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=_John L. Stephens, 1808-1852._= (Manual, p. 504.)

From the “Travels in Central America.”

=_269._= DISCOVERY OF A RUINED CITY IN THE WOODS

The sight of this unexpected monument put at rest, at once and forever, in our minds, all uncertainty in regard to the character of American antiquities, and gave as the assurance that the objects we were in search of were interesting, not only as the remains of an unknown people, but as works of art, proving, like newly-discovered historical records, that the people who once occupied the continent of America were not savages.  With an interest perhaps stronger than we had ever felt in wandering among the ruins of Egypt, we followed our guide, who, sometimes missing his way, with a constant and vigorous use of his machete, conducted us through the thick forest, among half-buried fragments, to fourteen monuments of the same character and appearance, some with more elegant designs, and some in workmanship equal to the finest monuments of the Egyptians; one displaced from its pedestal by enormous roots; another locked in the close embrace of branches of trees, and almost lifted out of the earth; another hurled to the ground, and bound down by huge vines and creepers; and one standing, with its altar before it, in a grove of trees which grew around it, seemingly to shade and shroud it as a sacred thing; in the solemn stillness of the woods it seemed a divinity mourning over a fallen people.  The only sounds that disturbed the quiet of this buried city, were the noise of monkeys moving among the tops of the trees, and the cracking of dry branches broken by their weight.  They moved over our heads in long and swift processions, forty or fifty at a time; some, with little ones wound in their long arms, walking out to the end of boughs, and holding on with their hind feet, or a curl of the tail, sprang to a branch of the next tree, and with a noise like a current of wind, passed on into the depths of the forest.  It was the first time we had seen these mockeries of humanity, and with the strange monuments around us, they seemed like wandering spirits of the departed race, guarding the ruins of their former habitations.

...  We sat down on the very edge of the wall, and strove in vain to penetrate the mystery by which we were surrounded.  Who were the people that built this city?  In the ruined cities of Egypt,—­even in the long lost Petra, the stranger knows the story of the people whose vestiges are around him.  America, say historians, was peopled by savages; but savages never reared these structures, savages never carved these stones.

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=_John Charles Fremont, 1813-._= (Manual, p. 505.)

From “Report of an Exploring Expedition.”

=_270._= ASCENT OF A PEAK OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.