possession, they sent their servant on a forag-wings, and the stars glittered in the torching expedition. In half an hour he returned light, and all gathered around to examine it.' with one egg: but he had roused the village; At length they departed, leaving a dozen illand the alcalde, an Indian with a silver-head-looking ruffians as a guard over them. ed cane, and seven alguazils with long thin wands of office, came down to interrogate them. Mr. Stephens showed them his passport: they could not read it, but examined the seal, and left them, after having returned the answer-which afterwards became but too familiar-no hay' (there is none) to the demand for eggs, fowls, and milk.

general.

The alcalde objected: we threatened him with the consequences; and at length he thrust it into the hands of an Indian, and beat him out of doors with his staff, and in a few minutes the guard was withdrawn.'

Exaggerated accounts of the fracas soon spread through the country; and wherever Mr. Stephens went, this arrest and the indignity offered to the government of the United States were the theme of conversation.

The "big seal" appears to have settled the business for in the middle of the night the whole of the ruffianly band again broke in upon them with the drunken alcalde at their head. The first impression of the travellers was that they had come to take the passport by force; but, to their surprise, the alcalde handed the letter back to Mr. Stephens, saying that there was no need to send it, and The alcalde, however, sent them a jar of that they were at liberty to proceed on their water; and they had concluded their supper journey. 'Our indignation,' says Mr. Steof bread and chocolate, and were getting in- phens, was now not the less strong because to their hammocks, when the door was sud- we considered ourselves safe in pouring it denly burst open, and twenty-five or thirty out. We insisted that the matter should not men rushed in, the alcalde, alguazils, soldiers, end here, and that the letter should go to the Indians, and mestitzoes, ragged and ferociouslooking fellows, armed with staves of office, swords, clubs, muskets, and machetes, and carrying blazing pine-sticks. At their head was an insolent young man, one of Carrera's captains, who denied the validity of the passport, which neither he nor the alcalde could read; threatened their lives, and peremptorily insisted upon detaining them prisoners until orders could be received from Chiquimula. The high tone assumed by Mr. Stephens, and the cool courage with which he supported it, carried them through this danger, the full extent of which they were not aware of at the time, having no idea of the lawless state of the country, and the sanguinary character of the people. The officer required him to give up the passport: this he refused to do, but said he would go with it himself, under a guard of soldiers, to Chiquimula. The offer was refused, and in spite of a learned exposition of the law of nations, the rights of ambassadors, and the terrors of the government del Norte,' from Mr. Catherwood, things were on the point of coming to a bloody termination, for Mr. Stephens and his party were well armed and resolute, when fortunately a person of a better class entered the hut, and asked to see the passport. Mr. Stephens would not trust it out of his hands but held it up before a blazing pine-stick, while the man read it aloud. This somewhat stilled the storm; but they were told that they must remain in custody. Mr. Stephens demanded a courier to carry a letter to General Cascara. After some hesitation this was granted. A note was written and signed by Mr. Catherwood, as secretary to the embassy; and having no official signet, he sealed it, unobserved by any one, with a new American half-dollar, and with diplomatic dignity handed it to the alcalde. The eagle spread its

The whole of the journey to Copan is full of interest and adventure, and so vividly told, that it is not without an effort that we forbear to extract it. We will resist, also, giving the lively details of the feud between the travellers and a certain Don Gregorio, the great man of the village, very rich, very tyrannical, and very churlish; and will at once introduce our readers to the ruins. There was only one man in the place who knew anything about the 'idols,' but he was absent in attendance on a grand cock-fight; and it was not until a late hour the next morning that they were enabled to visit them :—

'We dismounted, and tying our mules to trees clearing a path before us with a machete. Soon near by, entered the woods, José, the guide, we came to the bank of a river, and saw directly opposite a stone wall, perhaps a hundred feet high, with furze growing out of the top, running north and south along the river, in some places fallen, but in others entire. It had more the character of a structure than any we had ever seen ascribed to the aborigines of America, and formed part of the wall of Copan, an ancient city, on whose history books throw but little light.

'Dr. Robertson, in his History of America, lays it down as "a certain principle, that America was not peopled by any nation of the ancient continent which had made considerable progress in civilisation." . . At that time, disan; but since Dr. Robertson wrote, a new flood trust was perhaps the safer side for the historiof light has poured upon the world, and the field

monument put at rest at once and for ever, in our minds, all uncertainty in regard to the character of American antiquities, and gave us 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.

of American antiquities has been opened. . . The first new light thrown upon this subject as regards Mexico was by the great Humboldt, who visited that country at a time when, by the jealous policy of the government, it was almost as much closed against strangers as China is now. No man could have better deserved such fortune. At that time the monuments of the country were not a leading object of research; but Humboldt collected from various sources in- "With an interest perhaps stronger than we formation and drawings, particularly of Mytla, had ever felt in wandering among the ruins of or the Vale of the Dead; Xoxichalco, a moun- Egypt, we followed our guide, who, sometimes tain hewed down and terraced, and called "the missing his way, with a constant use of his maHill of Flowers;" and the great pyramid or tem-chete conducted us through the thick forest, ple of Cholula he visited himself. Unfortunate- among half-buried fragments, to fourteen monuly, of the great cities beyond the vale of Mexico, ments of the same character and appearance, buried in forests, ruined, desolate, and without some with more elegant designs, and some in a name, Humboldt never heard, or, at least, he workmanship equal to the finest monuments of never visited them. It is but lately that ac- the Egyptians: one displaced from its pedestal counts of their existence reached Europe and by enormous roots; another locked in the close our own country. These accounts, however embrace of branches of trees, and almost lifted vague and unsatisfactory, had roused our curios-out of the earth; another hurled to the ground, ity; though I ought perhaps to say that both and bound down by huge vines and creepers; Mr. Catherwood and I were somewhat sceptical, and one standing, with its altar before it, in a and when we arrived at Copan, it was with the grove of trees which grew around it, seemingly hope, rather than the expectation, of finding to shade and shroud it as a sacred thing: in the wonders. Since the discovery of these ruined solemn stillness of the woods, it seemed a divincities the prevailing theory has been, that they ity mourning over a fallen people. The only belonged to a race long anterior to that which sounds that disturbed the quiet of this buried inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish city were the noise of monkeys moving among conquest. Opposite the wall the river was not the tops of the trees, and the cracking of dry fordable: we returned to our mules, mounted, branches broken by their weight. They moved and rode to another part of the bank, a short over our heads in long and swift processions, distance above. The stream was wide, and in forty or fifty at a time, some with little ones some places deep, rapid, and with a broken and wound in their long arms, walking out to the stony bottom. Fording it, we rode along the end of boughs, and holding on with their hind bank by a footpath encumbered with under- feet or a curl of the tail, sprang to a branch of growth, which José opened by cutting away the the next tree, and, with a noise like a current branches, until we came to the foot of the wall, of wind, passed on into the depths of the forest. where we again dismounted and tied our mules. It was the first time we had seen these mocke'The wall was of cut stone, well laid, and in a ries of humanity; and, with the strange monugood state of preservation. We ascended by ments around us, they seemed like wandering large stone steps, in some places perfect, and in spirits of the departed race guarding the ruins others thrown down by trees which had grown of their former habitations. up between the crevices, and reached a terrace, We returned to the base of the pyramidal the form of which it was impossible to make structure, and ascended by regular stone steps, in out, from the density of the forest in which it some places forced apart by bushes and saplings, was enveloped. Our guide cleared a way with and in others thrown down by the growth of his machete (chopping-knife), and we passed, large trees, while some remained entire. In as it lay half buried in the earth, a large frag-parts they were ornamented with sculptured ment of stone elaborately sculptured, and came figures and rows of death's-heads. Climbing to the angle of a structure with steps on the over the ruined top, we reached a terrace oversides, in form and appearance, so far as the grown with trees, and, crossing it, descended by trees would enable us to make it out, like the stone steps into an area so covered with trees, sides of a pyramid. Diverging from the base, that at first we could not make out its form, but and working our way through the thick woods, which, on clearing the way with the machete, we came upon a square stone column, about we ascertained to be a square, and with steps fourteen feet high and three feet on each side, on all sides, almost as perfect as those of the Rosculptured in very bold relief, and on all four of man amphitheatre. The steps were ornamented the sides from the base to the top. The front with sculpture, and on the south side, about half was the figure of a man curiously and richly way up, forced out of its place by roots, was a dressed, and the face, evidently a portrait, so-colossal head, evidently a portrait. We ascendlemn, stern, and well fitted to excite terror. The ed these steps, and reached a broad terrace a back was of a different design, unlike anything we had ever seen before, and the sides were covered with hieroglyphics. This our guide called an "Idol;" and before it, at a distance of three feet, was a large block of stone, also sculptured with figures and emblematical devices, which he called an altar. The sight of this

hundred feet high, overlooking the river, and supported by the wall which we had seen from the opposite bank. The whole terrace was covered with trees, and even at this height from the ground were two gigantic Ceibas, or wild cotton-trees of India, above twenty feet in circumference, extending their half-naked roots fifty

...

After much consultation, we selected one of the "idols," and determined to cut down the trees around it, and thus lay it open to the rays of the sun. Here again was difficulty. There was no axe; and the only instrument which the Indians possessed was the machete, which varies in form in different sections of the country; wielded with one hand, it was useful in clearing away shrubs and branches, but almost harroless upon large trees; and the Indians, as in the days when the Spaniards discovered them, applied to work without ardour, carried it on with little activity, and, like children, were easily di

or a hundred feet around, binding down the ruins, Our guides knew only of this district; but havand shading them with their wide-spreading ing seen columns beyond the village, a league branches. We sat down on the very edge of distant, we had reason to believe that others the wall, and strove in vain to penetrate the mys- were strewed in different directions, completely tery by which we were surrounded. buried in the woods, and entirely unknown. The The next morning, before we started, a new woods were so dense that it was almost hopeless party, who had been conversing some time with to think of penetrating them. The only way to Don Gregorio, stepped forward and said that he make a thorough exploration would be to cut was the owner of the "Idols," that no one down the whole forest and burn the trees. This could go on the land without his permission, and was incompatible with our immediate purposes, handed me his title-papers. This was a new might be considered taking liberties, and could difficulty. I was not disposed to dispute his only be done in the dry season. After deliberatitle, but read his papers as attentively as if I tion, we resolved first to obtain drawings of the meditated an action in ejectment; and he seem- sculptured columns. Even in this there was ed relieved when I told him his title was good, great difficulty. The designs were very compliand that, if not disturbed, I would make him a cated, and so different from anything Mr. Cacompliment at parting. Our new acquaint- therwood had ever seen before as to be perfectly ance, Don José Maria Asabedo, was about fifty, unintelligible. The cutting was in very high tall, and well dressed; that is, his cotton shirt relief, and required a strong body of light to and pantaloons were clean; he was inoffensive, bring up the figures; and the foliage was so though ignorant; and one of the most respecta- thick, and the shade so deep, that drawing was ble inhabitants of Copan... Don José Maria impossible. accompanied me to the ruins, where I found Mr. Catherwood with the Indian workman. Again we wandered over the whole ground in search of some ruined building in which we could take up our abode, but there was none. To hang up our hammock under the trees was madness; the branches were still wet, the ground muddy, and again there was a prospect of early rain; but we were determined not to go back to Don Gregorio's. Don Maria conducted me to a hut at a little distance--the family-mansion of another Don, who was a white man, about forty, dressed in a pair of dirty cotton drawers, with a nether garment hanging outside, a handker-verted from it. One hacked into a tree, and, chief tied around his head, and barefooted; and when tired, which happened very soon, sat down by name Don Miguel. I told him that we wish to rest, and another relieved him. While one ed to pass a few days among the ruins, and ob- worked there were always several looking on. I tained his permission to stop at his hut. . . . remembered the ring of the woodman's axe in All day I had been brooding over the title-deeds the forests at home, and wished for a few longof Don José Maria, and at night drawing my sided Green Mountain Boys. But we had been blanket around me, I suggested to Mr. Cather-buffeted into patience, and watched the Indians wood "an operation." (Hide your heads, ye speculators in up-town lots!) To buy Copan! remove the monuments of a by-gone people from the desolate region in which they were buried, set them up in the "great commercial emporium," and found an institution to be the nucleus of a great national museum of American antiquities! But query, Could the "idols" be removed? They were on the banks of a river that emptied into the same ocean by which the docks of New York are washed, but there were rapids below; and, in answer to my inquiry, Don Miguel said these were impassable. Nevertheless, I should have been unworthy of having passed through the times "that tried men's souls," if I had not had an alternative; and this was to exhibit my sample: to cut one up and remove it in pieces, and make casts of the others. The casts of the Parthenon are regarded as precious memorials in the British Museum, and casts of Copan would be the same in

New York.

Trudging once more, next morning, over the district which contained the principal monuments, we were startled by the immensity of the work before us, and very soon we concluded that to explore the whole extent would be impossible.

while they hacked with their machetes, and even wondered that they succeeded so well. At length the trees were felled and dragged aside, a space cleared around the base, Mr. Catherwood's frame set up, and he set to work... It is impossible to describe the interest with which I explored these ruins. The ground was entirely new; there was no guide-books or guides; the whole was a virgin soil. We could not see ten yards before us, and never knew what we should stumble upon next. At one time we stopped to cut away branches and vines which concealed the face of a monument, and then to dig around and bring to light a fragment, a sculptured corner of which protruded from the earth. I leaned over with breathless anxiety while the Indians worked, and an eye, an ear, a foot, or a hand was disentoombed; and when the machete rang againt the chiselled stone, I pushed the Indians away, and cleared out the loose earth with my hands. The beauty of the sculpture, the solemn stillness of the woods, disturbed only by the scrambling of monkeys and the chattering of parrots, the desolation of the city, and the mystery that hung over it, all created an interest higher, if possible, than I had ever felt among the ruins of the Old World. After several hours'

works of art, we should be inclined to place them high in the scale of architectural sculpture. To the elegance and sublimity of the Grecian and Roman schools they have no pretension whatever, nor have they the seThe next morning he came, and his condi-vere grandeur of the best specimens of the tion was truly pitiable. He was anxious to conEgyptian; but they appear to us to be vastvert unproductive property into money, but was afraid to do so, and said that I was a stranger, ly superior to anything which India or Chiand it might bring him into difficulty with the na or Japan has ever produced. Their chief government. I again went into proof of cha- merit lies in their general effect. The figracter, and engaged to save him harmless. . . .ures are ill-proportioned; many of the faces Shades of suspicion still lingered; and, as a last are grotesque and even hideous, and the subresource, I opened my trunk, and put on a dip-ordinate parts confused and overcharged: but lomatic coat, with a profusion of large eagle but--and in this it is that they differ from all

mysterious interest which surrounds it, Copan of parties, the conflicting pretensions of the still offers an unrivalled field of study to the separate states, and the absence of anything antiquary. In the rapid progress which approaching to a fixed authority being such hieroglyphic science is now making, we can- that, in the end, he was constrained to quit not but hope that the abundant collection of the place and to seek elsewhere-but as it symbolical writings which its idols afford will proved with equal ill success-that federal ere long enable the zealous inquirer to re- government to which alone he was accredited move the veil which at present hangs over by his own country. He gives a vivid picthe place. ture of the state of society and of the anarCopan is on the left bank of the river of chy of political parties in Guatimala and the same name, which empties itself into the around it-and what a picture it is! TuMotagua; the former stream is not naviga- mults, seditions, conspiracies, domestic wars ble, even for canoes, except for a short time commenced without cause or object, and only during the rainy season; and there are falls j ending in one place to be renewed in anin its course. It is, we presume, from these other; each year, almost each month, a new difficulties that Mr. Stephens, although he knot of ambitious fools and scoundrels prebecame lord of the manor, could not carry senting themselves upon the stage, each in his into effect his patriotic scheme of floating the turn filling a large space in the public eye for idols down to the sea and shipping them off a bloody moment, and then swept away into to New York, in emulation of the late amia- oblivion. The mind recoils with sickening ble, accomplished, and most unjustly satirized disgust from the details. Were not all lighter Lord Elgin.

After spending a few more days among these ruins, our author's cares of office began to press upon his mind:

'When we turned off,' he says, 'to visit these ruins we did not expect to find employment for more than two or three days, and I did not consider myself at liberty to remain longer. I apprehended a desperate chase after a government, and fearing that among these ruins I might wreck my own political fortunes, and bring reproach upon my political friends, I thought it safer to set out in pursuit.'-vol. i., p.

148.

feelings subdued by the horrors which mark every page in the annals of Central America, there would be ample scope for ridicule in contemplating the succession of ignorant, remorseless demagogues, scarcely removed from and deliverers of their country; playing at savages, exalting themselves into heroic sages freedom like a set of mischievous schoolboys, and calling on all the world to admire their philosophy and self-devotion.

Although no direct admission of the kind escapes our author, we cannot but suspect, from more than one casual expression, that his enthusiastic admiration of Republican govA council was therefore called at the base ernments was a little disturbed when he of an idol, and it was settled that he should found himself surrounded by these clumsy immediately proceed to Guatimala, and that imitators. In the preface to this work, which Mr. Catherwood should remain to complete bears date so late as May, 1841, he adverts his drawings-a task which he has most ad- with much satisfaction tomirably performed, although his labours were interrupted by a severe attack of fever.*

A journey not of actual danger, but rendered insecure by the unsettled state of the country, brings our author at length to Guatimala. Here he enters upon his diplomatic functions, or rather makes an unsuccessful attempt to do so; the confusion and division

Our great object,' says Mr. Stephens, was to procure true copies, adding nothing to produce effect as pictures. Mr. Catherwood took all the outlines with the camera lucida, and divided his paper into sections, so as to preserve the utmost accuracy of proportion. The plates are, in my opinion, as true copies as can be presented; and except the stones themselves, the reader cannot have better materials for speculation and study.' vol. i., pp. 137, 138.

late intelligence from Central America, which enables him to express the belief that the state of anarchy in which he has represented that beautiful country no longer exists; that the dark clouds which hung over it have passed away, that civil war has ceased, and Central America may be welcomed back among republics.'-Preface, pp. iii. iv.

The hope has, alas! proved fallacious. Still later accounts speak of renewed commotion and bloodshed; and we predict with sorrow, but without a grain of doubt, that this fair, this magnificent country is doomed to a long period of civil war and all its attendant miseries. We predict this from our conviction that its population is very far removed from that state of intelligence and advancement which alone can fit a people to receive free institutions with advantage to themselves,

The illustrations indeed are admirable; not so the map of the route. It is incorrect, incomplete, and obscure. This should be amended in a second to adopt them with moderation and wisdom, and to use without abusing them. Even

edition.