18 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
So important are these passages in the present connection that they have 
been given in full in Appendix V. 
There seems to have been no doubt in the minds of either Fuentes y 
Guzman or his copyist Juarros that the Copan conquered by Hernando de 
Chaves in 1530 and the group of ruins described as early as 1576 under this 
name by Garcia de Palacio were one and the same place. This conclusion, 
however, has been seriously challenged by practically all modern students, 
and, as will appear later, it now seems safe to discard it altogether. The 
Copan of the two accounts never could have been the same place. 
Fuentes y Guzman’s description of the ruins is so fanciful, indeed, as to 
raise a question as to whether or not he ever saw them himself.’ Some of 
his statements are so extraordinary, so exaggerated that, taking them at 
their face value, he stands guilty either of extreme gullibility or of gross 
misrepresentation. His description, however, although far less accurate 
than the Garcia de Palacio account of the preceding century (1576), is 
interesting, and it is important because of its early date (1689). Since the 
original has never been completely published, a translation of it is given in 
Appendix V. Juarros, in his history of Guatemala, published in 1808,’ 
adds nothing new to Fuentes y Guzman’s description of the ruins.’ In fact, 
he follows the latter so closely that one suspects that he, too, never visited 
the site. Juarros’s account appears to have been extensively copied by 
later writers, however, and is largely responsible for the general dissemina- 
tion of Fuentes y Guzman’s exaggerations or misstatements. 
After Garcia de Palacio’s visit in 1576 there is a long period—more than 
two and a half centuries—before the next description of the ruins by an eye- 
witness. In April 1834, Colonel Juan Galindo, acting under a commission 
from the government of Central America,‘ visited Copan and made a study 
of the site. Galindo was an army officer and had been commandant at 
Flores in the Department of Peten, where he had made extensive explora- 
tions. He would seem to have had rather more than average experience in 
such matters, having prior to his visit to Copan already undertaken similar 
investigations at Palenque and Utatlan (Santa Cruz Quiché). He spent sev- 
eral months at Copan, making plans, views, and copies of the inscriptions and 
figures, and in writing a long report on the ruins and their history, which he 
says “the government of Central America intends publishing.’’> This report, 
however, appears never to have been published; and indeed has only very 
recently come to light in Mr. William Gates’s large collection of Maya 
manuscripts at Point Loma, California. (See Appendix XI.) A summary 
1Maudslay (1886, p. 572) also expresses the belief that Fuentes y Guzman did not visit the ruins himself, but 
wrote only from hearsay. 
*Compendio de la Historia de la Ciudad de Guatemala, by Senor Don Domingo Juarros, Guatemala, 1808. 
An English translation of this appeared in 1823 under the title 4 Statistical and Commercial History of the 
Kingdom of Guatemala, London, 1823; and a second Spanish edition in Guatemala in 1857. 
3Juarros, 1808, tom. I, pp. 43, 44. 
4At this time, the five Central American Republics were united under one government: the United States of 
Central America (1823-1840). 
5Galindo, 18354, p. 545. 
