Produced by Julia Miller and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) 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; RESULTING IN THE DISCOVERY OF THE IDOLATROUS CITY OF IXIMAYA, In an unexplored region; and the possession of two REMARKABLE AZTEC CHILDREN, Descendants and Specimens of the Sacerdotal Caste, (now nearly extinct,) of the Ancient Aztec Founders of the Ruined Temples of that Country, DESCRIBED BY JOHN L. STEVENS, ESQ., AND OTHER TRAVELLERS. Translated from the Spanish of PEDRO VELASQUEZ, of SAN SALVADOR. NEW YORK: E. F. Applegate, Printer, 111 Nassau Street. 1850. PROFILE ILLUSTRATIONS FROM CENTRAL AMERICAN RUINS, OF ANCIENT RACES STILL EXISTING IN IXIMAYA. [Illustration] The above three figures, sketched from engravings in "Stevens's Central America," will be found, on personal comparison, to bear a remarkable and convincing resemblance, both in the general features and the position of the head, to the two living Aztec children, now exhibiting in the United States, of the ancient sacerdotal caste of _Kaanas_, or Pagan Mimes, of which a few individuals remain in the newly discovered city of Iximaya. See, the following _Memoir_, page 31. [Illustration] These two figures, sketched from the same work, are said, by Senor Velasquez, in the unpublished portion of his narrative, to be "irresistible likenesses" of the equally exclusive but somewhat more numerous priestly caste of _Mahaboons_, still existing in that city, and to which belonged Vaalpeor, an official guardian of those children, as mentioned in this memoir. Velasquez states that the likeness of Vaalpeor to the right hand figure in the frontispiece of Stevens' second volume, which is here also the one on the right hand, was as exact, in outline, as if the latter had been a daguerreotype miniature. While writing his "Narrative" after his return to San Salvador, in the spring of the present year, (1850,) 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, (somewhat imperfect,) of two of the male faces to which he refers: [Illustration]