They lived upon Mounds, says the Shan Hai King.
"They are very gentle, and do not quarrel. They have fragrant plants. They have a flowering-plant which produces blossoms in the morning that die in the evening.
The Chinese account calls this vegetable production the Hwa plant, and as Hwa stands for "glory" (see Williams' Chinese dict.) it is apparent that the "Morning Glory" is referred to.
Botanist Wood says: "This glorious plant is a native of Tropical America and now universally cultivated. It is also nearly naturalized with us." (in the United States.)
"The flowers are ephemeral. Beginning to open soon after midnight, they greet the Sun at his rising, arrayed in all their glory" (Hwa) "and before he reaches the meridian, fold their robes and perish. But their work is done, and their successors, already in bud, will renew the gorgeous display the following morning."—P. 182.
Such a flower might be held to symbolize the fleeting glory of the generations which had lived and died in Central America. It still climbs about the temples of the Sun, saluting its divinity with a smile, and then falling prostrate among the desolate and forsaken altars. It may often be seen twining its arms around the monuments of a buried Past, or pressing its lips to the dust of the vanished race it so speedily follows.
It lives but a day, says the American botanist.
It lives but a day, says the Shan Hai King.
Surely the works in Arizona are worthy of the exiled Toltecs.
One of the ancient stone structures, on a northern feeder of the Gila, is so strong, commodious, and so impregnably planted that by universal consent it is called a Castle. And because the Indian tribes persist in ascribing its construction to Mu or Mo-te it is known as "Montezuma's Castle." The Ethnological Bureau has interested itself in the preservation of this impressive work of the so-called Cliff-dwellers, and our Government has taken charge of it as a "National Monument." And Ari-zona is named in honor of the Ari or "Maiden"—the legendary Queen of the Pimo zona or Pimo valley. The mother referred to in the ancient Chinese record is thus remembered in the title of a Yankee sister State.