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Read Ebook: Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Thackeray by Thackeray William Makepeace Widger David Editor
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Transcriber's Note
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. A list of corrections is found at the end of the text. Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been maintained. A list of inconsistently spelled and hyphenated words is found at the end of the text.
Oe ligatures have been expanded.
MEMOIR OF AN EVENTFUL EXPEDITION IN CENTRAL AMERICA;
In an unexplored region; and the possession of two
REMARKABLE AZTEC CHILDREN,
Descendants and Specimens of the Sacerdotal Caste, of the Ancient Aztec Founders of the Ruined Temples of that Country,
DESCRIBED BY
JOHN L. STEVENS, ESQ., AND OTHER TRAVELLERS.
NEW YORK: E. F. Applegate, Printer, 111 Nassau Street. 1850.
While writing his "Narrative" after his return to San Salvador, in the spring of the present year, Senor Velasquez was favored, by an American gentleman of that city, with a copy of "Layard's Nineveh," and was forcibly struck with the close characteristic resemblance of the faces in many of its engravings to those of the inhabitants in general, as a peculiar family of mankind, both of Iximaya and its surrounding region. The following are sketches, of two of the male faces to which he refers:
And the following profile, from the same work, is pronounced by Velasquez to be equally characteristic of the female faces of that region, making due allowance for the superb head dresses of tropical plumage, with which he describes the latter as being adorned, instead of the male galea, or close cap, retained in the engraving.
It should have been stated in the following Memoir, that Senor Velasquez, on his return to San Salvador, caused the two Kaana children to be baptized into the Catholic Church, by the Bishop of the Diocese, under the names of Maximo and Bartola Velasquez.
MEMOIR OF A RECENT EVENTFUL EXPEDITION IN CENTRAL AMERICA.
The Padre averred that, in younger days, he had climbed to the topmost ridge of the sierra, a height of 10 or 12,000 feet, and from its naked summit, looking over an immense plain, extending to Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico, had seen, with his own eyes, in the remote distance, "a large city, spread over a great space, with turrets white and glittering in the sun." His account of the prevalent Indian report concerning it was, that no white man had ever reached that city; that the inhabitants, who speak the Maya language, are aware that a race of white strangers has conquered the whole country around them, and have hence murdered every white man that has since attempted to penetrate their territory. He added that they have no coin or other circulating medium; no horses, mules, or other domestic animals, except fowls, "and keep the cocks under ground to prevent their crowing being heard." This report of their slender resources for animal food, and of their perpetual apprehension of discovery, as indicated in this inadequate and childish expedient to prevent it, is, in most respects, contradicted by that of the adventurous expedition about to be described, and which, having passed the walls of their city, obtained better information of their internal economy and condition than could have been acquired by any Indians at all likely to hold communication with places so very remote from the territory as Quiche or Chajul.
The effects of these extraordinary averments and recitals of the Padre, upon the mind of Mr. Stevens, together with the deliberate conclusions which he finally drew from them, is best expressed in his own language.
"The interest awakened in us, was the most thrilling I ever experienced. One look at that city, was worth ten years of an every day life. If he is right, a place is left where Indians and a city exist, as Cortez and Alvarado found them; there are living men who can solve the mystery that hangs over the ruined cities of America; who can, perhaps, go to Copan and read the inscriptions on its monuments. No subject more exciting and attractive presents itself to any mind, and the deep impression in my mind, will never be effaced.
It is now known that two intrepid young men, incited probably by this identical passage in Mr. Stevens's popular work--one a Mr. Huertis, of Baltimore, an American of Spanish parents, from Cuba, possessing an ample fortune, and who had travelled much in Egypt, Persia, and Syria, for the personal inspection of ancient monuments; and the other, a Mr. Hammond, a civil-engineer from Canada, who had been engaged for some years on surveys in the United States, agreed to undertake the perilous and romantic enterprise thus cautiously suggested and chivalrously portrayed.
Amply equipped with every desirable appointment, including daguerreotype apparatuses, mathematical instruments, and withal fifty repeating rifles, lest it should become necessary to resort to an armed expedition, these gentlemen sailed from New-Orleans and arrived at Belize, in the fall of 1848. Here they procured horses, mules, and a party of ten experienced Indians and Mestitzos; and after pursuing a route, through a wild, broken, and heavily wooded region, for about 150 miles, on the Gulf of Amatique, they struck off more to the south-west, for Coban, where they arrived on the morning of Christmas day, in time to partake of the substantial enjoyments, as well as to observe the peculiar religious ceremonies, of the great Catholic festival, in that intensely interior city.
In order, however, to avoid an anticipator
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