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Nor does the condition of astronomical science in
aboriginal America prove a connection with
Asia.
The red men could not but observe the pole-star; and even their children could give the names and trace the motions of the more brilliant groups of stars, of which the return marked the seasons; but they did not divide the heavens, nor even a belt in the heavens, into constellations.
It is a curious coincidence, that among
the Algonquins of the
Atlantic and of the
Mississippi, alike among the Narragansetts and the
Illinois, the north star was called the
bear. This accidental agreement with the widely-spread usage of the Old World, is far more observable than the imaginary resemblance between the signs of the Mexicans for their days and the signs on the zodiac for the month in Thibet.
The American nation had no zodiac, and could not, therefore, for the names of its days, have borrowed from
Central Asia the symbols that marked the path of the sun through the year.
Nor had the Mexicans either weeks or lunar months; but, after the manner of barbarous nations, they divided the days in the year into eighteen scores, leaving the few remaining days to be set apart by themselves.
This division may have sprung directly from their system of enumeration; it need not have been imported.
It is a greater marvel, that the indigenous inhabitants of
Mexico had a nearly exact knowledge of the length of the year, and, at the end of one hundred and four years, made their Interca-
lation more accurately than the Greeks, the Romans, or the Egyptians.
The length of their tropical year was almost identical with the result obtained by the
astronomers of the caliph
Almamon; but let no one derive this coincidence from intercourse, unless he is prepared to believe that, in the ninth century of our
