material help given by you to Foreign
and American explorers in that field of investigations?

Accept, then, my personal thanks, with the dedication of this small
Essay. It forms part of the result of many years' study and hardships
among the ruined cities of the Incas, in Peru, and of the Mayas in
Yucatan.

Yours very respectfully,

AUGUSTUS LE PLONGEON, M. D.

NEW YORK, _December 15, 1881_.

Entered according to an Act of Congress, in December, 1881,

BY AUGUSTUS LE PLONGEON,

In the Office of the LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS in Washington, D.C.

VESTIGES OF THE MAYAS.

Yucatan is the peninsula which divides the Gulf of Mexico from the
Caribbean Sea. It is comprised between the 17 deg. 30' and 21 deg. 50',
of latitude north, and the 88 deg. and 91 deg. of longitude west from
the Greenwich meridian.

The whole peninsula is of fossiferous limestone formation. Elevated a
few feet only above the sea, on the coasts, it gradually raises toward
the interior, to a maximum height of above 70 feet. A bird's-eye view,
from a lofty building, impresses the beholder with the idea that he is
looking on an immense sea of verdure, having the horizon for boundary;
without a hill, not even a hillock, to break the monotony of the
landscape. Here and there clusters of palm trees, or artificial mounds,
covered with shrubs, loom above the green dead-level as islets, over
that expanse of green foliage, affording a momentary relief to the eyes
growing tired of so much sameness.

About fifty miles from the northwestern coast begins a low, narrow range
of hills, whose highest point is not much above 500 feet. It traverses
the peninsula in a direction a little south from east, commencing a few
miles north from the ruined city of Uxmal, and terminating some distance
from the eastern coast, opposite to the magnificent bay of Ascension.

Lately I have noticed that some veins of red oxide of iron exist among
these hills--quarries of marble must also be found there; since the
sculptured ornaments that adorn the facade of all the monuments at Uxmal
are of that stone. To-day the inhabitants of Yucatan are even ignorant
of the existence of these minerals in their country, and ocher to paint,
and marble slabs to floor their houses, are imported from abroad. I
have also discovered veins of good lithographic stones that could be
worked at comparatively little expense.

The surface of the country is undulating; its st