OF THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 69 



The Aztecs say they found in Mexico a people of ancient race 

 and high civilization called the Toltecs, who were fair^ robust and 

 bearded. This race they conquered, and like the barbarians who 

 overran Rome, they borrowed the arts and customs, and clothed 

 themselves in the civilization of the nation whom they had defeated. 



Leaving the Toltecs here for the present, we will turn to certain 

 propositions already advanced and generally conceded by Archae- 

 ologists, men of science, and researchers generally, viz : That the 

 early American races were a people advanced in architecture to an 

 heroic perfection, as evinced in the ruins left us of temples, walls, 

 palaces and pyramids — hundreds of the latter yet complete. 



That they possessed the finer arts of painting, engraving and 

 sculpture, as shown by their frescoes and carvings, ornate and 

 emblematical, on the walls of their palaces and temples. 



That they were workers in metallurgy, using copper, tin, iron, 

 gold and silver ; they also made beautiful wares in pottery and glass 

 many perfect specimens of which can be seen in the different 

 museums. 



That they must have had a systematized government, probably 

 despotic— as we shall later show^s indicated in their great public 

 works, particularly in Peru and Yucatan ; some of which can 

 scarcely be paralleled even in Europe. From among the number 

 we may enumerate :' roads two thousand miles long — that in the 

 words of Humboldt. " They were the most useful and stupendous 

 ever erected by man. Massive stone, and even suspension bridges 

 spanning streams and chasms ; aqueducts and reservoirs for 

 irrigation, some of which were three hundred miles long." 



That all the countries named must have been densely popu- 

 lated is self-evident from the vast number of ruined cities that strew 

 the land from the confines of Mexico to those of Peru. 



Norman, an explorer who visited the ruins of Central America 

 early in this century, concludes their builders must have had a 

 profound knowledge of geometry, as he had measured all details by 

 plumb and line, and found them to conform to each other with 

 perfect accuracy in all parts. 



Just here it may not be impertinent to our subject to refer in 

 detail to some of the greatest of the ruined cities and pyramids. 

 The same writer we have just quoted says, in referring to the ruins 



