[898] Brasseur, Bibl. Mex.-Guat., p. 152.
[899] Prescott, i. 24. Harrisse, Bib. Am. Vet., calls Veytia’s the best history of the ancient period yet (1866) written.
[900] A second ed. (Mexico, 1832) was augmented with notes and a life of the author, by Carlos Maria de Bustamante; Field, Ind. Bibliog., no. 909; Brasseur’s Bibl. Mex.-Guat., p. 68.
[901] Prescott, i. 133. Gama and others collected another class of hieroglyphics, of less importance, but still interesting as illustrating legal and administrative processes used in later times, in the relations of the Spaniards with the natives; and still others embracing Christian prayers, catechisms, etc., employed by the missionaries in the religious instruction (Aubin, Notice, etc., 21). Humboldt (vol. xiii., pl. p. 141) gives “a lawsuit in hieroglyphics.”
There was published (100 copies) at Madrid, in 1878, Pintura del Gobernador, Alcaldes y Regidores de México, Codice en geroglíficos Méxicanos y en lengua Castellana y Azteca, Existente en la Biblioteca del Excmo Señor Duque de Osuna,—a legal record of the later Spanish courts affecting the natives.
[902] Humboldt describes these collections which he knew at the beginning of the century, speaking of José Antonio Pichardo’s as the finest.
[903] Notice sur une collection d’antiquités Mexicaines, being an extract from a Mémoire sur la peinture didactique et l’Écriture figurative des Anciens Mexicains (Paris, 1851; again, 1859-1861). Cf. papers in Revue Américaine et Orientale, 1st ser., iii., iv., and v. Aubin says that Humboldt found that part of the Boturini collection which had been given over to the Mexican archivists diminished by seven eighths. He also shows how Ternaux-Compans (Crauatés Horribles, p. 275-289), Rafael Isidro Gondra (in Veytia, Hist. Ant. de Mex., 1836, i. 49), and Bustamante have related the long contentions over the disposition of these relics, and how the Academy of History at Madrid had even secured the suppression of a similar academy among the antiquaries in Mexico, which had been formed to develop the study of their antiquities. It was as a sort of peace-offering that the Spanish king now caused Veytia to be empowered to proceed with the work which Boturini had begun. This allayed the irritation for a while, but on Veytia’s death (1769) it broke out again, when Gama was given possession of the collection, which he further increased. It was at Gama’s death sold at auction, when Humboldt bought the specimens which are now in Berlin, and Waldeck secured others which he took to Europe. It was from Waldeck that Aubin acquired the Boturini part of his collection. The rest of the collection remained in Mexico, and in the main makes a part at present of the Museo Nacional. But Aubin is a doubtful witness.
Aubin says that he now proposed to refashion the Boturini collection by copies where he could not procure the originals; to add others, embracing whatever he could still find in the hands of the native population, and what had been collected by Veytia, Gama, and Pichardo. In 1851, when he wrote, Aubin had given twenty years to this task, and with what results the list of his MSS., which he appends to the account we have quoted, will show.
These include in the native tongue:—
a. History of Mexico from a.d. 1064 to 1521, in fragments, from Tezozomoc and from Alonso Franco, annotated by Domingo Chimalpain (a copy).