Sacred Mysteries Among the Mayas and the Quiches 11 500 Years Ago

<p>The forests of Yucatan and Central America are to-day for the majority of the people of the United States even those who call themselves scientific and well informed as much a terra incognita as America was to the inhabitants of Europe before its discovery by Cristobal Colon in 1498 when for the first time he came in sight of the northern coast of South America and navigated along it from the mouth of the river Orinoco to Porto Cabello in the Golfo Triste.</p><p>A few having perused the books of J. L. Stephens Norman and other tourists who have hurriedly visited the ruins of the ancient cities that lie hidden in the depths of those forests have a vague idea that there exist the remains of stone houses built some time or other before the discovery aver authoritatively that their builders were but little removed from the state of savagism and that none of their handwork is worth the attention of the students of our age. Their civilization they confidently say was at best very crude. They were ignorant of the art of writing; and the scanty records of their history chronicled on deer-skins in pictorial representations are well nigh unintelligible. They had no sciences no mental culture or intellectual development. They were in fact a race whose intelligence was for the most part of lower order. From what they did nothing is to be learned that has any direct bearing on the progress of civilization. In no wise can they be compared with the Egyptians or the Chaldees much less with the Greeks or Romans; it is not therefore worth our while to spend time and money in researches among the ruins of their cities. It is to Greece it is to Egypt to Chaldea that Americans must go in order to make new discoveries. In those</p><p>countries must be established schools for study of Greek or Egyptian or Chaldean arch��ology: and American schools have been established at Athens and Alexandria and expeditions sent to Syria to the shores of the Euphrates.</p>