98 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



has poured upon the world, and the field of American 

 antiquities has been opened. 



The ignorance, carelessness, and indifference of the 

 inhabitants of Spanish America on this subject are mat- 

 ter of wonder. In our own country, the opening of for- 

 ests and the discovery of tumuli or mounds and fortifi- 

 cations, extending in ranges from the lakes through the 

 valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi, mummies in a cave 

 in Kentucky, the inscription on the rock at Dighton, 

 supposed to be in PhcEnician characters, and the ruins 

 of walls and a great city in Arkansas and Wisconsin 

 Territory, had suggested wild and wandering ideas in 

 regard to the first peopling of this country, and the 

 strong belief that powerful and populous nations had 

 occupied it and had passed away, whose histories are 

 entirely unknown. The same evidences continue in 

 Texas, and in Mexico they assume a still more definite 

 form. 



The first new light thrown upon this subject as re- 

 gards Mexico was by the great Humboldt, who visited 

 that country at a time when, by the jealous policy of 

 the government, it was almost as much closed against 

 strangers as China is now. No man could have better 

 deserved such fortune. At that time the monuments 

 of the country were not a leading object of research ; 

 but Humboldt collected from various sources informa- 

 tion and drawings, particularly of Mitla, or the Vale of 

 the Dead; Xoxichalco, a mountain hewed down and 

 terraced, and called the Hill of Flowers ; and the great 

 pyramid or Temple of Cholula he visited himself, of 

 all which his own eloquent account is within reach of 

 the reader. Unfortunately, of the great cities beyond 

 the Vale of Mexico, buried in forests, ruined, desolate, 

 and without a name, Humboldt never heard, or, at least, 



