TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 175 



covered with cocoa-palms, and contains more tlian 2000 inliabitants, who are of 

 the same race as the Maldives, and of the Mohammedan religion. 



On the Ruined Cities of Central America. By Captain L. Brine, R.N. 



The author stated that it was not imtil the year 1750 (more than 200 years 

 after the Spanish conquest) that the existence of ruined cities and temples lying 

 hidden in the jungles and forests of Central America was revealed to the know- 

 ledge of the Spanish Government. A small party of Spaniards, travelling in the 

 State of Chiapas, happened to diverge from the usual track leading from the 

 southern limit of the Gulf of Mexico to the Mexican Cordilleras, and accidentally 

 discovered in the dense forest remains of stone buildings — palaces and temples — 

 with other evidences of a past and forgotten civilization of. a very high order. 

 These ruins were those of Palenque. Some years subsequently to this discovery, 

 the King of Spain ordered an official survey to be made, and this survey was made 

 in 1787 under the direction of Captain del Rio. Later official surveys were also 

 made in 1806 and 1807 ; but these, with the usual secrecy' of the Spanish con- 

 querors, were not generally made public, and thus it happened that only as recently 

 as the year 1822, at the revolution of Mexico, did the existence of these ruins first 

 become known in Europe. Since then other hidden cities or temples had been 

 discovered — Copan, in the State of Honduras ; Ocosingo, on the frontiers of Gua- 

 temala ; and several in Yucatan, of which Uxmal and Chichen-Itza are the most 

 famous. It was very remarkable that all these ruins, evidently the work of one 



f (articular and highly civilized race of Indians, should only be found in a very 

 imited area. None exist in South America, and none in that part of the conti- 

 nent commonly distinguished as North America ; they aU lie within the Tropics, 

 between the 14th and 22nd parallels of north latitude, and were chiefly adjacent 

 to the Mexican and Honduras Gulfs, or in the plains on the west of the Cordil- 

 leras of Central America. On the eastern or Pacific slopes and plateaux, within 

 the same parallels, are also remains of ancient fortifications and sacrificial altars, 

 but these are of a less elaborate type, and are allied to the Aztecan structures of 

 Mexico. The author gave an account of a journey made by him across the con- 

 tinent in the spring of last year, from the Pacific, through Guatemala, to the 

 Atlantic; he examined in detail the mixed populations and conditions of the 

 countries between the Cordilleras and the Pacific, the central plateaux, with their 

 aboriginal Indian races and ruins, the region (almost entirely unknown) inhabited 

 by those unbaptized Indians called the Candones, near which lie the ruins of 

 Ocosingo and Palenque ; he concluded the journey by traversing Yucatan, visiting 

 the strange ruins with which the country abounds, and emerging on the northern 

 coast of the Peninsula at Sisal. 



The Interior of Greenland. By Dr. Robert Brown. 



After reviewing the old ideas of the nature of the interior. Dr. Brown spoke at 

 length of the views which his own studies and those of others had led him to. 

 Various more or less successful attempts had been made to penetrate into the 

 interior, viz. by Dalager, Kielssen, RinK, Hayes, Rae, Nordenskjold and Bei'g- 

 gren, various Danish officers and Eskimo on hunting trips, &c., and one in which, 

 •with his companions MM. E. Whymper, A. P. Tegner, C. E. Olsen, J. Fleischer, and 

 an Eskimo, he had shared in. The result of all these expeditions showed that the 

 interior is one huge mer de f/lace, of which the outlets and overflow are the com- 

 paratively small glaciers on the coast, though in reality, compared with the glacier- 

 system of the Alps, they are of gigantic size. The outskirtiug land is to all 

 intents and purposes merely a circlet of islands of greater or less extent. There 

 are in all probability no mountains in the interior, only a high plateau from which 

 the unbroken ice is shed on either side to the east and west, the greatest slope 

 being towards the west. This " inland ice " was increasing, as necessarily it must, 

 and would most likely eventually overlie the country as it once had in former 

 periods of the earth's history. He considered that Greenland might be crossed 



