Daylight was nearly gone, and it soon became impossible to see anything with distinctness. For the first time, the peculiarity of my lonely situation forced itself upon my attention. I was alone with the Carib boy. I had not even brought my side-arms with me, and I know that it was now too late to make any attempt to escape through the forest. The idea of returning by the subterranean aqueduct never crossed my mind as a possibility; for my nerves flinched at the bare thought of the shrill whistle of Pio, and the mysterious obedience of the stones. Whilst revolving these unpleasant ideas through my brain, the boy approached me respectfully, opened a small knapsack that I had not before observed he carried, and offered me some food. Hungry and fatigued as I was, I could not eat; the same peculiar smile passed over his features; he rose and left me for a moment, returned, and offered me a gourd of water. After drinking, I felt greatly refreshed, and endeavored to draw my companion into a conversation. But all to no purpose. He soon fell asleep, and I too, ere long, was quietly reposing in the depths of the forest. It may seem remarkable that the ruins of _Casa Grande_ have never been discovered, as yet, by professional travelers. But it requires only a slight acquaintance with the characteristics of the surrounding country, and a peep into the intricacies of a tropical forest, to dispel at once all wonder on this subject. These ruins are situated about five miles in a westerly direction from those known as _El Palacio_, and originally constituted a part of the same city. They are as much more grand and extensive than those of _El Palacio_ as those are than the remains at Uxmal, or Copan. In fact, they are gigantic, and reminded me forcibly of the great Temple of Karnak, on the banks of the Nile. But they lie buried in the fastnesses of a tropical forest. One half of them is entombed in a sea of vegetation, and it would require a thousand men more than a whole year to clear away the majestic groves that shoot up like sleepless sentinels from court-yard and corridor, send their fantastic roots into the bedchamber of royalty, and drop their annual foliage upon pavements where princes once played in their infancy, and courtiers knelt in their pride. A thousand vines and parasites are climbing in every direction, over portal and pillar, over corridor and sacrificial shrine. So deeply shrouded in vegetation are these awful memorials of dead dynasties, that a traveler might approach within a few steps of the pyramidal mound, upon which they are built, and yet be totally unaware of their existence. I cannot convey a better idea of the difficulties attending a discovery and explanation of these ruins than to quote what Mr. Stephens has said of _El Palacio_. "The whole country for miles around is covered by a dense forest of gigantic trees, with a growth of brush and underwood unknown in the wooded deserts of our own