those [ruins] as yet known, as appears by the plan, is not larger than our Park or Battery" [in New York], he proceeds: '*It is proper to add, however, that considering the space now occupied by the ruins as the site of palaces, temples, and public buildings, and supposing the houses of the inhabitants to have been, like those of the Egyptians and the present race of Indians, of frail and perishable materials as at Memphis and Thebes, to have disappeared altogether, the city may have covered an immense extent."[1] This is a clear case of suggestio falsi by Mr. Stephens, who is usually so careful and reliable and, even here, so guarded in his language. He had fallen into the mistake of regarding these remains as a city in ruins, instead of a small Indian pueblo in ruins. But he had furnished a general ground plan of all the ruins found of the Palenque pueblo, which made it plain that four or five structures upon pyramidal platforms at some distance from each other, with the whole space over which they were scattered about equal to the Battery, made a poor show for a city. The most credulous reader would readily perceive that it was a misnomer to call them the ruins of a city; wherefore the suggestions of Mr. Stephens, that considering the space now occupied by the ruins as the site of palaces, temples, and public buildings, and supposing the houses of the inhabitants * * * of frail and perishable materials to have disappeared * * * the city 7nay have covered an immense extent." That Mr. Stephens himself considered or supposed either to be true may have been the case, but it seems hardly supposable, and in either event he is responsible for the false coloring thus put upon those ruins, and the deceptive inferences drawn from them.
These structures are highly creditable to the intelligence of their builders, and can be made to reveal the manner of their use and the actual progress they had made in the arts of life; but they never can be rationally explained while such wild views are entertained concerning them. Until the actual character and signification of these ruins are made known, such opinions may be expected to prevail concerning them. They spring from the assumed existence of a state of society far enough advanced to develop potentates and privileged classes, with power to enforce labor from the people for personal objects. There is no evidence whatever in
- ↑ Incidents of Travel, Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, ii, 355.
