his History of the Conquest, such a theory was quite tenable; but the new historic matter lately made known by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg has given a different aspect to the question. Without attempting to maintain the credibility of this writer’s history as a whole, I cannot but think that he has given us satisfactory grounds for believing that the ruined cities of Central America were built by a race which flourished long before the Toltecs; that they were already declining in power and civilization in the seventh century, when the Toltecs began to flourish in Mexico; and that the present Mayas of Yucatan are their degenerate descendants.
What I have seen of Central American and Mexican antiquities, and of drawings of them in books, tends to support the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg’s view of the history of these countries. Traces of communication between the two peoples are to be found in abundance, but nothing to warrant our holding that either people took its civilization bodily from the other. My excuse for entering into these details must be that some of the facts I have to offer are new.