CHAPTER III. WEST COAST OR PACIFIC STATES.

by Stephens, during his second expedition. It is not improbable that an intercourse existed between the inhabitants of these districts, prior to the Spanish Conquest. We believe that these architectural remains and nearly all of those in Yucatan, Chiapas and Guatemala, were the abodes and temples of the Indians who dwelt in Mexico and the adjacent countries when Grijalva and Cortéz first landed on our continent. The distance from Oajaca, through Chiapas and Tabasco, to Yucatan is not too great to have prevented even a rapid communication from Mitla to Uxmal, or Palenque. The reader will recollect that the realm of Montezuma is alleged to have extended to near the present limits of the Republic of Central America; nor will he forget with what rapidity the well trained Indian couriers of the Emperor passed over the three hundred intervening miles of mountain, plain and valley, between Vera Cruz and the Valley of Mexico, in order to inform their sovereign of the Spaniards' arrival and their leader's determination to visit the Aztec Court. At Cozumel, and elsewhere in Yucatan, the earliest Spanish adventurers were struck by the architecture of the edifices which were inhabited by the Indians. In their letters and narratives they always speak of these "buildings of stone and lime" as indicating civilization. The Indian deities were, at that time, unquestionably, worshipped in them. At Cholula, Tlascala, and Tenochtitlan or Mexico, as well as at Tezcoco,—pyramids, dwellings, palaces, walls, streets, causeways, were all built of stone cemented by mortar, and many of these objects were profusely ornamented. There can be no doubt of these facts, for they were attested at the time by numerous witnesses, while many of the material relics of that age have descended even to the present time, and may still be inspected in the capital of the Republic. Why, then, should we hesitate to believe that a vast chain of civilized, intelligent and affiliated nations, co-existed on the central part of this continent in the sixteenth century, and that the ruined cities, temples and pyramids which are spread from the waters of the Gila as far south as Peru and Chili, and whose wonderful remains are now gradually unearthed by the industry of antiquarians, are the architectural fragments of their national grandeur?