PREFACE.
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"To accept any authority as final, and to dispense with the necessity of independent investigation, is destructive of all progress."
(Man by two Chelas.)
"What you have learned, verify by experience, otherwise learning is vain."
(Indian Saying.)
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In this work I offer no theory. In questions of history theories prove nothing. They are therefore out of place. I leave my readers to draw their own inferences from the facts presented for their consideration. Whatever be their conclusions is no concern of mine. One thing, however, is certain
— neither their opinion nor mine will alter events that have happened in the dim past of which so little is known to-day. A record of many of these events has reached our times written, by those who took part in them, in a language still spoken by several thousands of human beings. There we may read part of man's history and follow the progress of his civilization.
The study — in situ — of the relics of the ancient Mayas has revealed such striking analogies between their language, their religious conceptions, their cosmogonic notions, their manners and customs, their traditions, their architecture, and the language, the religious conceptions, the cosmogonic notions, the manners and customs, the traditions, the architecture of the
