prohibitive laws I have
already mentioned, and that on account of the better requirements
of the service I was to disarm my men, I interrupted my works; that
is to say, in one hundred days I have made scrupulously exact plans
of the principal edifices, discovering that their architects made
use, in those remote times, of the metrical measure with its
divisions. I have made five hundred stereoscopic views, from which
I have selected eighty, equal to those that accompany this writing;
I have discovered hieroglyphics which I have caused to reappear
intact, and taken photographs of some that are said to be a
prophecy of the establishment of the electric telegraph between
_Saci_ (Valladolid of to-day), and _Ho_ (Merida); I have restored
mural paintings of great merit for the drawing, and for the history
they reveal; I have taken exact tracings of the same which form a
collection of twenty plates, some nearly one meter long; I have
discovered bas-reliefs which have nothing to envy in the
bas-reliefs of Assyria and Babylon; and, guided by my
interpretations of the ornaments, paintings, &c., &c., of the most
interesting building in Chichen (historically speaking), I have
found amidst the forest, eight meters under the soil, a statue of
Chaacmol, of calcareous stone, one meter, fifty-five centimeters
long, one meter, fifteen centimeters in height, and eighty
centimeters wide, weighing fifty kilos, or more; and this I
extracted without other machine than that invented by me, and
manufactured from trunks of trees with the _machete_ of my Indians.
I have opened two leagues of carriage road to carry my findings to
civilization; and finally I have built a rustic cart in which to
bring the statue to the high road that leads from [C]itas to
Merida. This statue, Mr. President, the only one of its kind in the
world, shows positively that the ancient inhabitants of America
have made, in the arts of drawing and sculpture, advances, equal at
least to those made by the Assyrian, Chaldean and Egyptian artists.

I will pause a moment to give you an idea of my works that concern
said statue, and soon bring to an end this writing. Guided, as I
have just said, by my interpretations of the mural paintings,
bas-reliefs, and other signs that I found in the monument raised to