ANCIENT REMAINS IN YUCATAN AND CHIAPAS. The physical description of these two States, presented in the preceding pages, will have satisfied the reader that they possess a prolific soil and an agreeable climate which would probably attract a large population had they been properly explored and developed by an energetic race. We are sustained in this belief by the fact, that in these States travellers have found the most remarkable remains of an advanced ancient civilization hitherto discovered on our continent. What has existed may exist again under the benignant influence of modern progress; nor is it improbable that as human interests direct the attention of maritime or emigrating nations towards the central portions of the western continent, Yucatan and Chiapas may again become the seat of a population even larger than that which thronged it during the palmy days anterior to the Spanish conquest. Since the year 1840 three important works have been published in this country relative to these ancient remains of towns, temples, cities, idols and monuments. Two of these are due to the pen and pencil of Mr. John L. Stephens and Mr. Catherwood, while the other and slighter production is the result of a hasty visit paid to Yucatan by Mr. B. M. Norman. These three publications, plentifully illustrated by accurate engravings of the ruins and remains, have been so widely disseminated throughout Europe and America that readers are already familiar with them. In the "long, irregular and devious route" pursued by Stephens and Catherwood, they "discovered the crumbling remains of _fifty-four ancient cities, most of them but a short distance apart_, though, from the great change that has taken place in the country, and the breaking up of the old roads, having no direct communication with each other. With but few exceptions, all were lost, buried and unknown, never before visited by a stranger, and some of them, perhaps, never looked upon by the eyes of a white man." Leaving Guatemala, the travellers encountered, in Chiapas, remarkable remains at Ocozingo and Palenque; and passing thence into Yucatan, in their second journey to those central regions, they explored and described the architectural and monumental relics at Maxcanu, Uxmal, Sacbey, Xampon, Sanacte, Chunhuhu, Labpahk, Iturbide, Mayapan, San Francisco, Ticul, Nochacab, Xoch, Kabah, Sabatsche, Labna, Kenick, Izamal, Saccacal, Tekax, Akil, Mani, Macoba, Becanchen, Peto, Chichen, in the interior; and at Tuloom, Tancar, and in the Island of Cozumel on the eastern coast.