FEW travelers have found more inducements in past popularity, to continue their wanderings over the world, than Mr. Stephens. His earlier works on some parts of the eastern continent, although hasty and inaccurate, were so full of good nature and of entertainment, that the reader closed them with a feeling of personal friendship for the author. In his Central America, he attempted somewhat higher things. His preparation, indeed, for investigating the ruins of that country, was apparently but small; his accuracy in description, we sus pect, was not equal to that of ordinary travelers. Still his enthusiastic ardor in exploring the architectural remains of Copan and Palenque, amid the greatest discomforts; his narrative of a dangerous journey through a country in a state of anarchy and revolution, together with his perpetual good nature, and disposition to make the least of all annoyances and hardships;-these valuable qualities of a traveler again ensured him success with his read ers; while the really valuable results of his journey raised his work above the level of those which are written for mere amusement.

The work before us, is to be regarded as a continuation of Mr. Stephens' travels in Central America, which were broken off soon after he reached Yucatan, by the illness of the accomplished artist who was his companion. On their return to Yucatan, the Spanish gentlemen, with whom they had become acquainted during their first visit, did all in their power to promote their objects. Letters of recommendation, and fa

vorable notices in the newspaper at the capital, gave them every encouragement at the outset of their enterprise. When they reached the interior, the country houses, and the laborers on the farms, were put at their disposal. The curates assist. ed them with information and advice, and became their most hospitable entertainers. And though few felt much curiosity concerning Indian ruins, and the majority, perhaps, wondered that men could come so far on such a business; still every kind attention was paid to them, except that of assisting them in their explorations. That would be too much labor to be ex pected of the indolent Spaniards of Yucatan.

But with all this, the embarrassments they met with, were little less than those of their tour in Central America. The rainy season was of unusual length, and instead of ending soon after they reached their field, hung on until their frames felt its worst effects, in fever and ague. When they came to a ruin it was overgrown with large trees, to say nothing of bushes, which must be felled, for the sake of the drawings. No surveyor of the route for a railroad at the west, or layer out of cities in the woods, ever had more to do, than our travelers; and certainly none ever had more inef ficient helpers, than an ignorant Maya Indian. Among their troubles, not the smallest arose from the smallest cause. From the bushes which they brushed by, multitudes of garrapatas or wood-ticks dropped upon them, and penetrating the skin, produced such torment, that, between the fever and ague and these little animals, one wonders how they came away alive, and admires their resolution in not coming away re infecta.

The reader is pleased to find that such toils were rewarded by the discovery of a great number of remains. In his former tour, Mr. Stephens went over ground that had been visited before. Palenque had been explored; Copan had at least been known; but in Yucatan a multitude of places lay buried in the woods, wholly unknown to foreigners, and a large part of them unvisited by the Spanish inhabitants of the country. It was the high excitement of continual discovery, and the feeling of success, that enabled our travelers to fight with such good courage, against sickness and a host of discomforts; had they failed of their end, they might have returned with ruined health, or fallen victims to the climate. But the high spirits in which Mr. Stephens writes, prove that he at least is none the worse for the ague and the ticks; we doubt not that he will be soon longing again to break away from the dull life of New York, and penetrate into some new, unexplored field of discovery. May success attend him, wherever he goes, and may Mr. Catherwood be with him, to measure distances, and draw plans, and keep him down to the actual dimensions of things.

The features of the country described in these volumes, are rather monotonous; and the ruins themselves are sufficiently like one another, to diminish our interest in the latter part of the work. He who has read the description of Uxmal, need go no farther, if he wishes only to form a general notion of the ruined structures. Nor is there much of interest in the present degraded native race, who, having lost their old traditions and distinct ive character, have sunk to the condition of mere serfs, however they may be dignified with the name of free citizens of Yucatan. With such materials before him, it might be feared that Mr. Stephens would fall below his past works, and, what

would no doubt be very grievous to him, would write a dull book; but the case is quite otherwise. He has succeeded better, in some respects, than in either of his foregoing attempts. His zeal and cheerfulness carry you along with him, without effort on your part; he seems more accurate and scrupulous in details, than he has been; and he finds a thousand things in the present manners and condition of the Yucatanese to speak of, when the old ruins are in danger of becoming an old story. According to the wish with which he closes the work, he may be assured "that there is nothing in these pages to disturb" the pleasant feeling that has existed between him and the reader.

We can not, therefore, be very severe towards his faults, yet there is one which we ought to mention, because it affects the value, we mean the permanent value of his work. He has, we think, confined his attention too exclusively to architectural remains; and the question has too exclusive a place in his researches, whether the ancestors of the Indians now existing, or some other race, constructed the ruins which he has brought to light. The connection of the native American races, with those of the rest of the world, and their relationship to each other, if ever to be made out, must be ascertained by careful study of the usages, civil and religious, and the language of each tribe. It would be, perhaps, unreasonable to expect Mr. Stephens, so soon after his journey, and while as yet he is apparently not very deep in the subject of American antiquities, to talk with authority upon these topics. But it would have greatly added to the value of his work, if he had given an abstract of all that is known in regard to the Maya nation. At present we know of no book from which any thing, besides scattered particulars, can be gleaned, in the important matter of their religion; and the meager no

tices in the Mithridates, concerning their language, together with what Mr. Norman has extracted in his volume from a Spanish Grammar, are nearly all the materials within our reach, by which we can judge of that principal element in a nation's existence. Surely if he would gratify his own curiosity, and assist in solving a problem, about which he expresses the strongest interest, Mr. Stephens ought to have attended more to these points. And if there were no solution of the problem, still the materials collected for such a purpose, would be of great value. A writer who should do so, would reconstruct, as far as now can be done, the fallen edifice of a nation's life; he would give it shape and breath before our eyes; and whether he could assign it its place on the map of national affinities or not, what he had done would never lose its interest as a part of the history of man.

Mr. Stephens' steps were direct ed in the first place towards Uxmal, which he had visited in his previous tour, but which he was soon forced to leave on account of the illness of his traveling companion. This place, the most remarkable and easiest of exploration among all the ruins, with one exception, had been before visited and described by Waldeck; but it would appear that his researches and drawings did not render future examination unneces sary. Having taken up their abode in one of the chambers of the ruins, the travelers use the troop of Indians residing on the hacienda, to clear away the brushwood which, even since their previous visit, had grown with surprising rankness, and sit down to their work, as to the siege of some fortress; Mr. Stephens occasionally making visits to neighboring places, and leaving Mr. Catherwood with his instruments, in possession of the ground. We will let the buildings at Uxmal serve as specimens of the Maya architecture,

and give some details in regard to them, abridged from the work before us.

The building first examined, and called the house of the governor, rests on three terraces, whose united height is forty-two feet; the lowest presents a front of five hun dred and seventy-five feet, and is only fifteen feet broad. The next has a length of five hundred and forty-five feet, and a breadth of two hundred and fifty; and the third, on which the building stands, is three hundred and sixty by thirty feet. These platforms are supported by stone walls, and according to Mr. Stephens the whole structure rises artificially from the plain. That is the case with the great pyramid of Cholula in Mexico, which is over a quarter of a mile long, and one hundred and seventy feet high, but can not compare in elegance of material with the structures of Yucatan, being composed of unbaked bricks alternating with layers of clay.* It is uncertain whether the platforms in Yucatan are in general made by hand, or whether advantage is taken of a rising ground. On one occasion Mr. Stephens, having penetrated into what the natives considered a very remarkable cave, found it to be a series of passages and chambers in one of these mounds formed by art. The Indians of Cholula assured Humboldt that the inside of that pyramid was hollow, and at one time concealed a number of their warriors, who lay in wait for the Spaniards. But the silence of historians, and the nature of the materials, induce that distinguished traveler to consider this assertion of the Indians as improbable; although he allows that the pyramid contains cavities of some size. From the second terrace to the third there is no ascent except on the south side and by an inclined plane; which

* Humboldt's Researches, I, 90.

makes it necessary for one who has ascended the second in front, that is on the east, to travel half the length of the building and back again, before arriving at the great stair-case of the third terrace, by which the building is finally reached. This mode of gaining the summit, somewhat resembles that which was adopted in the largest temple of the city of Mexico. The stairs there began at the side of the building, and were parallel with one another. After ascending one story, it was necessary to go around the whole temple before coming to the next stair-case, and in this way the top was reached by a journey of more than a mile.*

The edifice surmounting these platforms, consists of a double row of narrow chambers, of which every rear one is connected by a door with one in front of it. The palace, for so it deserves to be called, is three hundred and twenty-two feet long, and thirty-nine feet wide. The roof is flat. The chambers, and indeed all those which were seen in Yucatan, are constructed on a principle which shows a want of knowledge of the arch. The stones of the side walls are laid horizontally, and project inwardly as they ascend. Be fore the angle is completed by their contact, a roof of stones is laid flat upon them, although in some few instances, the sides meet.

In Yuca

tan, the inside of these triangular arches, if they may be so called, is always made smooth by cutting off the edges of the projecting stones, and usually a slight curve is given to the sides. This mode of building, readily accounts, as one of the travelers remarks in an appendix, "for the extreme narrowness of the rooms in all the buildings, the widest not exceeding twenty feet, and the width more frequently being only from six to ten feet."

That which strikes the eye on

* Clavigero, I, 262.

examining these, and indeed all the ancient structures of Yucatan, is the extreme richness of the ornaments upon their façades. Usually a number of courses of plain squared stones rise to the height of the doors, and above the doors is found a heavy and elaborately adorned cornice. To judge of the style of the decorations upon these cornices, it is necessary to inspect Mr. Catherwood's drawings; and even on them the details are imperfectly exhibited. Justice can be done to these minute carvings only by larg er engravings, such as will be published hereafter by our travelers, if the public will encourage the undertaking. It is enough here to say, that many of the ornaments in themselves considered are very elegant; that certain projecting stones, of a singu. lar form, and unknown use, compared by Waldeck to the trunks of elephants, are found every where throughout the ruins; that bas-reliefs of serpents, some of them cov. ered with feathers, are of frequent occurrence, and remind one of the close connection of those odious animals with the worship of the Mexicans; and that here and there hieroglyphics meet the eye. The carefulness of detail in the workmanship of most of the structures in Yucatan, is proof, perhaps, that they had the same fondness which the Mexicans exhibited for ornaments upon the person; and the few representations of the human body which were seen argued the same thing, being almost buried in feathers. But we can not infer from it a great degree of civilization, since savage tribes sometimes reach a considerable degree of elegance in the figures with which they tattoo their skins. The style of a remarkable building at Mitla, in the state of Oaxaca, where the Zapotecs lived, is of the same description.*

The use to which this building

Humboldt, u. s. II, 153.

was applied can not now be known. If it was a religious structure, as is not improbable, the numerous apart ments were intended perhaps for one of those fraternities of priests or monks, which are known to have swarmed in Mexico, as in the countries where Buddhism prevails. On the higher terrace Mr. Stephens discovered by digging into the ground an image in stone, which represents two lynxes, and may have been an accompaniment of some idol. It was probably buried by the Spaniards, in order to remove from the sight of the Indians objects fitted to remind them of their old superstition. Not far off from it was found on the surface a stone which from its shape appeared to be a symbol, of frequent occurrence on the east. ern continent, but which, as Humboldt asserts, had not when he wrote (1813)* been traced in Mexico. If this stone really has the meaning which is given to it, and similar ones were found repeatedly afterwards, it will afford a more striking proof than most which have been adduced of the common origin of the religious rites upon both continents.

Concerning another building at Uxmal, now quite in ruins, certain historical notices are preserved. It is called the house of the dwarf, or of the diviner, and consists of a substructure two hundred and thirtyfive feet long and one hundred and fifty-five wide, which rises in nearly a pyramidal form to the height of eighty-eight feet, and has upon its top a long narrow building in three compartments, much ruined, but presenting on its front the most elegant ornaments to be seen in Uxmal. Mr. Stephens thinks that a stair-case, supported on a triangular arch, such as he afterwards found still remaining in another ruined city, led up the pyramid on one side to certain chambers below

the main building just spoken of. Up the eastern front ascends a very steep and narrow stair-case, of which Cogolludo the historian of Yucatan makes mention. He is speaking of the sacrifices performed at the prin cipal teocalli,* or temple of Uxmal, which circumstances point out to be this building. "The high priest," says he, as translated by Mr. Stephens, "had in his hand a large, broad and sharp knife, made of flint. Another priest carried a wooden collar, wrought like a snake. The persons to be sacrificed were con ducted, one by one, up the steps, stark naked, and as soon as laid on the stone, had the collar put upon their necks, and the four priests took hold of the hands and feet. Then the high priest, with wonderful dexterity ripped up the breast, tore out the heart, reeking, with his hands, and showed it to the sun, offering him the heart and steam which came from it. Then he turned to the idol and threw it in his face, which done he kicked the body down the steps, and it never stopped because they were very up. right. One who had been a priest, and had been converted, said that when they tore out the heart of the wretched person sacrificed, it did beat so strongly that he took it up from the ground three or four times till it cooled by degrees, and then he threw the body still moving down the steps."

This account of human sacrifices in Yucatan is the more remarkable, because that horrid custom had not long been established in Mexico. The Toltecs, it is said, who preceded the Aztecs in that country, and to whom most of the institutions which the Spaniards found among the Aztecs are ascribed, used unbloody offerings of fruits and flowers, of gums and seeds. The Az

* A Mexican word used in speaking of these temples built on pyramids, and derived from teotl, god, (teo being the root, and tl a termination,) and calli, house.