C]itas, and the
moment is already approaching when the doors of the American
Exhibition will open.

With all that, I have faith in the justice, intelligence, and
patriotism of the men who rule the destinies of the Mexican
Republic.

Will the man who, to place his country at the height of other
civilized nations, has known how to improvise, in less than three
months, an astronomical commission, and send it to Japan to observe
the transit of Venus, will he permit, I ask, the greatest discovery
ever made in American archaeology, to remain lost and unknown to the
scientific men, to the artists, to the travellers, to the choicest
of the nations that are soon to gather at Philadelphia? No! I do
not believe it! I do not wish to, I cannot believe it!

These difficulties, I had conquered! Plate No. 9 proves how, having
found the means of raising the statue from the depth of its
pedestal, I knew also how to make it pass over the debris that
impeded its progress. My few men armed with levers were able to
carry it where there was a rustic cart made by me with a _machete_.

With rollers and levers I was able to carry it over the sculptured
stones, its companions, that seemed to oppose its departure. But
with rollers and levers alone I could not take it to Piste, four
kilometers distant, much less to [C]itas, distant from Piste
sixteen kilometers; it needed a cart and that cart a road.

Sr. President, the cart has been made, the road has been opened
without any expense to the State. In fifteen days the statue
arrived at Piste, as proved by plate 11. Senor D. Daniel Traconis,
his wife and their young son, who had come to visit us, witnessed
the triumphal entrance of the Itza Chieftain Chaacmol, at Piste,
the first resting place on the road that leads from Chichen to
Philadelphia. I have opened more than three kilometers of good cart
road of five to six meters in width, from Piste toward [C]itas; but
for reasons that it is out of place to refer to here, and which I
have not been able up to the present time to alter, for they do not
depend on me, I have seen myself compelled to hurriedly abandon my
works on the 6th of the present month of January.

I have come with all speed to Merida, from which place I direct to
you the present writing; but until