are brought back, as seems to happen whatever road we
follow, to the middle status of barbarism. The Yucatan architecture
shows the marks of its origin in the adobe and rubble-stone work of the
New Mexico pueblos. The inside of the wall "is a rude mixture of friable
mortar and small irregular stones," and under the pelting tropical rains
the dislocation of the outer facing is presently effected. The large
blocks, cut with flint chisels, are of a soft stone that is soon damaged
by weather; and the cornices and lintels are beams of a very hard wood,
yet not so hard but that insects bore into it. From such considerations
it is justly inferred that the highest probable antiquity for most of
the ruins in Yucatan or Central America is the twelfth or thirteenth
century of our era.[153] Some, perhaps, may be no older than the ancient
city of Mexico, built A. D. 1325.

[Footnote 150: Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. p.
348.]

[Footnote 151: Charnay, _op. cit._ p. 209. "I may remark that
[the] virgin forests [here] have no very old trees, being
destroyed by insects, moisture, lianas, etc.; and old monteros
tell me that mahogany and cedar trees, which are most durable,
do not live above 200 years," id. p. 447.]

[Footnote 152: The reader will find it suggestive to compare
portions of Schliemann's _Mycenae_ and M. de Charnay's book,
just cited, with Morgan's _Houses and House-Life_, chap. xi.]

[Footnote 153: Charnay, _op. cit._ p. 411. Copan and Palenque
may be two or three centuries older, and had probably fallen
into ruins before the arrival of the Spaniards.]

[Sidenote: Chronicle of Chicxulub.]

But we are no longer restricted to purely archaeological evidence. One of
the most impressive of all these ruined cities is Chichen-Itza, which is
regarded as older than Uxmal, but not so old as Izamal. Now in recent
times sundry old Maya documents have been discovered in Yucatan, and
among them is a brief history of the Spanish conquest of that country,
written in the Roman character by a native chief, Nakuk Pech, about
1562. It has been edited, with an English translation, by that zealous
and indefatigable scholar, to whom American philology owes such a debt
of gratitude,--Dr. Daniel Brinton. This chronicle tells us several
things that we did not know before, and, among others, it refers most
explici