A portion of the ruins which are noticed in detail in the following pages had never been visited, to the author’s knowledge, by any modern traveller before his arrival. Others, which had been summarily alluded to, he has portrayed as elaborately and adequately as his circumstances and scientific qualifications would admit; and, he has no hesitation in saying, far more minutely than they had ever before been described. In corroboration of these remarks, he ventures to call the reader’s attention to the chapters which include the ruins of Chi-Chen, of Kahbah, Zayi, and Uxmal, of which cities, the last only excepted—to which Mr. Stephens devotes a few sentences near the conclusion of his recent popular work upon this subject—no other published accounts, it is believed, have appeared. The author avails himself of the present opportunity to make those acknowledgments to the people of Yucatan which could not be incorporated with propriety in the body of his work. He feels himself under grateful obligations for the uniform kindness which he received at their hands; and he begs to assure those of his American friends who may feel disposed to visit the province of Yucatan, that whatever inconveniences they may experience indirectly from an unfavorable climate and an unsettled political organization, they may count upon meeting, among the higher ranks of the Yucatecos, a kindliness of feeling and a spontaneity of hospitality which will compare favorably with their experience in any other portion of the globe. In acknowledging his obligations to the friends who have assisted him in the preparation of these pages, he would be guilty of great injustice did he not tender his most sincere thanks to an American gentleman, who has long resided in Yucatan, to whom he is indebted for most of the facts connected with the political history of that country, which are embodied in the thirteenth chapter. The long residence of that gentleman in the country, and his evident familiarity with its political history, give the author reason to rely implicitly upon his acquaintance with the subject, as well as upon his fidelity as an historian. The author regrets that he is not permitted to give the name of the gentleman to whose aid he is indebted for the philological remarks contained in the fourteenth chapter, which he ventures to believe will prove to the scholar and the antiquarian not the least interesting feature of the work. It has been the author’s intention upon all occasions to acknowledge his indebtedness to any preceding or cotemporary writer in appropriate modes and places in the text, and he believes that he has seldom failed in his aim; at the same time, he feels that to Waldeck, a distinguished French traveller, who spent a number of years in Central America and Yucatan, his obligations are of a character not to be passed over without a special acknowledgment.