To find the chief seats and most abundant remains of the most remarkable
civilization of this old American race, we must go still farther south
into Central America and some of the more southern states of Mexico.
Here ruins of many ancient cities have been discovered, cities which
must have been deserted and left to decay in ages previous to the
beginning of the Aztec supremacy. Most of these ruins were found buried
in dense forests, where, at the time of the Spanish Conquest, they had
been long hidden from observation.
The ruins known as Palenque, for instance, seem to have been entirely
unknown to both natives and Spaniards until about the year 1750. Cortez
and some of his companions went through the open region near the forest
in which these ruins are situated without hearing of them or suspecting
their existence. The great ruins known as Copan were in like manner
unknown in the time of Cortez. The Spaniards assaulted and captured a
native town not far from the forest that covered them, but heard nothing
of the ruins. The captured town, called Copan, afterward gave its name
to the remains of this nameless ancient city, which were first
discovered in 1576, and described by the Spanish licentiate Palacios.
This was little more than forty years after the native town was
captured; but, although Palacios tried, "in all possible ways," to get
from the older and more intelligent natives some account of the origin
and history of the ruined city, they could tell him nothing about it.
To them the ruins were entirely mythical and mysterious. With the facts
so accessible, and the antiquity of the ruins so manifest, it is very
singular that Mr. Stephens fell into the mistake of confounding this
ruined city, situated in an old forest that was almost impenetrable,
with the town captured by the Spaniards. The ruins here were discovered
accidentally; and to approach them it was necessary, as at Palenque, to
cut paths through the dense tropical undergrowth of the forest.
To understand the situation of most of the old ruins in Central America,
one must know something of the wild condition of the country. Mr. Squier
says:
"By far the greater proportion of the country is in its primeval state,
and covered with dense, tangled, and almost impenetrable tropical
forests, rendering fruitless all attempts at systematic investigation.
There are vast tracts untrodden by human feet, or traversed only by
Indians who have a superstitious reverence for the moss-covered and
crumbling monuments hidden in the depths of the wilderness. * * * For
these and other reasons, it will be long before the treasures of the
past, in Central America, can become fully known."
A great forest of this character covers the southern-half of Yucatan,
and extends far into Guatemala, which is half covered by it. It extends
also into Chiapa and Tabasco, and reaches into Honduras. The ruins known
as Copan and Palenque are in this forest, not far from its southern
edge. Its vast depths have never been much explored. There are ruins in
it which none but wandering natives have ever seen, and some, perhaps,
which no human foot has approached for ages. It is believed that ruins
exist in nearly every part of this vast wilderness.
According to the old Central American books and traditions, some of the
principal seats of the earliest civilization, that of the "Colhuas," was
in this forest-covered region. In their time the whole was cultivated
and filled with inhabitants. Here was a populous and important part of
the Colhuan kingdom of "Xibalba," which, after a long existence, was
broken up by the Toltecs, and which had a relation, in time, to the
Aztec dominion of Montezuma, much like that of the old monarchy of Egypt
to the kingdom of the Ptolemies.
In the time of the Spaniards there was in the forest at Lake Peten a
solitary native town, founded nearly a century previous to their time by
a Maya prince of Itza, who, with a portion of his people, fled from
Yucatan to that lonely region to escape from the disorder and bloodshed
of a civil war. This was the civil war which destroyed Mayapan, and
broke up the Maya kingdom of Yucatan. In 1695, Don Martin Ursua, a
Spanish official, built a road from Yucatan to Lake Peten, captured the
town, and destroyed it. He reported that the builders of this road found
evidence that "wrecks of ancient cities lie buried in this wilderness."
All along the route they discovered vestiges of ruins, and special
mention is made of "remains of edifices on raised terraces, deserted and
overgrown, and apparently very ancient."