Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/488

410 funds provided by an association in Mexico, had passed two years among the rains. His drawings, as he states in a work on another place, were taken away by the Mexican government; but he had retained copies, and before we set out, his work on Palenque was announced in Paris. It, however, has never appeared, and in the meantime Dupaix's is the text-book.

I have two objections to make to this work, not affecting Captain Dupaix, who, as his expedition took place thirty-four years since, is not likely to be affected, if he be even living, but his Paris editors. The first is the very depreciating tone in which mention is made of the work of his predecessor, Del Rio, and, secondly, this paragraph in the introduction:—

"It must be considered that a government only can execute such undertakings. A traveller relying upon his own resources, cannot hope, whatever may be his intrepidity, to penetrate, and, above all, to live in those dangerous solitudes; and, supposing that he succeeds, it is beyond the power of the most learned and skilful man to explore alone the ruins of a vast city, of which he must not only measure and draw the edifices still existing, but also determine the circumference and examine the remains, dig the soil and explore the subterraneous constructions. M. Baradere arrived within fifty league of Palenque, burning with the desire of going there; but what could a single man do with domestics or other auxiliaries, without moral force or intelligence, against a people still half savage, against serpents and other hurtful animals, which, according to Dupaix, infest these ruins, and also against the vegetative force of a nature, fertile and powerful, which in a few years re-covers all the monuments and obstructs all the avenues?"

The effect of this is to crush all individual enterprise, and, moreover, it is untrue. All the accounts, founded upon this, represent a visit to these ruins as attended with immense difficulty and danger, to such an extent that we feared to encounter them; but there is no difficulty whatever in going from Europe or the United States to Palenque. Our greatest hardships, even in our long journey through the interior, were from the revolutionary state of the countries and want of time; and as to a residence there, with time to construct a hut or to fit up an apartment in the palace, and to procure stores from the seaboard, those "dangerous solitudes" might be anything rather than unpleasant.

And to show what individuals can accomplish, I state that Mr. Catherwood's drawings include all the objects represented in the work of Dupaix, and others besides which do not appear in that work at all,