Moreover, it is entirely
undetermined whether it should be read from the first to the last page,
or _vice versa_, whether from right to left or from left to right, from
bottom to top or from top to bottom, around the edges of the page toward
the centre, or each line in the opposite direction from the preceding
one. There are good authorities for all these methods,[12-1] and they
may all be correct, for there is no evidence that any fixed rule had
been laid down in this respect.
Immense masses of such documents were stored in the imperial archives of
ancient Mexico. Torquemada asserts that five cities alone yielded to the
Spanish governor on one requisition no less than sixteen thousand
volumes or scrolls! Every leaf was destroyed. Indeed, so thorough and
wholesale was the destruction of these memorials now so precious in our
eyes that hardly enough remain to whet the wits of antiquaries. In the
libraries of Paris, Dresden, Pesth, and the Vatican are, however, a
sufficient number to make us despair of deciphering them had we for
comparison all which the Spaniards destroyed.
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