a it is still spoken in its pristine
purity, as, for example, by the _Chaacmules_, a tribe of bearded men, it
is said, who live in the vicinity of the unexplored ruins of the ancient
city of _Tekal_. It is a well-known fact that many tribes, as that of
the Itzaes, retreating before the Nahualt invaders, after the surrender
and destruction of their cities, sought refuge in the islands of the
lake _Peten_ of to-day, and called it _Petenitza_, the _islands of the
Itzaes_; or in the well nigh inaccessible valleys, defended by ranges of
towering mountains. There they live to-day, preserving the customs,
manners, language of their forefathers unaltered, in the tract of land
known to us as _Tierra de Guerra_. No white man has ever penetrated
their zealously guarded stronghold that lays between Guatemala, Tabasco,
Chiapas and Yucatan, the river _Uzumasinta_ watering part of their
territory.

The Maya language seems to be one of the oldest tongues spoken by man,
since it contains words and expressions of all, or nearly all, the known
polished languages on earth. The name _Maya_, with the same
signification everywhere it is met, is to be found scattered over the
different countries of what we term the Old World, as in Central
America.

I beg to call your attention to the following facts. They may have no
significance. They may be mere coincidences, the strange freaks of
hazard, of no possible value in the opinion of some among the learned
men of our days. Just as the finding of English words and English
customs, as now exist among the most remote nations and heterogeneous
people and tribes of all races and colors, who do not even suspect the
existence of one another, may be regarded by the learned philologists
and ethonologists[TN-6] of two or three thousand years hence. These
will, perhaps, also pretend that _these coincidences_ are simply the
curious workings of the human mind--the efforts of men endeavoring to
express their thoughts in language, that being reduced to a certain
number of sounds, must, of necessity produce, if not the same, at least
very similar words to express the same idea--and that this similarity
does not prove that those who invented them had, at any time,
communication, unless, maybe, at the time of the building of the
hypothetical Tower of Babel. Then all the inhabitants of earth are said
to have bid each other a friendly good night, a certain evening, in a
universal tongue, to find next morning that e