hand down to the younger ones in their strange Tarascan speech. They are tenacious of their manners and customs, and preserve in their church festivals the forms and rites which the early priests allowed them to transfer from their old religion to the ceremonials of the newly acquired Catholic faith. The Tarascans are skilful in carving in bone. They make tiny boxes, neatly fitted with lock and key, of wood. Their canoes are dug out of tree-trunks, and they kill the wild fowl which swarm and herd in quantities upon their lake, with a long wooden javelin hurled with skill. Their pottery, like that of all the Mexicans, is simple in design, graceful in form, and tasteful in color. From time immemorial they have possessed the knowledge of handling clay and making their utensils of it. Such are the descendants of the old Tarascan tribes, little changed as yet by the changes of government that have swept over their country since the invasion of the Conquistadores. VIII. MAYAS. There is another race of which something must be said before we begin upon the Aztecs, that branch of the Nahuatl family which took the leading part in the struggle with the Conquistadores. Although the Mayan civilization was established outside the limits of the present Mexico, it is necessary to know something of it in connection with the other tribes who built up the civilization of Anahuac. The Mayas are thought to have been the earliest of the Nahuatl family to migrate from their northern home. Their language differs from the other Nahua dialects, and so do their traditions, monuments, and hieroglyphics, but these differences were probably caused by the difference in time in the departure of these races from their common starting-point. The resemblance outweighs the disparity, and we can only imagine that the deviations were caused by a long separation from the original stock. Their descendants live in Yucatan, and the early monuments of the Mayas are found in that country and its neighborhood. [Illustration: CASA DEL GOBERNADOR, UXMAL.] They are supposed to have migrated from the shores of the Atlantic to the region now the state of Chiapas, the farthest south of all the states, adjoining Guatemala, in the midst of a rich and fertile country. Their empire grew to be one of great importance, so that at one time even the proud Tula was tributary to it. It extended over the greater part of Central America. Mayapan and Copan were the other chief tribes of their confederacy, of which Nachan, or Town of Serpents, was the capital or chief. This great city was already in ruins, buried in the thick wilderness, its site and very existence forgotten before the arrival of the Conquistadores. Cortés must have marched close to it once when he was on his way to Honduras, but he probably had no notion of its existence. The ruins were discovered by chance in the middle of the eighteenth century, by a curate of the little town Palenque in the neighborhood.