gradually spread into the interior, and to the high table-lands of Mexico.  And, accordingly, we find, as I have already shown, that all the traditions of Central America and Mexico point to some country in the East, and beyond the sea, as the source of their first civilized people; and this region, known among them as “Aztlan,” lived in the memory of the people as a beautiful and happy land, where their ancestors had dwelt in peace for many generations.

Dr. Le Plongeon, who spent four years exploring Yucatan, says: 

“One-third of this tongue (the Maya) is pure Greek.  Who brought the dialect of Homer to America? or who took to Greece that of the Mayas?  Greek is the offspring of the Sanscrit.  Is Maya? or are they coeval? . . . The Maya is not devoid of words from the Assyrian.”

That the population of Central America (and in this term I include Mexico) was at one time very dense, and had attained to a high degree of civilization, higher even than that of Europe in the time of Columbus, there can be no question; and it is also probable, as I have shown, that they originally belonged to the white race.  Desire Charnay, who is now exploring the ruins of Central America, says (North American Review, January, 1881, p. 48), “The Toltecs were fair, robust, and bearded.  I have often seen Indians of pure blood with blue eyes.”  Quetzalcoatl was represented as large, “with a big head and a heavy beard.”  The same author speaks (page 44) of “the ocean of ruins all around, not inferior in size to those of Egypt” At Teotihuacan he measured one building two thousand feet wide on each side, and fifteen pyramids, each nearly as large in the base as Cheops.  “The city is indeed of vast extent . . . the whole ground, over a space of five or six miles in diameter, is covered with heaps of ruins—­ruins which at first make no impression, so complete is their dilapidation.”  He asserts the great antiquity of these ruins, because he found the very highways of the ancient city to be composed of broken bricks and pottery, the debris left by earlier populations.  “This continent,” he says (page 43), “is the land of mysteries; we here enter an infinity whose limits we cannot estimate. . . .  I shall soon have to quit work in this place.  The long avenue on which it stands is lined with ruins of public buildings and palaces, forming continuous lines, as in the streets of modern cities.  Still, all these edifices and balls were as nothing compared with the vast substructures which strengthened their foundations.”

We find the strongest resemblances to the works of the ancient European races:  the masonry is similar; the cement is the same; the sculptures are alike; both peoples used the arch; in both continents we find bricks, glassware, and even porcelain (North American Review, December, 1880, pp. 524, 525), “with blue figures on a white ground;” also bronze composed of the same elements of copper and tin in like proportions; coins made of copper, round and T-shaped, and even metallic candlesticks.