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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
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