INHABITANTS PROBABLY NOT EXTINCT. 457 



ed to them ; vigour and acuteness of intellect, knowl- 

 edge and learning, have never been expended upon 

 them. For centuries the hieroglyphics of Egypt were 

 inscrutable, and, though not perhaps in our day, I feel 

 persuaded that a key surer than that of the Rosetta stone 

 will be discovered. And if only three centuries have 

 elapsed since any one of these unknown cities was in- 

 habited, the race of the inhabitants is not extinct. Their 

 descendants are still in the land, scattered, perhaps, and 

 retired, like our own Indians, into wildernesses which 

 have never yet been penetrated by a white man, but 

 not lost ; living as their fathers did, erecting the same 

 buildings of " lime and stone," " with ornaments of 

 sculpture and plastered," " large courts," and "lofty 

 towers with high ranges of steps," and still .carving on 

 tablets of stone the same mysterious hieroglyphics; and 

 if, in consideration that I have not often indulged in 

 speculative conjecture, the reader will allow one flight, 

 I turn to that vast and unknown region, untraversed 

 by a single road, wherein fancy pictures that mysteri- 

 ous city seen from the topmost range of the Cordilleras, 

 of unconquered, unvisited, and unsought aboriginal in- 

 habitants. 



In conclusion, I am at a loss to determine which 

 would be the greatest enterprise, an attempt to reach 

 this mysterious city, to decipher the tablets of hiero- 

 glyphics, or to wade through the accumulated manu- 

 scripts of three centuries in the libraries of the convents. 



Vol. II.— 3 M 



