“ History was to us a succession of facts; empire succeeding empire, and one form of civilization another, with scarcely more connection than in the scenes of a theatre;--the great isolated fact of all being the existence of the Jews. All cosmic myths and noble conceptions of Deity and pure religious beliefs were only offshoots of Hebrew tradition. ”

“ In the course of a wandering of seven or eight centuries, it overturns and destroys everything in order to build on the ruins of ancient kingdoms its own civilization, science, and arts; it traverses all the provinces of Mexico and Central America, leaving everywhere traces of its superstitions, its culture, and its laws, sowing on its passage kingdoms and cities, whose names are forgotten to-day, but whose mysterious memorials are found again in the monuments scattered under the forest vegetation of ages and in the different languages of all the peoples of these countries."--Vol. ”

“ In the Mexican tradition, instead of the rain we find a violent eruption of the volcanoes, and men are changed into fishes, and again into _chicime_,--which may designate the barbarian tribes that invaded Central America.
In still another tradition, the Deity and his associates are more plainly men of superior intelligence, laboring to civilize savage races; and finally, when they cannot inspire two essential elements of civilization,--a taste for labor, and the religious idea,--a sudden inundation delivers them from the indocile people. ”

“ The various traditions agree that this elevated being, the father of American civilization, inculcated first of all a belief in a Supreme Creator, Lord of Heaven and Earth. It is a singular fact, that the ancient Quiche tradition represents the Deity as a Triad, or Trinity, with the deified heroes arranged in orders below,--a representation not improbably connected with the Hindoo conception. The belief in a Supreme Being seems to have been generally diffused among the Central American and Mexican tribes, even as late as the arrival of the Spaniards. ”

“ The world wakes to find itself much older than it thought. History is hardly the same study that it once was. Even more than the investigations of hieroglyphs and bass-reliefs and sculptures, during the past few years, have the researches in one especial direction changed the face of the ancient world.
LANGUAGE is found to be itself the best record of a nation's origin, development, and relation to other races. ”

“ The most ancient language of Central America, the ground on which all the succeeding languages have been planted, is the Maya. Even the Indian languages of to-day are only combinations of their own idioms with this ancient tongue. Its daughter, the Tzendale, transmits many of the oldest and most interesting religious beliefs of the Indian tribes.
All the traditions, whether in the Quiche, the Mexican, or the Tzendale, unite in one somewhat remarkable belief,--in the reverent mention of an ancient Deliverer or Benefactor ”

“ Sometimes he appears as a wise and dignified legislator, arrived suddenly among an ignorant people from an unknown country, to instruct them in agriculture, the arts, and even in religion. He bears suffering in their behalf, patiently labors for them, and, when at length he has done his work, departs alone from amid the weeping crowd to the country of his birth. ”

“ Each vocabulary and grammar of a dead nation is a Nineveh, rich in pictures, inscriptions, and historical records, uncovering to the patient investigator not merely the external life and actions of the people, but their deepest internal life, and their connection with other peoples and times. ”

“ A singular characteristic of the ancient Indian legends is the mingling of two separate courses of tradition. In their poetic conceptions, and perhaps under the hands of their priests, the old myths of the Creation are constantly confused with the accounts of the first periods of their civilization. ”

“ This race was continually driven towards the South by more savage tribes, and it at length reached its favorite seats and the height of its civilization in Central America. In comparing the similar monuments of Southern Siberia, and the dates of the immigration to the Aztec plateau, with those of the first movements of the Huns and the great revolutions in Asia, an indication is given, worthy of being followed up by the ethnologist, of the Asiatic origin of the Central American tribes. The traditions, monuments, customs, mythology, and astronomic systems all point to a similar source. ”

“ He has ventured to lift, at length, the veil from our mysterious and confused American antiquity. It is an especial merit of M. de Bourbourg, in this stage of the investigation, that he has attempted to do no more. He has collected and collated facts, but has sought to give us very few theories. The stable philosophical conclusions he leaves for later research, when time shall have been afforded for fuller comparison.
There is an incredible fascination to many minds in these investigations into the traditions and beliefs of antiquity. We feel in their presence that they are the oldest things ”

“ In the passage of man from one hemisphere to another he sees no difficulty; as, without considering Behring's Strait, the voyage, from Mantchooria, or Japan, following the chain of the Koorile and the Aleutian Isles, even to the Peninsula of Alaska, would be an enterprise of no great hazard.
The traditions of the Indian tribes, as well as their monumental inscriptions, point to an Eastern origin. From whatever direction the particular tribe may have emigrated, they always speak of their fathers as having come from the rising of the sun. ”

“ Without committing himself to a theory, M. de Bourbourg supposes that one race--the Quiche--has passed through the whole North American continent, erecting at different stages of its civilization those gigantic and mysterious pyramids, the _tumuli_ of the Mississippi Valley,--of whose origin the present Northern Indian tribes have preserved no trace, and for whose erection no single American tribe now would have the wealth or the superfluous labor. ”

“ They represent the childish instincts of the human mind,--its _gropings_ after Truth,--its dim ideals and shadowings forth of what it hopes will be. They are the earliest answers of man to the great questions, WHENCE and WHITHER?
* * * * The most ancient people of Central America, according to M. de Bourbourg,--a people referred to in all the oldest traditions, but of whom everything except the memory has passed away,--are the Quinames. Their rule extended over Mexico and Guatemala, and there is reason to suppose that they attained to a considerable height of civilization. ”

“ Fruits are in abundance, but there is no grain which requires culture, and which would give origin to a continued industry. The legend relates, somewhat naively, the hunger and distress of these elevated beings, until at length they discover the maize, and other nutritious fruits and grains in the county of Paxil and Cayala. ”

“ The thorough study of the aboriginal races reveals the fact, that the whole continent, from the Arctic regions to the Southern Pole, was divided irregularly between two distinct families;--one nomadic and savage, the other agricultural and semi-civilized ”