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RAMBLES IN YUCATAN.*

ACCORDING to the cyclical theory of historical interpretation, which was formerly very fashionable, and which prevails extensively even in our day, the history of nations is nothing but a record of successive revolutions. They move in their appointed courses like the heavenly bodies, through the several phases of rise, progress, and decline, -their morning, noon, and night;with this difference, however, from their type, that the nation is supposed to disappear at night, and its place to be supplied in the horizon by a new people and a new civilisation. The friends of this doctrine of course reject the theory of progress entirely. They see in the increased experience of nations, in the multiplied experiments in government and in life, which are treasured up in history and in the memories of men, no enlarged capabilities for happiness, nor any new sources of enjoyment which are not counterbalanced by a corresponding increase of susceptibility to the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." To such this life offers no future. They anticipate for their form of civilisation no immunity from the disastrous fate with which elder nations have been visited.

We need not say that we entertain no sympathy with this mode of interpret ing the history of the past. We are willing to admit that the progress of civilisation has been revolutionary; but not that its advance, like the moon's, has been "but its progress to decay." We venture to believe that the forms of organized society may have died out, their constitutions, their laws, their social and political customs may have perished, or have undergone complete transmutation-but the important principle which it had been the mission of each nation to evolve, has been preserved and bequeathed to the world. Nay, we believe, farther, that a careful student of history may measure and prove the value of the bequests by comparing

the colonial civilisations with the parent, throughout the ancient world. It is our firm persuasion that the history of no nation or people that has been preserved conflicts with the correctness of the progressive theory of man, to which we have so frequently avowed our allegiance.

Having thus renewed our profession of faith, we wish to add that in our opinion by far the most serious and formidable difficulty that the ingenuity of man has yet been able to array against our favorite view of this subject is to be found, not in the decayed and ruined institutions of what writers have been pleased to call the Old World,-not that Thebes and Palmyra, and Antioch and Petræa should be in ruins, and that wild Arabs should lie down at night with their camels in the deserted halls which once blazed with the magnificence of mighty kings. We know for what those cities have been exchanged. They have left their sign upon the institutions of posterity. We can now look over the earth and behold the heirs of all that ancient glory, might, majesty, and dominion. History shows us the processes, too, of its transmission, and assures us that nothing material was lost in the descent. But what has become of the multitudinous races of men who once inhabited the American continent, the only memorials of whose existence now remaining were written upon the surface of the earth probably more than three thousand years ago? What has become of the builders and inhabitants of those stupendous ruins which perchance were antiquities when the shepherd's hut of Faustulus was the only habitation of man to be seen over all those seven hills which were one day to sustain upon their ample shoulders the great city of the Cæsars? Ruins of temples which may have been historical when Solomon was laying the foundations of the first

* Rambles in Yucatan; including a Visit to the Remarkable Ruins of Chi-Chen, Kabah, Zayi, and Uxmal. By a Modern Antiquary. New York: J. and H. G. Langley. 1842.

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What, we ask again, has become of all that life, that power, that skill, that genius, which must have presided over the civilisation of ANCIENT AMERICA, and which the earth alone has been able to remember? We look in vain among the present aborigines of this continent for any trace of a forming and progressive civilisation. On the contrary, centuries of spontaneous growth and development, if unassisted by the instruction of foreign nations, must elapse before the Indian of North or South America can approach in cultivation and refinement those whom we are compelled to consider his progenitors on this continent. Where, we ask, or to whom has their wisdom been bequeathed? If their national life and decease was but preparatory to a new and more extended civilisation, where is the final result? We confess that these questions are not free from embarrassment to the doctrine of progress. We can only answer that it is more probable that the theory should be correct with all the facts in its favor but one, and that the exception should be apparent only, than that its inconsistency with all the facts but one should be only apparent, and that it should ultimately prove to be altogether erroneous.

We have been led into this train of thought by the perusal of a work, the title of which we have placed at the head of this article. The author, with a very becoming though quite unnecessary modesty, has concealed his name under the nom-de-guerre of "A Modern Antiquary." The merit of his work is such, that we should not probably have hesitated to invade the sanctity of the author's baptismal privileges, so far as to announce his name to the world, had we no other justifi

cation; but the public having been already made acquainted with Mr. Norman through other channels, we feel no hesitation now in speaking of himself and his valuable book with as much freedom, as if his name appeared in the title page.

Mr. Norman tells us, that he sailed from New Orleans in the month of November, 1841, with the intention of passing the winter in the warm climate of some of the Central American Islands. In the progress of his travels, he is induced to change his destination for Yucatan. He arrives at Sisal, a seaport town, on the western coast of that province, on the twentieth of December. He passes four months travelling about in the interior of the country, and the sights which his eyes there saw, and the wonders of which his ears there heard, are the burden of the book before us. We feel that we can do no more acceptable service to our readers, few of whom can yet have had access to this very interesting book, than to give a digest of its contents, among which will be found details scarcely less extraordinary than the startling revelations of Belzoni himself.

To gather some idea of the spirit with which Mr. Norman started upon his excursion, we extract the following paragraph from his opening chapter:

"The prospect of leaving one's country for a season, affects different people in very different ways. To some, it suggests only the loss of friends, and the want made to them the necessaries of life. By of the conveniences which habit may have their formidable equipments, their groaning trunks, and systematic leave-takings, they intimate a foregone conclusion, that every nation except their own is peopled with Ishmaelites, whose hands are ever raised against the rest of mankind. There is another class, who have faith in man wherever he exists, and who rely upon the permanence of the laws of Nature; who do not imagine that a man is necessarily a cannibal or a troglodyte because born in a different degree of latitude, nor that water will refuse to run down hill at a fidence in the uniformity of Nature's laws, foreigner's request. Through their conthey feel it unnecessary to equip themselves for a campaign into chaos when they leave their native land, always presuming mote from the illuminating centres of civievery corner of this planet, however re

lisation, to be possessed of some of the elements of existence, such as air, fire, water, &c., which a traveller may spare himself the trouble of bringing from home in his trunk. With the latter class, kind reader, the author of the following notes deserves to be associated, He would require nothing but a valise to contain his outfit for a circumnavigation of the globe, and would include the moon in his circuit, if practicable, without materially enlarging his equipage, except, perhaps, by some device that would diminish the inconveniences of a rarefied atmosphere. This faith in the future, this trust in the resources which a mind of ordinary intelligence can always command under any sun and in any clime, sustained the writer in his determination, last fall, to visit some of the islands of the West India seas, almost without notice, and with scarcely more preparation than a domestic man would deem essential for an absence from home of a single week. The cork legged merchant of Rotterdam did not commence his journeyings more unexpectedly to himself, nor less formidably panoplied against the emergencies of his adventurous tour. To the writer's unpreparedness, a term which, in such cases, usually signifies freedom from anxiety, he, feels indebted for most of the pleasure which this excursion has afforded him; and he has only cause to regret the want of more elaborate preparation, inasmuch as it may have deprived these pages of a portion of their interest and value."

Sisal, the place at which Mr. Norman disembarked, is the second port of the province, and during the prevalence of the northerly winds unsafe. It has about one thousand inhabitants, compounded of Indians and Mexicans. He left the second day after his arrival for Merida, the capital of the country, and thirty-six miles from Sisal. Of Merida he thus discourses:

"Merida, the capital of Yucatan, is situated about the twenty-first degree of north latitude, and is elevated some twenty-five feet above the level of the sea. The thermometer ranges at about eighty of Fahrenheit, and the maximum length of the days is nearly thirteen hours. The city was built upon the ruins of an Indian town, which was destroyed by the Spaniards in their superstitious zeal, so madly manifested in the destruction of everything throughout Mexico that was found belonging to the people whom they had conquered. The present population is calculated at twenty thousand, the ma

jority of whom are Indians and halfbreeds.

"The city was founded in 1542. From the few scattered facts which have been handed down to us by history, we gather that, prior to the Spanish conquest, there existed in Yucatan a people of an origin remote and unknown, who were under the subjection of rulers, with fixed prineiples of law and order; had passed through the ordinary vicissitudes of nations, and finished their career by losing, at once, their liberty and their dominions. The triumphant forces of the Spaniards having obtained full possession of the country, the church came in to execute its part; and their language, manners, customs, and religion, were disseminated by the steady and persevering arm of Catholic power and management, To complete the work, everything that had a tendency to remind the vanquished of the past, was obliterated, in accordance with the grovelling policy or the blind fanaticism that marked the times. Ancient pictorial and hieroglyphical manuscripts were burnt; their idols, images, and planispheres, were destroyed, and their temples and cities were razed to the ground. It is melancholy to reflect that a chasm has thus been made in the early history of the country, which the historian must despair of ever seeing filled up.

"Merida, since it was rebuilt, has not rendered itself in anywise historical. Its remote and isolated position has prevented its participation, to any extent, in the political struggles which have marked the history of the city of Mexico; and the inselves of their peace and political comhabitants appear to have availed themposure by a cultivation of letters, and certainly unsurpassed in any province of general mental cultivation, to an extent Mexico."

The author then speaks of the streets, the squares, which throughout the province are sadly neglected; the markets, the trade, the climate, the public buildings, &c. &c. Upon the subject of trade throughout Yucatan, he seems to have but one opinion, that it is trifling, and under the influence of the Yucatan climate and government, must continue trifling.

He illustrates the business activity of Merida, by stating that he has frequently in crossing the great public square, disturbed the buzzard and killdeer at noon day. The trades and professions are mostly filled by half-breeds and Indians; and whenever an article is to be made to order, a portion—about

one half-of the purchase money must be paid in advance, that the contractor may be in funds to purchase stock. Men do the millinery and mantuamaking work for the other sex, and ladies' dresses are suspended upon the door-ways of the houses, to attract a kind of custom which with us is wholly engrossed by the fairer sex. Manufactories are nowhere to be seen; the clatter of the loom, or the noise of the hammer, never disturbs the streets of Merida.

"Commercial transactions are limited to the supply of retail dealers in the city and country. The principal articles of trade are dry goods, imported from England and France, by the way of the Balize and Havana. The exportation of the products of the country is conducted through the same channel; but owing to the poverty of the soil, and the supineness of the people, it is likewise very circumscribed. On the whole, so far as my personal observation has yet extended, the land presents a barrenness of appearance which offers few of those inducements that have been held out for emigration, either to the husbandman or the

mechanic.

"The agricultural products of Yucatan are numerous. Corn, resembling that of New England, which constitutes one of the principal articles of food, and from which tortillas are prepared, is raised here in great abundance. Also black beans, so well known to travellers by the name of frejoles, constitute an agricultural staple of the country. Heniken is cultivated, and prepared for exportation, to a considerable extent. It is known in the United States as Sisal hemp,' and takes its name from the port whence it is shipped. It is indigenous, and grows upon a rocky and apparently barren soil to the height of about twelve feet, from a short rough trunk. It is cut at a certain period, and the fibres drawn out and dried, after which it is prepared and put up for the market. Sugar and cotton are raised in some of the eastern districts; but very little attention is paid to their cultivation beyond the small demand for the home consumption. Hats, from the leaf of the palm, are manufactured in the interior in large quantities for exportation, and are shipped at Campeachy. They are known in our market as the Campeachy hat.'

"Some idea of the wealth or poverty of a country may be formed from an acquaintance with its currency. Silver is the basis of the circulation of Yucatan, of which the Spanish sixpence is the small

est. A fractional sort of change, however, is represented by the seeds of the cacao, two hundred and fifty grains of which are considered equal to sixpence. Of these, five grains constitute the smallest amount ever received in trade. In some of the provinces of the Mexican confederacy, pieces of soap pass as a circulating medium, and lose none of their estithe balance of exchange should not be mated value for a few washings, provided such as to carry it out of the district where it is known. The great scarcity of money tends to reduce everything else in an equal ratio. Servants' wages are from three to five dollars a month, and those of mechanics are at a proportionate rate. Rents are almost a nominal charge. This is partially produced by the number of untenanted buildings that are decaying without occupants."

Speaking of the church of Jesus, which is attached to a monastery of Jesuits, our traveller takes occasion to describe one of the ceremonies which is, we believe, peculiar to the church at Merida, but which might by some be thought worth propagating. It was at vespers; the congregation being composed mostly of Indians:

"After the usual ceremonies were concluded, a large Indian prostrated himself upon the floor before the altar, carefully adjusted his limbs, and laid himself out, as if he were preparing for burial. Men, with coils of rope about their heads, representing crowns of thorns, dressed in loose garments, and bending under the weight of a heavy cross, then entered and tottered up the aisles. A cross and skull were then passed around; the bearer repeating in Latin as they were handed to be kissed,This is the death, and this is the judgment!' When this form had been concluded, we were all supplied with whips, (I declined to avail myself of their politeness), the lights were extinguished, and all was darkness. Nothing was visible but the gigantic windows, and the outlines of the stupendous arches and fretted walls above us. The chamber of death was never more silent than was that church for the moment. While I was speculating upon what would probably occur next in the order of exercises, my meditations were suddenly interrupted by the sounds of stripes rising and echoing through every part of the vast edifice. That there was whipping going on, I had no doubt; but whether each did his own whipping, or had it done by his neighbors, I was, for some time, unable to satisfy

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