migration of the Maya family from the north toward the south. Support is given to this by their dialect, which is most closely akin to that of the Tzendals of Tabasco, the nearest Maya race to the south of them, and also by very ancient traditions of the Aztecs. It is noteworthy that these two partially civilized races, the Mayas and the Aztecs, though differing radically in language, had legends which claimed a community of origin in some indefinitely remote past. We find these on the Maya side narrated in the sacred book of the Kiches, the Popol Vuh, in the Cakchiquel 'Records of Tecpan Atillan,' and in various pure Maya sources. ... The annals of the Aztecs contain frequent allusions to the Huastecs." _D. G. Brinton, The Maya Chronicles, introduction._ "Closely enveloped in the dense forests of Chiapas, Gautemala, Yucatan, and Honduras, the ruins of several ancient cities have been discovered, which are far superior in extent and magnificence to any seen in Aztec territory, and of which a detailed description may be found in the fourth volume of this work. Most of these cities were abandoned and more or less unknown at the time of the [Spanish] Conquest. They bear hieroglyphic inscriptions apparently identical in character; in other respects they resemble each other more than they resemble the Aztec ruins--or even other and apparently later works in Guatemala and Honduras. All these remains bear evident marks of great antiquity. ... I deem the grounds sufficient ... for accepting this Central American civilization of the past as a fact, referring it not to an extinct ancient race, but to the direct ancestors of the peoples still occupying the country with the Spaniards, and applying to it the name Maya as that of the language which has claims as strong as any to be considered the mother tongue of the linguistic family mentioned. ... There are no data by which to fix the period of the original Maya empire, or its downfall or breaking up into rival factions by civil and foreign wars. The cities of Yucatan, as is clearly shown by Mr. Stephens, were, many of them, occupied by the descendants of the builders down to the conquest, and contain some remnants of wood-work still in good preservation, although some of the structures appear to be built on the ruins of others of a somewhat different type. Palenque and Copan, on the contrary, have no traces of wood or other perishable material, and were uninhabited and probably unknown in the 16th century. The loss of the key to what must have been an advanced system of hieroglyphics, while the spoken language survived, is also an indication of great antiquity, confirmed by the fact that the Quiché structures of Guatemala differed materially from those of the more ancient epoch. It is not likely that the Maya empire in its integrity continued later