448 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



turies of servitude, and toiling daily for a scanty sub- 

 sistence, are alike ignorant and indifferent concerning 

 the history of their ancestors, and the great cities ly- 

 ing in ruins under their eyes. And strange or not, 

 no argument can be drawn from it, for this ignorance 

 is not confined to ruined cities or to events before 

 the conquest. It is my belief, that among the w^hole 

 mass of w^hat are called Christianized Indians, there 

 is not at this day one solitary tradition which can 

 shed a ray of light upon any event in their history that 

 occurred one hundred and fifty years from the pres- 

 ent time ; in fact, I believe it would be almost im- 

 possible to procure any information of any kind 

 whatever beyond the memory of the oldest living In- 

 dian. 



Besides, the w^ant of traditionary knowledge is not 

 peculiar to these American ruins. Two thousand 

 years ago the Pyramids towered on the borders of 

 the African Desert without any certain tradition of 

 the time w^hen they were founded ; and so long back 

 as the first century of the Christian era, Pliny cites 

 various older authors who disagreed concerning the 

 persons who built them, and even concerning the 

 use and object for which they were erected. No 

 traditions hang round the ruins of Greece and Rome ; 

 the temples of Psestum, lost until within the last half 

 century, have no traditions to identify their build- 

 ers ; the " holy city" has only weak inventions of 

 modern monks. But for written records, Egyptian, 

 Grecian, and Roman remains would be as myste- 



