CHAPTER IX. 
IN THE OLDEN TIME. 
HE physical features of Central America are rich and 
JL varied; but the story of the races which have peo¬ 
pled it is tinged with a romance and clouded with a 
mystery which accord intimately with the cloud-capped 
summits, the impenetrable forests, and the earth-fires. 
Stories written in stone, whose authors no man knows, 
whose meaning none can read, carry us back beyond his¬ 
tory and beyond legend; and until patient study unravels 
the enigma, as it must in time, our vision of the aborigi¬ 
nes is illumined only by those legends which beautify 
and corrupt all history. We may treat all legendary lore 
as mythic if we are willing to forget that a myth is the 
creation of an advanced thought and civilization which 
we do not usually concede to the long-perished races who 
have preceded us; or we may simply accept what has 
been preserved for us, smile at its simplicity, wonder at 
its beauty, or puzzle our brains to connect and classify it 
with similar matter from other sources and of other 
times. In an uncontroversial spirit I would accept the 
slight glimpses of early human races which have lived 
upon this continent, and leave to others the task, agree¬ 
able to their tastes, of weighing, measuring, and analy¬ 
zing these stories of a simple people who can no longer 
speak for themselves. 
