78 BUREAU OF AMERlCAlSr ETHNOLOGY [bull.28 



under the direction of the Peabody Museum in Boston, and in Alta Vera 

 Paz by the private enterprise of Mr Erwin P. Dieseldorff and Dr Karl 

 Sapper. 



1 have nothing to report here concerning results achieved by the 

 Americans in Copan, and full reports concerning them have not been 

 made known. But the Royal Museum, on the contrary, has been able 

 satisfactorily to open communications with Messrs Dieseldortf and 

 Sapper and has received rich material from ])oth gentlemen, especially 

 abundant from the latter. Mr Dieseldorff has himself begun to report 

 the results of his excavations in the Transactions of the Berlin Society 

 for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Archeology." Doctor Sapper has 

 presented to the Royal Museum his share of the results of the excava- 

 tions undertaken in cooperation with Mr Dieseldortf and what he has 

 been able to collect on his geologic expeditions in Guatemala. In 

 addition to the reports of this traveler, which form the second article 

 of this number, I will discuss some important specimens of this collec- 

 tion and compare them with such material as the Royal Museum already 

 possesses in earlier collections from the same region. 



Beginning in the north, we have before us in the frontier tracts 

 near Yucatan and the mountainous regions of Alta Vera Paz the 

 interesting territory to whose peoples, in pre-Spanish times, an 

 extended maritime intercourse was unknown, which then formed 

 the great highroad of traffic and travel, and which also had doubtless 

 been the ancient highway of migratory nations. Now, however, this 

 region is largely waste and desolate, uninhabited, and covered with 

 primeval forests. Concerning the ancient conditions of this territory, 

 which are obscure in many respects, I wish to make some introductory 

 observations. 



Cortes passed through this territory in his famous expedition to 

 Honduras in 1525.*^ He found his way as far as the Usumacinta with 

 the help of charts which the aborigines of Coatzacualco had given him. 

 On the other side of the Usumacinta he came to a territory called 

 Acalan, whose inhabitants on one side carried on an uninterrupted 

 traffic by boat with Tabasco and Xicalango and on the other side had 

 their factories on the Golfo Dulce, on the boundaries of Honduras. 

 There Cortes received more reliable news of the Spaniards settled on 

 the Golfo Dulce, to see whom he had undertaken his expedition. On 

 a piece of cloth the}' painted for him all the rivers, lakes, and swamp.s 

 he would have to cross on his overland journey to the Golfo Dulce. 

 In a similar wa}^ Canek, the cacique of Peten, the island city of the 

 Lagoon of Itza, proved to be accurately informed. He, too, had his 



aZeitsehrift fiir Ethnologic, 1893, v. 25, pp. 374 and 548; same journal, 1894, v. 26, pp. 372 and 676. 



& Cortes has himself given a description of this expedition in his fifth letter. Bernal Diaz, who took 

 part in this expedition and describes it very thoroughly, differs from Cortes in some details, especially 

 in a certain place in the order of events. Still, Cortes is here the more authentic source, for he wrote 

 much earlier and had naturally much better opportunity to collect reliable information. 



