twelve thousand years ago, if the stones, in their eloquent
muteness, do not deceive. And unless the few treasures that yet
remain, in a state of more or less perfect preservation, be
gathered and saved, they will before long disappear completely, and
with them the last traces of the high civilization, the artistic
and scientific culture attained by the architects and other artists
that worked and raised them, under the protection of enlightened
potentates, lovers of all that was grand, and of everything that
could glorify their country.

The results of my investigations, although made in territories
forbidden to the whites, and even to pacific Indians obedient to
Mexican authority; surrounded by constant dangers, amid forests,
where, besides the wild beasts, the fierce Indians of
Chan-Santa-Cruz lay in ambush for me; suffering the pangs of
hunger, in company with my young wife Alice Dixon Le Plongeon, have
surpassed my most flattering hopes. To-day I can assert, without
boasting, that the discoveries of my wife and myself place us in
advance of the travellers and archaeologists who have occupied
themselves with American antiquities.

Returning however to civilization with the hope of making known to
the scientific world the fruit of our labors, I am sorry to find
myself detained by prohibitive laws that I was ignorant of, and
which prevent me from presenting the unmistakable proofs of the
high civilization and the grandeur, of ancient America; of this old
Continent of Professor Agassiz and other modern geologists and
archaeologists.

These laws, sanctioned by an exclusive and retrogressive
government, have not been revoked up to the present time by the
enlightened, progressive and wise government that rules the
destinies of the Mexican Republic, and they are a barrier that
henceforth will impede the investigation of scientific men, among
the ruins of Yucatan and Mexico. It is in effect a strange fact,
that while autocratic governments, like those of Turkey, Greece,
and Persia, do not interpose difficulties--that of Turkey to Dr.
Henry Schliemann, after discovering the site of the celebrated Troy
and the treasures of King Priam, to his carrying his _findings_ and
presenting them to the civilized world; that of Greece to General
C