Copy 1, Volume 1

Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan / By John L. Stephens.

  • John Lloyd Stephens
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan / By John L. Stephens. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    119/483 (page 105)
    but architecture, sculpture, and painting, all the arts which embellish life, had flourished in this overgrown forest; orators, warriors, and statesmen, beauty, ambi¬ tion, and glory, had lived and passed away, and none knew that such things had been, or could tell of their past existence. Books, the records of knowledge, are silent on this theme. The city was desolate. No rem¬ nant of this race hangs round the ruins, with traditions handed down from father to son, and from generation to generation. It lay before us like a shattered bark in the midst of the ocean, her masts gone, her name ef¬ faced, her crew perished, and none to tell whence she came, to whom she belonged, how long on her voyage, or what caused her destruction ; her lost people to be traced only by some fancied resemblance in the con¬ struction of the vessel, and, perhaps, never to be known at all. The place where we sat, was it a citadel from which an unknown people had sounded the trumpet of war ? or a temple for the worship of the God of peace ? or did the inhabitants worship the idols made with their own hands, and offer sacrifices on the stones be¬ fore them ? All was mystery, dark, impenetrable mys¬ tery, and every circumstance increased it. In Egypt the colossal skeletons of gigantic temples stand in the unwatered sands in all the nakedness of desolation ; here an immense forest shrouded the ruins, hiding them from sight, heightening the impression and moral effect, and giving an intensity and almost wildness to the interest. Late in the afternoon we worked our way back to the mules, bathed in the clear river at the foot of the wall, and returned to the hacienda. Our grateful muleteer- boy had told of his dreadful illness, and the extraordi¬ nary cure effected by Mr. Catherwood; and we found Vol. I.—O