172 DISCOVERIES OF STEPHENS, CATHERWOOD, NORMAN, ETC. 



that in these States travellers have found the most remarkable re- 

 mains of an advanced ancient civilization hitherto discovered on 

 our continent. What has existed may exist again under the be- 

 nignant influence of modern progress; nor is it improbable that as 

 human interests direct the attention of maritime or emigrating na- 

 tions towards the central portions of the western continent, Yucatan 

 and Chiapas may again become the seat of a population even larger 

 than that which thronged it during the palmy days anterior to the 

 Spanish conquest. 



Since the year 1840 three important works have been published 

 in this country relative to these ancient remains of towns, temples, 

 cities, idols and monuments. Two of these are due to the pen and 

 pencil of Mr. John L. Stephens and Mr. Catherwood, while the 

 other and slighter production is the result of a hasty visit paid to 

 Yucatan by Mr. B. M. Norman. These three publications, plenti- 

 fully illustrated by accurate engravings of the ruins and remains, 

 have been so widely disseminated throughout Europe and America 

 that readers are already familiar with them. In the "long, irregular 

 and devious route" pursued by Stephens and Catherwood, they 

 "discovered the crumbling remains of fifty-four ancient cities, most 

 of them but a short distance apart, though, from the great change 

 that has taken place in the country, and the breaking up of the old 

 roads, having no direct communication with each other. With but 

 few exceptions, all were lost, buried and unknown, never before 

 visited by a stranger, and some of them, perhaps, never looked upon 

 by the eyes of a white man." Leaving Guatemala, the travellers 

 encountered, in Chiapas, remarkable remains at Ocozingo and Pa- 

 lenque; and passing thence into Yucatan, in their second journey 

 to those central regions, they explored and described the architec- 

 tural and monumental relics at Maxcanu, Uxmal, Sacbey, Xampon, 

 Sanacte, Chunhuhu, Labpahk, Iturbide, Mayapan, San Francisco, 

 Ticul, Nochacab, Xoch, Kabah, Sabatsche, Labna, Kenick, Izamal, 

 Saccacal, Tekax, Akil, Mani, Macoba, Becanchen, Peto, Chichen, 

 in the interior ; and at Tuloom, Tancar, and in the Island of Cozu- 

 mel on the eastern coast. 



The simple catalogue of these names, indicating the sites of an- 

 cient civilization in the midst of what is at present almost an unex- 

 plored wilderness and covering so wide a field of observation, will 

 satisfy the reader that it is impossible to condense a satisfactory re- 

 view of these architectural remains within the space that we are 

 enabled to appropriate to antiquarian researches. The ruins of Pa 

 lenque in Chiapas, and of Uxmal and Chichen in Yucatan, are, 



