town of Marysville.
Then he visited Peru, and travelled with Mr. Squire and took photographs
of ruins. He came to New York in 1871, with three valuable paintings,
which he had procured in Peru, two of them said to be Murillo's, and the
other the work of Juan del Castillo, Murillo's first master. A long
account of these pictures appears in the "New York Evening Mail" of
March 2, 1871. He took them to England in the same year, and is said to
have sold them to the British Museum. Since his residence in Yucatan,
both the Doctor and Mrs. Le Plongeon have been engaged in archaeological
studies and explorations among the ruins of Chichen-Itza, Uxmal, and
Ake, and they have also visited other ruins in the eastern part of
Yucatan, together with those of the once famous islands of Cozumel and
Mugeres, and have there pursued the same system of investigation. They
are at present at Belize, British Honduras, where this explorer is
awaiting a reply to his appeal, as an American citizen, to our Minister
at Mexico for redress for the loss of the statue which he had
discovered, and which has been removed by the government to Mexico,
without his knowledge or consent, to be there placed in the National
Museum. The writer is in possession of many of Dr. Le Plongeon's letters
and communications, all of them in English, and very interesting to
antiquarian students. It is regretted that the shortness of time since
receiving the more important of these documents will prevent doing
justice to the very elaborate and extended material which is at hand;
but it is with the hope that interest and cooperation may be awakened in
Dr. Le Plongeon and his labors, that this crude and unsatisfactory
statement, and imperfect and hasty reference to his letters, is
presented.
The conspicuous results of Dr. Le Plongeon's active and successful
labors in the archaeological field, about which there can be no
controversy, are the wonderful statue which he has disinterred at
Chichen-Itza, and a series of 137 photographic views of Yucatan ruins,
sculptures and hieroglyphics. All of the photographs are similar to
those which appear in heliotype, diminished in size, as illustrations of
this paper. They consist of portraits of Dr. Le Plongeon and of his
wife; 8 photographs of specimen sculpture--among them pictures of men
with long beards; 7 photographs of the ruins of Ake, showing the
arrangement of so-called _Katuns_--the Maya method of chronology; 12
photographs
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