 202. 8 See Paradise Found, pp. 1-15, 182-187, 191-278, 350-358. '

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ALL ROADS LEAD T0 TIIULE. 31 language, was one of the richest ever brought together. I-Ie wrote many volumes upon these themes, drawing from aborigi- nal sources. At the time of his recent death, he was probably regarded the world over as the most eminent and able of that class of archaeologists and antiquarians known in Europe as Americanists. I-Iis last great work was his H Four Letters upon Mexico. 1 In this he claims to have unlocked the profound symbolism of the ancient hicroglyphies of Mexico, and to have found the Cradle of the Human Race. On the basis of indigenous texts, he sets forth the theory that this cradle was in Central America, and that from this centre, in the world's morning, the first pio- neer settlers of Egypt and Asia and Europe went forth. To him, therefore, the New World was older than the Old. t In fuller form his doctrine is, that originally the American con- tinent was almost twice as large as at present. It filled all the space now covered by the vast Gulf' of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and adjacent portions of' the Atlantic Ocean. It reached far out toward the west coast of Africa and Europe. It was the Atlantis of Plato. All parts were Eden-like, but the pre-emi- nently Paradisaic centre' was the primitive capital-city, Tollan 01' Tulan, situated-as the Abbe believed -to the south-east of Mexieof in the region now covered by the Caribbean Sea, not far from the inner shore of the Antilles? In one of the great geologic catastrophes of' the early world, all this immense tract was volcanically upheavedg then, in the sudden collapse, sunken and submerged beneath the waters of the ocean. Echoes of, the stupendous disaster live on in Plato, and in the 1 Quatre Leltres sur le Mcatique .' Exposition absolue du Systeme hierogly- phique mexicaing la Fin de l'Age dc Pierre. Epoque Glaciaire temporaire. Commencement dc l'Age ole Bronze. Origines de la Civilisation et des Religions de l'Ant'iqutte2 cl'aprEs le Yeo-Amoxtli et autre documents mexicains. Con- stituting the fourth volume of his Uoltection de Documents dans les Langue.: Indigenes. Paris,18tS8. 2 Au sud-est du Mexiqne, p 110. 3 The old Spanish writers give us many spellings : Tula Tulan, Tullan, Tnlha, Tulla, Tollan, etc. H. H. Bancroft tin Native Races, vol. v. p. 1825 refers to the variety. Dr. Brinton tin his Library of Aboriginal American Literature, vol. vi. p. Ill says the word is properly Yhnatlan. But he most unscientiilcally denies all historic basis to the Aztec myths, resolving them into pure creations of the fancy. 1