Mr. Frank Cushing, who was commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution, at Washington, to make a study of their customs and manners, has been adopted by the tribe, and has now become one of their most influential chiefs. Among the many interesting things discovered by him, not the least is the existence of _twelve sacred orders_, with their priests, their initiations, their sacred rites, as carefully guarded as the secrets of the ancient sacred mysteries to which they bear great resemblance. He has been initiated into many of them, having had to submit to ordeals almost as severe as those of Xibalba from which no doubt they are derived, having been brought among them by Maya colonists and afterward Nahualt invaders. The Nahualts invaded and for a long time held sway over Mexico and some of the northern portions of Central America. The aborigines of those countries at last expelled them from their territories, when they scattered in all directions, about the beginning of the Christian era. Some reached as far north as the gulf of California and Arizona. The Yaqui Indians, neighbors of the Mayos, and who inhabit the countries watered by the rivers Yaqui and Mayo in Sonora, are descendants of a Nahualt tribe, from which in all probability, the adjoining nations, the inhabitants of the seven cities of Cibola, the Zuñis among them, learned many of their religious practices; and the institution of the _twelve_ sacred orders, that recall the _twelve_ priests who presided at the initiation into the sacred mysteries at Xibalba. Seeking for the origin of the institution of the sacred mysteries, of which Masonry seems to be the great-grandchild, following their vestiges from country to country, we have been brought over the vast expanse of the blue sea, to this western continent, to these mysterious "Lands of the West" where the souls of all good men, the Egyptians believed, dwelt among the blessed. It is, therefore, in that country, where Osiris was said to reign supreme, that we may expect to find the true signification of the symbols held sacred by the initiates in all countries, in all times, and which have reached us, through the long vista of ages, still surrounded by the veil, well-nigh impenetrable, of mystery woven round them by their inventors. My long researches among the ruins of the ancient temples and palaces of the Mayas, have been rewarded by learning at the fountain-head the esoteric meaning of some at least of the symbols, the interpretation of which has puzzled many a wise head—the origin of the mystification and symbolism of the numbers 3, 5, and 7.