RESOURCES OF THE BUILDERS.

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for making them; and, more than this, to conceive the immense time, skill, and labour required for carving such a surface of stone, and the wealth, power, and cultivation of the people who could command such skill and labour for the mere decoration of their edifices. Probably all these ornaments have a symbolical meaning; each stone is part of an allegory or fable, hidden from us, inscrutable under the light of the feeble torch we may burn before it, but which, if ever revealed, will show that the history of the world yet remains to be written.

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CHAPTER XXVI.

Exploration finished.-Who built these ruined Cities?-Opinion of Dupaix.These Ruins bear no Resemblance to the Architecture of Greece and Rome.Nothing like them in Europe.-Do not Resemble the known Works of Japan and China. Neither those of Hindu.-No Excavations found.-The Pyramids of Egypt, in their original State, do not resemble what are called the Pyramids of America.-The Temples of Egypt not like those of America.-Sculpture not the same as that of Egypt.-Probable Antiquity of these Ruins.-Accounts of the Spanish Historians.-These Cities probably built by the Races inhabiting the Country at the time of the Spanish Conquest.-These Races not yet extinct.

I HAVE now finished the exploration of ruins. The reader is perhaps pleased that our labours were brought to an abrupt close (my publishers certainly are); but I assure him that I could have found it in my heart to be prolix beyond all bounds, and that in mercy I have been very brief; in fact, I have let slip the best chance that author ever had to make his reader remember him. I will make no mention of other ruins of which we heard at more remote places. I have no doubt a year may be passed with great interest in Yucatan. The field of American antiquities is barely opened; but for the present I have done.

And here I would be willing to part, and leave the reader to wander alone and at will through the labyrinth of mystery which hangs over these ruined cities; but it would be craven to do so, without turning for a moment to the important question, Who were the people that built these cities?

Since their discovery, a dark cloud has been thrown over them in two particulars. The first is in regard to the immense difficulty and danger, labour and expense, of visiting and exploring them. It has been my object to clear away this cloud. It will appear from these