Could Joseph Smith have been aware of this legend in 1820?
The second age, the suri of air, terminated with a great hurricane which swept away trees, rocks, houses, and people, although many men and women escaped, chiefly such as took refuge in caves which the hurricane could not reach. After several days the survivors came out to find a multitude of apes living in the land; and all this time they were in darkness, seeing neither the sun nor moon. The next event recorded, although Yeytia makes it precede the hurricane, is the stopping of the sun for a whole day in his course, as at the command of Joshua in the mythology of the Old World. "When the mosquito, however, saw the sun thus suspended and pensive, he addressed him saying, Lord of the world, why art thou thus motionless, and doest not thy duty as is commanded thee ? Dost thou wish to destroy the world as is thy wont ? Then seeing that he was yet silent and made no response, the insect went up and stung him in the leg, whereupon he, feeling himself stung, started anew on his accustomed coarse." Next occurred an earthquake which swallowed up and destroyed all the Quinames, or giants at least all those who lived in the coast regions together with many of the Toltecs and of their neighbors the Chichimecs. After the destruction of these Philistines, " being at peace with all this new world, all the wise Toltecs, both the astrologers and those of other arts, assembled in Huehue TJapallan, the chief city of their dominion, where they treated of many things, the calamities they had suffered and the movements of the heavens since the creation of the world, and of many other things, which on account of their histories having been burned, have not been ascertained further than what has been written here, among which they added the bissextile to regulate the solar vear with the equinox, and many other curiosities as will be seen in their tables and arrangement of years, months, weeks, days, signs, and planets as they understood them." One hundred and sixteen years after this regulation or invention of the Toltec calendar, "the sun and moon were eclipsed, the earth shook, and the rocks were rent asunder, and many other things and signs happened, though there was no loss of life. This was in the year Ce Calli, which, the chronology being reduced to our systems, proves to be the same date when Christ our Lord suffered" (33 A.D.)
http://www.archive.org/stream/nativeraces05bancrich/nativeraces05bancrich_djvu.txt
The similarity between this and the events recorded in 3 Nephi seems like quite a coincidence unless Joseph could have read of this in some English book that was circulating around 1830.
Does anyone know if this information was available?