Page:Enterprise and Adventure.djvu/284

256 Discoveries of this description are in the highest degree interesting, because they give evidence of the advanced state of civilization which must have existed in the countries bordered by the Gulf of Mexico before the settlement of the Spanish colonies. The histories of savage nations are little more than annals of wars and conquest; but though expeditions like those of Mr. Squier do not often supply information as to martial or political history, they give yet more valuable insight into the social position of a state. It may be questioned whether it is not more important to find that the art of sculpture was brought to a very considerable degree of excellence among the ancestors of a people whom we call savages, than to supply a vacancy in a dynasty, or to follow the changing fortunes of Central American armies. Among some of the Mexican tribes there is at the present day a wild, legendary tradition of the existence of a magnificent city, undiscovered by Europeans, in which Aztec rule still prevails, under a sovereign of the line of Acamapitzin, and therefore a prince of the same dynasty as Montezuma. The hope entertained so largely by the Central American tribes that the latter monarch will return to reconstruct the empire of Mexico, reminds us of the old Welsh legends of King Arthur. But though native independence was doomed to utter and final extinction when the Spanish invasion commenced, there are abundant remains to show that a very important state was overthrown when Spain established its ascendancy in Central America; and that the arts and refinements of peace were studied by the Aztecs of Mexico, as well as the extension of political power, and the conquest of neighbouring nation.