I think we need not hesitate in condemning the legend of Cholula, which I have just related, as not genuine, or at least as partly of late fabrication.  But we fortunately possess another version of it, which shows the legend to have developed itself farther than was quite discreet.  A MS. history, written by Duran in 1579, and quoted by the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, relates that people built the pyramid to reach heaven, finding clay or mud ("terre glaise") and a very sticky bitumen ("bitume fort gluant"), with which they began at once to build, &c.  This is evidently the slime or bitumen of the Book of Genesis; but I believe I may safely assert that the Mexicans never used bitumen for any such purpose, and that it is not found anywhere near Cholula.

The Aztec historians ascribe the building of the Pyramid of Cholula to the prophet Quetzalcoatl.  The legends which relate to this celebrated personage are to be found in writers on Mexican history, and, more fully than elsewhere, in the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg’s work.

I am inclined to consider Quetzalcoatl a real personage, and not a mythical one.  He is said to have been a white, bearded man, to have come from the East, to have reigned in Tollan, and to have been driven out from thence by the votaries of human sacrifices, which he opposed.  He took refuge in Cholollan, now called Cholula (which means the “place of the fugitive"), and taught the inhabitants to work in metals, to observe various fasts and festivals, to use the Toltec calendar of days and years, and to perform penance to appease the gods.

A relic of the father of Quetzalcoatl is said to have been kept until after the Spanish Conquest, when it was opened, and found to contain a quantity of fair human hair.  The prophet himself departed from Cholula, and put to sea in a canoe, promising to return.  So strong was the belief in the tradition of these events among the Aztecs, that when the Spaniards appeared on the coast, they were supposed to be of the race of the prophet, and the strange conduct of Montezuma to Cortes is to be ascribed to the influence of this belief.

There is a singular legend, mentioned by the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, of a white man, with a hooded robe and white beard, bearing a cross in his hand, who lands at Tehuantepec (on the Pacific coast of Mexico), and introduces among the Indians auricular confession, penance, and vows of chastity.

The coming of white, bearded men from the East, centuries before the Spanish invasion in the 16th century, and the introduction of new arts and rites by them in Mexico, is as certain as most historical events of which we have only legendary knowledge.  As to who they were I cannot offer an opinion.  There are, however, one or two points connected with the presence of the Irish and Northmen in America in the 9th and following centuries—­a period not very far from that ascribed to Quetzalcoatl—­which are worthy of notice.