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Rh less a civilized people living under an organized government. Indeed, if any inference can be drawn from the epic legends it would be that, prior to the Aryan conquest, the Nâgá rajas were ruling powers, who had cultivated the arts of luxury to an extraordinary degree, and yet succeeded in maintaining a protracted struggle against the Aryan invaders."

Like the English of to-day, the Mayas sent colonists all over the earth. These carried with them the language, the traditions, the architecture, astronomy, cosmogony, and other sciences—in a word, the civilization of their mother country. It is this civilization that furnishes us with the means of ascertaining the rôle played by them in the universal history of the world. We find vestiges of it, and of their language, in all historical nations of antiquity in Asia, Africa, and Europe. They are still frequent in the countries where they flourished.

It is easy to follow their tracks across the Pacific to India, by the imprints of their hands dipped in a red liquid and pressed against the walls of temples, caves, and other places looked upon as sacred, to implore the benison of the gods—also by their name, Maya, given to the banana tree, symbol of their country, whose broad leaf is yet a token of hospitality