g them a curious sepulchral effigy. "It was a
handsome block or slab of stone, (wider at one end than the other,)
measuring seven feet in length, with an average of nearly two and a half
feet in width and one foot in thickness. Upon its face was beautifully
wrought, in bold relief, the full length figure of a man, in a loose
robe with a girdle about his loins, his arms crossed on his breast, his
head encased in a close cap or casque, resembling the Roman helmet (as
represented in the etchings of Pinelli) without the crest, and his feet
and ankles bound with the ties of sandals. The figure is that of a tall
muscular man of the finest proportions. The face, in all its features,
is of the noblest class of the European or Caucasian race."[10-+]

Mr. Norman was himself struck "with the resemblance between this, and
the stones that cover the tombs of the Knights Templar in some of the
ancient churches of the old world," but he thinks that neither this nor
any other circumstance proves this effigy to have been of European
origin or of modern date. "The material," he adds, "is the same as that
of all the buildings and works of art in this vicinity, and the style
and workmanship are those of the great unknown artists of the western
hemisphere;" and he arrives at the conclusion, as many ingenuous minds
have done before him, that these and the other archaeological remains of
Mexico and Yucatan, "are the works of a people who have long since
passed away; and not of the races, _or the progenitors of the races_,
who inhabited the country at the epoch of the discovery."[11-*]

With the highest respect for this intelligent traveller, I am not able
to agree with him in his conclusion; but I should not now revive my
published opinions or contest his, were it not that some new light
appears to me to have dawned on this very question.

In the first place, then, we regard the effigy found near Panuco as
probably Caucasian; so does Mr. Norman; but instead of referring it to a
very remote antiquity, or to some European occupancy of Mexico long
before the Spanish conquest, we will venture to suggest, that even if
the town of Panuco was itself older than that event, (of which indeed we
have no doubt,) it is consistent with collateral facts to infer, that
the Spaniards may have occupied this very town, in common with, or
subsequent to, the native inhabitants, and have left this sepulchral
monument. That the Spaniards did sometimes practice this