first city they built in the reputed new world, at the head of the Mexican Gulf, they pursued their triumphant way around a south-easterly branch of the Cordillera Mountains, directly to the great valley and city of Mexico. Hence the antiquities spoken of were left far on their left. The subsequent conquest of Peru, under Pizarro, led them still farther from these scenes of ancient greatness. In the conquered territories themselves, crowded as they were with magnificent specimens of primitive genius and wealth, they may be supposed to have had a field sufficiently large, and objects numerous and valuable enough, for their cupidity, while the innumerable vassals—before, the proud and happy lords of the finest country under heaven—afforded them ample scope for robbery and tyranny. These ruins, then, being removed from the first settlements of the Spanish, is one reason why they were not made known to Europeans at an earlier date. The natives themselves, from a just reverence for the relics of their ancestors, and a religious regard for the objects of their worship, withheld all intelligence respecting them from their cruel tyrants, and the occupants of their favored soil. At length, however, the facts in relation to the Palenquan city were revealed by some Spaniards, who, having penetrated into the dreary solitudes of a high and distant desert, discovered, to their astonishment, that they were surrounded by the remains of a once large and splendid city, the probable capital of an unknown and immeasurably remote empire! These facts were communicated by them to one of the governors of a neighboring province, who, on ascertaining the truth of the representations from the natives, wrote to his royal master, the king of Spain, to induce him to command an exploration of these strange ruins.

Another reason why the world was kept in ignorance of the antiquities of Tultica and Mexico, or, as the whole was anciently called, Anahuæ, is attributable to the gross misrepresentations of Robertson, the historian, who, as every one knows, wrote the history of the conquest of Mexico. This writer says but little of the Mexican arts that is calculated to excite astonishment; and what is said by him, plainly evinces the strangest ignorance of facts, or an unpardonable and wilful perversion of truth. He says, in fact, that 'there is not in all the extent of New Spain, any monument or vestige of building more ancient than the conquest.' 'The great Temple of Chollula,' he says, 'was nothing but a mound of solid earth, without any facing or steps, covered with grass and shrubs!' He also says, that 'the houses of the people of Mexico were but huts, built of turf, or branches of trees, like those of the rudest Indians!' Robertson, in these rank mistatements, could not, we think, have had the plea of ignorance; for the account of the conquerors themselves was a full contradiction of his assertions. From the facts before him, therefore, we are compelled to conclude that prejudice, incredulity, or a spirit of wilful perversion, dictated these erroneous statements. Our descriptions will hereafter show how wide from truth these statements are. The high reputation of Robertson as a historian will hardly atone for the errors here fixed upon him. It might be thought that prejudice or incredulity caused the Spanish inhabitants of the neighboring places to be so long silent on this subject, inasmuch as they can hardly be considered likely to have formed a correct opinion of the remoteness of the Tultican monuments, if they had noticed them, or speculated at all upon their origin. Whatever cause contributed most toward our ignorance of the antiquities we are about to describe, nothing will appear half so strange as the inconsistency and otherwise singular conduct of the Spanish authorities on this subject.

Conformably to the information communicated by the Governor of Guatemala, the King of Spain, in 1786, thirty years subsequent to the discovery of the ruins, commissioned, under the direction of that functionary, Don Antonio Del Rio, captain in his majesty's cavalry service in that province, to proceed with despatch, and the requisite means, to the exploration of the great ruins of the city of Ciudad del Palenque—signifying the city of the desert, called Otulum, from the name of a river running near it, which we shall hereafter notice—situated in the province of Ciudad Real Chiapa. This city was three hundred and thirty leagues, or one thousand miles, distant from the city of Mexico, about two hundred and forty miles from Tabasco, south of Vera Cruz, north-east of Guatemala, and fifteen miles from the present town of St. Domingo Palenque. It was situated on an elevated plain, now covered by an ancient and umbrageous forest, extended for thirty miles along the plain, was two miles wide at its terminating point, upward of sixty miles in circumference, more than ten times larger than the city of New-York, and contained a population of probably near three millions of inhabitants!