e Bourbourg
says: "Among the edifices forgotten by Time in the forests of Mexico and
Central America are found architectural characteristics so different
from one another, that it is as impossible to attribute their
construction to one and the same people, as it is to suppose that they
were built at the same epoch.... The ruins that are the most ancient and
that have the most resemblance to one another are those which have been
discovered in the country of the Lacandous, the foundations of the city
of Mayapan, some buildings of Tulha, and the greater part of those
of Palenque; it is probable that they belong to the first period of
American civilization."--Vol. I. p. 85.

The truly historical records of Central America go back to a period but
little before the Christian era. Beyond that epoch, we behold through
the mists of legends, and in the defaced pictures and sculptures, a
hierarchical despotism sustained by the successors of the mysterious
Votan. The empire of the Votanides is at length ruined by its own vices
and by the attacks of a vigorous race, whose records and language have
come down even to our day,--the only race on the American continent
whose name has been preserved in the memory of the peoples after the
ruin of its power, the only one whose institutions have survived its own
existence,--the Xahoa, or Toltec.

Of all the American languages, the Nahuatl holds the highest place, for
its richness of expression and its sonorous tone,--adapting itself with
equal flexibility to the most sublime and analytic terms of metaphysics,
and to the uses of ordinary life, so that even at this day the
Englishman and the Spaniard employ its vocabulary for natural objects.

The traditions of the Nahoas describe their life in the distant Oriental
country from which they came:--"There they multiplied to a considerable
degree, and lived without civilization. They had not then acquired the
habit of separating themselves from the places which had seen them born;
they paid no tributes; and all spoke a single language. They worshipped
neither wood nor stone; they contented themselves with raising their
eyes to heaven and observing the law of the Creator. They waited with
respect for the rising of the sun, saluting with their invocations the
morning star."

This is their prayer, handed down in Indian tradition,--the oldest piece
extant of American liturgy:--"Hail, Creator and Former! Regard us!
Listen to us! Heart of Heaven! He