ef that certain colossal mahogany trees growing between and over
the ruins at Palenque must be nearly 2,000 years old. But when M. de
Charnay visited Palenque in 1859 he had the eastern side of the "palace"
cleared of its dense vegetation in order to get a good photograph; and
when he revisited the spot in 1881 he found a sturdy growth of young
mahogany the age of which he knew did not exceed twenty-two years.
Instead of making a ring once a year, as in our sluggish and temperate
zone, these trees had made rings at the rate of about one in a month;
their trunks were already more than two feet in diameter; judging from
this rate of growth the biggest giant on the place need not have been
more than 200 years old, if as much.[149]

[Footnote 146: Stephens, _Incidents of Travel in Central
America, Chiapas, and Yucatan_, 2 vols., New York, 1841.]

[Footnote 147: It occurred in the drawings of the artist
Frederic de Waldeck, who visited Palenque before Stephens, but
whose researches were published later. "His drawings," says Mr.
Winsor, "are exquisite; but he was not free from a tendency to
improve and restore, where the conditions gave a hint, and so
as we have them in the final publication they have not been
accepted as wholly trustworthy." _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, i.
194. M. de Charnay puts it more strongly. Upon his drawing of a
certain panel at Palenque, M. de Waldeck "has seen fit to place
three or four elephants. What end did he propose to himself in
giving this fictitious representation? Presumably to give a
prehistoric origin to these ruins, since it is an ascertained
fact that elephants in a fossil state only have been found on
the American continent. It is needless to add that neither
Catherwood, who drew these inscriptions most minutely, nor
myself who brought impressions of them away, nor living man,
ever saw these elephants and their fine trunks. But such is the
mischief engendered by preconceived opinions. With some writers
it would seem that to give a recent date to these monuments
would deprive them of all interest. It would have been
fortunate had explorers been imbued with fewer prejudices and
gifted with a little more common sense, for then we should have
known the truth with regard to