ians, NOHNIAL, a word which means literally _big noses for
our daughters_; whilst the coming of the bearded men from the _east_,
better looking than those of the west, if we are to give credit to the
bas-relief where their portraits are to be seen, was called
CENIAL--_ornaments for our daughters_.

If we are to judge by the great number of ruined cities scattered
everywhere through the forests of the peninsula; by the architectural
beauty of the monuments still extant, the specimens of their artistic
attainments in drawing and sculpture which have reached us in the
bas-reliefs, statues and mural paintings of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza; by
their knowledge in mathematical and astronomical sciences, as manifested
in the construction of the gnomon found by me in the ruins of Mayapan;
by the complexity of the grammatical form and syntaxis of their
language, still spoken to-day by the majority of the inhabitants of
Yucatan; by their mode of expressing their thoughts on paper, made from
the bark of certain trees, with alphabetical and phonetical characters,
we must of necessity believe that, at some time or other, the country
was not only densely populated, but that the inhabitants had reached a
high degree of civilization. To-day we can conceive of very few of their
attainments by the scanty remains of their handiwork, as they have come
to us injured by the hand of time, and, more so yet, by that of man,
during the wars, the invasions, the social and religious convulsions
which have taken place among these people, as among all other nations.
Only the opening of the buildings which contain the libraries of their
learned men, and the reading of their works, could solve the mystery,
and cause us to know how much they had advanced in the discovery and
explanation of Nature's arcana; how much they knew of mankind's past
history, and of the nations with which they held intercourse. Let us
hope that the day may yet come when the Mexican government will grant to
me the requisite permission, in order that I may bring forth, from the
edifices where they are hidden, the precious volumes, without opposition
from the owners of the property where the monuments exist. Until then we
must content ourselves with the study of the inscriptions carved on the
walls, and becoming acquainted with the history of their builders, and
continue to conjecture what knowledge they possessed in order to be able
to rear such enduring structures, besides the art of