XI.] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 415 



assimilated in speech and usages to the natives. The very streets 



are still indicated by the carved images of the hawk, 



flamingo, or other tutelar deities, while the houses to T d h a e y Mayas 



of the suburbs continue to be built in the old Maya 



style, two or three feet above the street level, with a walled porch 



and stone bench running round the enclosure. 



One reason for this remarkable contrast may be that the 

 Nahua culture, as above seen, was to a great extent borrowed 

 in relatively recent times, whereas the Maya civilization is now 

 shown to date from the epoch of the Tolan and Cholulan 

 pyramid-builders. Hence the former yielded to the first shock, 

 while the latter persists to such an extent that Yucatan, from the 

 ethnical standpoint, may still be called Mayapan, as in the days of 

 the great Xibalba confederacy, whose splendour is attested by the 

 astonishing monuments of Palenque, Copan, Chichen-Itza, Uxmal, 

 and the not yet fully described ruins of Quiriqua, Lake Itzal, and 

 other places in Guatemala, Honduras, and Salvador. Despite 

 their more gentle disposition, as expressed in the softer and almost 

 feminine lines of their features, the Mayas held out more valiantly 

 than the Aztecs against the Spaniards, and a section of the nation 

 occupying a strip of territory between Yucatan and British Hon- 

 duras, still maintains its independence. The " barbarians," as 

 the inhabitants of this district are called, would appear to be 

 scarcely less civilised than their neighbours, although they have 

 forgotten the teachings of the padres, and transformed the Catholic 

 churches to wayside inns. Were Yucatan by any political convul- 

 sion detached from the central government, all its inhabitants, 

 together with most of those south of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 

 would probably in a few generations revert under modified con- 

 ditions to the old Maya culture. Even as it is the descendants 

 of the Spaniards have to a great extent forgotten their mother- 

 tongue, and Maya- Quiche dialects are almost everywhere current 

 except in the Campeachy district. Those also who call themselves 

 Catholics preserve and practise many of the old rites. After 

 burial the track from the grave to the house is carefully chalked, 

 so that the soul of the departed may know the way back when 

 the time comes to enter the body of some new-born babe. The 

 descendants of the national astrologers everywhere pursue their 



