Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/84

76 when they left Anahuac, came here, some of them, and built these cities; yet again he says, "They claim no affinity with the works of any known people, but a distinct, independent, and separate existence." (!)

It will not be permitted for men chained to any particular creed, who would fain be the Champollions of the New World, to decipher the inscriptions on the walls of these cities. We have seen enough of this kind in the work of the Spanish ecclesiastics, who perverted history that Indian traditions might conform to the views of priests and monks squinting through Papal spectacles. They do not take into account the cumulative evidence in favor of an original American civilization, but crawl about, groping for some clue that shall lead up to Shem, Ham, and Japhet!

Many blunders have been committed by writers reasoning from false premises; but the most amusing, perhaps, is one by Prescott, who, unfortunately, obliged to avail himself solely of the researches of others, was led frequently into blind alleys and byways. In writing of the ruins of Uxmal he says, "Another evidence of their age is afforded by the circumstance that in one of the courts of Uxmal the granite (?) pavement, on which the figures of tortoises were raised in relief, is worn nearly smooth by the feet of the crowds who have passed over it; a curious fact, suggesting inferences both in regard to the age and population of the place." Now this "granite pavement," with its carven tortoises, has never been seen by mortal man, although described by the unreliable and wonder-seeking Waldeck. The native historian of Yucatan, Señor Ancona, calls attention to this fact, and declares that we are wholly indebted to the imagination of Waldeck for this statement: "Estas tortugas, expuestas a las piedras de la muchedumbre, solo han existido en la imaginacion de Waldeck." It is true that there are many sculptures of this kind in Uxmal, but only on the doors and on the cornices.

The Consul and myself fixed our residence in the Casa del Gobernador, in the inner room of the great apartment. Some beams had once crossed the room, at ten feet or so above the