translation of the abundant records of Yucatan. But no one can compare the pyramidal structures of central Mexico, Tehuantepec, and Huanaco, or the style of architectural ornamentation of Mitla, Uxmal, and Granchimu, without feeling that they are the work of a people who were generically the same. The striking and peculiar images in gold, silver, and alloy, as well as the pottery of Peru, of Bogotá, and Chiriqui, afford confirmatory evidence of this unity.
The intercourse between these neighboring and cognate nations was undoubtedly for the most part by sea. Columbus met traders from cities of Central America at Ruatan, where they came in a vessel of considerable size, carrying sail and manned by twenty sailors; and Pizarro, on his way to Peru, when near the equator, encountered a vessel of the Peruvians, which he says "was like a European caravel," and was loaded with merchandise, vases, mirrors of burnished silver, and curious fabrics of cotton and wool, the latter undoubtedly made from the wool of the llama. With such vessels it would be easy to pass from the Mexican to the Central American and thence to the South American ports; and we have incidental evidence that this was done. Louis Hoffman, a German mining engineer, who was one of the scientific corps attached to the staff of Maximilian, and who on professional duty visited all the mining districts of Mexico, tells me that on the Pacific coast, directly south from the city of Mexico, in a region abounding in ruins yet unstudied, at the mouth of a river, is what was once a large seaport town. From this point the passage would be direct and easy to Tehuantepec, Panama, and thence southward.
The question of the origin of the Mexican and Peruvian civilization has been much discussed, and various views have been advanced in regard to it: by some, that it was the fruit of seed borne across the Atlantic by the Phoenician traders, and was therefore of European origin; by others, that it was a remnant of the civilization that pervaded the fabulous country of Atlantis, which once stretched from Central America far over toward the Old World, from which it was separated by a strait that was easily passed in the original dissemination of the human race.
It must be said, however, that with the exception of some features which are common to all phases of human culture, and are the spontaneous outgrowth of qualities which are inherent in all peoples—or are the records of creeds or customs which prevailed in the cradle of the human race, wherever that be—there is nothing whatever to indicate a borrowing from Egypt or Tyre or any European nation. On the contrary, there are an originality and independence in all the forms in which this civilization was embodied that prove that it was either indigenous and grew from
