wildered our sight. By a common
impulse, we turned to leave, and descended the mountain in silence as
deep as that which brooded over chaos ere God spoke creation into being.
We soon reached the foot of the hill, and parted, with no word upon our
lips, though with the wealth of untold worlds gathered up in our hearts.

Never, since that bright and glorious tropical night, have I mentioned
the mysterious scene we witnessed on the ramparts of Fort Castillo; and
I have every reason to believe that my companion has been as discreet.

This, perhaps, will be the only record that shall transmit it to the
future; but well I know that its fame will render me immortal.

Through me and me alone, the sculptured marbles of Central America have
found a tongue. By my efforts, Palenque speaks of her buried glories,
and Uxmal wakes from oblivion's repose. Even the old pyramid of Cholula
yields up its bloody secrets, and _Casa Grande_ reveals the dread
history of its royalties.

The means by which a key to the monumental hieroglyphics of Central
America was furnished me, as well as a full account of the discoveries
made at Palenque, will be narrated in the subsequent chapters of this
history.

CHAPTER II.

"Amid all the wreck of empires, nothing ever spoke so forcibly
the world's mutations, as this immense forest, shrouding what was
once a great city."--STEPHENS.

At daylight on the next morning after the singular adventure recorded in
the preceding chapter, the California passengers bound eastward arrived,
and those of us bound to the westward were transshipped to the same
steamer which they had just abandoned. In less than an hour we were all
aboard, and the little river-craft was busily puffing her way toward the
fairy shores of Lake Nicaragua.

For me, however, the evergreen scenery of the tropics possessed no
charms, and its balmy air no enchantments. Sometimes, as the steamer
approached the ivy-clad banks, laden as they were with flowers of every
hue, and alive with ten thousand songsters of the richest and most
variegated plumage, my attention would be momentarily aroused, and I
enjoyed the sweet fragrance of the flowers, and the gay singing of the
birds. But my memory was busy with the past, and my imagination with the
future. With the Judge, even, I could not converse for any length of
time, without falling into a reverie by no means flattering to his
powers of conversation. About noon, however, I was fully a