we have a more certain record, and not from
contemporaneous historical accounts of eye witnesses.

In answer to Mr. Morgan's line of argument, it may be said, that the
agreement of early voyagers and chroniclers, of whom there is so large a
number, as to the main facts, is strong evidence that their impressions,
as stated, were founded upon what they saw, and not on pictures of the
imagination. Moreover, the existing undecyphered manuscripts, together
with the hieroglyphical and symbolical inscriptions upon buildings,
traced in characters similar to those found in aboriginal manuscripts,
prove that there was a literature among the Mayan and Aztec races, which
places them in a grade of civilization far above that of communistic
Indian tribes of which we have any record. More than all, the manuscript
of Bishop Landa, an eye witness of expiring Mayan civilization, with its
detailed account of the political and social relations of the Indians of
that country, is strong testimony to the correctness of the generally
accepted theories regarding their social and political systems. The
truthfulness of Bishop Landa's account is attested by its conformity to
other accounts, and to the customs and usages of the Yucatan Indians of
to-day, as described by recent travellers. We are obliged to consider
the argument of Mr. Morgan insufficient to destroy the common opinions
of three centuries and a half, in so far as relates to the Maya
Indians.

Mr. Morgan also says that "the Aztecs had no structures comparable with
those of Yucatan." If the only grounds for this statement are, that
almost no ruins now remain in that country, and that the early accounts
of Spanish writers, of what they themselves saw, are considered, by him,
untrustworthy, the weight of probability seems, to the writer of this
paper, on the contrary, to lie in quite the other direction. When Cortez
left Havana, in 1519, he visited Cozumel, famous for its beautiful
temples, and Centla, and certain other towns in Central America, on his
way to Mexico. Having thus seen the wonderful structures of Central
America, is it not strange, that the historians of that expedition, and
Cortez himself, should be filled with wonder and amazement at what they
found in Mexico, to a degree that disposed them to give a much more
particular account of the Aztec palaces than of Yucatan buildings, if
they were inferior to them in point of architecture? Mexico has since
that time been more po