ndred
years previous to the Spanish Conquest, this date will carry us back
only to the last days of its history as an inhabited city. Beyond it, in
the distant past, is a vast period, in which the civilization
represented by Palenque was developed, made capable of building such
cities, and then carried on through the many ages during which cities
became numerous, flourished, grew old, and gave place to others, until
the long history of Palenque itself began.

Those who have sought to discredit what is told of the Aztec
civilization and the empire of Montezuma have never failed to admit
fully the significance of Copan, Palenque, and Mitla. One or two
writers, pursuing the assumption that the barbarous tribes at the north
and the old Mexicans were of the same race, and substantially the same
people, have undertaken to give us the history of Montezuma's empire
"entirely rewritten," and show that his people were "Mexican savages."
In their hands Montezuma is transformed into a barbarous Indian chief,
and the city of Mexico becomes a rude Indian village, situated among the
islands and lagoons of an everglade which afforded unusual facilities
"for fishing and snaring birds." One goes so far as to maintain this
with considerable vehemence and amusing unconsciousness of absurdity. He
is sure that Montezuma was nothing more than the principal chief of a
parcel of wild Indian tribes, and that the Pueblos are wild Indians
changed to their present condition by Spanish influence. There is
something in this akin to lunacy.

But this topic will receive more attention in another place. I bring it
to view here because those who maintain so strangely that the Aztecs
were Indian savages, admit all that is claimed for the wonderful ruins
at the south, and give them a very great antiquity. They maintain,
however, that the civilization represented by these ruins was brought to
this continent in remote pre-historic times by the people known as
Phoenicians, and their method of finding the Phoenicians at Palenque,
Copan, and every where else, is similar in character and value to that
by which they transform the Aztec empire into a rude confederacy of wild
Indians.

DISTINCT ERAS TRACED.

It is a point of no little interest that these old constructions belong
to different periods in the past, and represent somewhat different
phases of civilization. Uxmal, which is supposed to have been partly
inhabited when the Spaniards arrived in the co