280 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



force than it had ever possessed before, and that 

 was the utter impossibility of ascribing these ruins 

 to Egyptian builders. The magnificent tombs of 

 the kings at Thebes rose up before me. It was on 

 their tombs that the Egyptians lavished their skill, 

 industry, and wealth, and no people, brought up in 

 Egyptian schools, descended from Egyptians, or de- 

 riving their lessons from them, would ever have con- 

 structed in so conspicuous a place so rude a sepulchre. 

 Besides this, the fact of finding these bones in so 

 good a state of preservation, at a distance of only 

 three or four feet from the surface of the earth, com- 

 pletely destroys all idea of the extreme antiquity of 

 these buildings ; and again there was the universal 

 and unhesitating exclamation of the Indians, " They 

 are the bones of our kinsman." 



But whosesoever they were, little did the pious 

 friends who placed them there ever imagine the fate 

 to which they were destined. I had them carried 

 to the convent, thence to Uxmal, and thence I bore 

 them away forever from the bones of their kindred. 

 In their rough journeys on the backs of mules and 

 Indians they were so crumbled and broken that in 

 a court of law their ancient proprietor would not be 

 able to identify them, and they left me one night in 

 a pocket-handkerchief to be carried to Doctor S. G. 

 Morton of Philadelphia. 



Known by the research he has bestowed upon 

 the physical features of the aboriginal American 

 races, and particularly by his late work entitled " Cra- 



