vaders and destroyers of the Itza metropolis, introduced the
phallic worship into Yucatan. The monuments of Uxmal do not date
from so remote an antiquity as those of Chichen, notwithstanding
that Uxmal was a large city when Chichen was at the height of its
glory. Some of its most ancient edifices have been enclosed with
new walls and ornamentation to suit the taste and fancy of the
conquerors. These inner edifices belong to a very ancient period,
and among the debris I have found the head of a bear exquisitely
sculptured out of a block of marble. It is in an unfinished state.
When did bears inhabit the peninsula? Strange to say, the Maya does
not furnish the name for the bear. Yet one-third of this tongue is
pure Greek. Who brought the dialect of Homer to America? Or who
took to Greece that of the Mayas? Greek is the offspring of
Sanscrit. Is Maya? or are they coeval? A clue for ethnologists to
follow the migrations of the human family on this old continent.
Did the bearded men whose portraits are carved on the massive
pillars of the fortress at Chichen-Itza, belong to the Mayan
nations? The Maya language is not devoid of words from the
Assyrian.

We made up our minds to visit Ake, the place where the Spaniards
escaping from Chichen took refuge in the first days of the
conquest. The land where these ruins stand forms a part of the
hacienda of Ake. It belongs to Don Bernardo Peon, one of the
wealthiest men of the country, but on account of the insalubrity of
the climate it is to-day well nigh abandoned. Only a few Indian
servants, living in a constant dread of the paludean fevers that
decimate their families, remained to take care of the scanty herds
of cattle and horses which form now the whole wealth of the farm.
In the first days of March we arrived at the gate of the
farm-house. The Majordomo had received orders to put himself and
his men at our disposal. The ruined farm-house lies at the foot of
a cyclopean structure. From the veranda, rising majestically in
bold relief against the sky, is to be seen the most interesting and
best preserved monument of Ake, composed of three platforms
superposed. They terminate in an immense esplanade crowned by three
rows of 12 columns each. These columns, formed of huge square
stones roughly hewn, and pil