esnola's disposing in New York of his collection of Phoenician
antiquities (the only one in the world), found in the tombs of the
Island of Cyprus. Nor did even that of Persia think of preventing
Mr. George Smith, after he had disinterred from among the ruins of
Nineveh, the year before last, the libraries of the kings of
Assyria, from carrying the precious volumes to the British Museum,
where they are to be found to-day. I alone, a free citizen of a
Republic, the friend of Mexico, after spending my fortune and time,
see myself obliged to abandon, in the midst of the forests, the
best and most perfect works of art of the sculptor, up to the
present time known in America, because the government of this
Nation reclaims as its own, objects found in the midst of forests,
at great depths below the surface of the earth, and of whose
existence it was not only ignorant, but was even unsuspicious.

The photographs of these objects, and of the places where they were
found, are all that, with plans, and tracings of most interesting
mural paintings, I can now present: and that after so many
expenses, cares, and dangers, unless you, Mr. President,
considering the historical importance of my discoveries and works,
as an illustrious man, a lover of progress, and the glory of his
country, in the name of the nation authorize me to carry my
_findings_ and photographs, plans and tracings, to that great
concourse of all nations to which America has just invited every
people of the earth, and which will be opened shortly in
Philadelphia; and with them the material proofs of my assertion
that America is the cradle of the actual civilization of the world.

Leaving New York on the 29th of July, 1873, we, Mrs. Le Plongeon
and myself, arrived, on the 6th of August, at Progreso. We remained
in Merida from that date, studying the customs of the country,
acquiring friends, and preparing to fulfil the mission that had
brought us to Yucatan, (viz: the study of its ruins), until the 6th
of November, 1874. At that epoch the epidemic of small-pox, that
has made such ravages in Merida, and is yet active in the interior
villages of the Peninsula, began to develop itself. Senor D.
Liborio Irigoyen, then Governor, knowing that I was about to visit
the towns of the east, to seek among t