It is for you, reader, to judge if such facts are worthy your consideration, and of the truthfulness of my assertion that a knowledge of the history of the primitive dwellers in these "Lands of the West" will help to raise the veil that has covered during so many centuries the origin of the first traditions of mankind. Although in the first annual report of the executive committee of the "Archæological institute of America," we read that: "The study of American archæology relates indeed to the monuments of a race that never attained to a high degree of civilization and that has left no trustworthy records of continuous history. It was a race whose intelligence was for the most part of a low order, whose sentiments and emotions were confined within a narrow range, and whose imagination was never quickened to find expression of itself in poetic or artistic forms of beauty. From what it was or what it did, nothing is to be learned that has any direct bearing on the progress of civilization." With all due respect for the learning of the gentlemen who have attached their names to so astounding an assertion, I beg to differ from their opinion expressed so emphatically. I differ because I have seen and photographed the constructions left by the mighty races that have preceded us on this continent. They have not. Because I have studied for years, _in situ_, these monuments that attest to the high civilization of their builders. They have not. Because I have learned the language in which they have consigned part at least of their history in inscriptions carved on stones, and read some of said inscriptions. They have not. Indeed, on this continent, not far from New Orleans, exist the relics of past generations which are as interesting, if not more so, as those of Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, and Italy; as deserving the attention of all students of archæology, of history, of ethnology, and philology. It is time yet to save from utter destruction the last records of ancient American history, that are crumbling every day more and more, and are being destroyed by the hand of ignorance and cupidity. A few years more, and all intelligible traces of them will have disappeared. Will nothing be done in this country to preserve what remains of the ancient American civilization? of that civilization which seems to have been the fountain-head at which the philosophers of all nations, in the remotest antiquity, have come to acquire knowledge and drink inspiration from the learning and wisdom of the Maya sages.