THE next morning, however, I was in better luck. I came unexpectedly upon a raccoon and secured him with my pistol and, a little later, I found a huge land tortoise. I dined well, and feeling much better, swung on down the valley. To my delight I now found I had passed beyond the volcanoes, and somehow I had a feeling that I was nearing the end of my journey. I had been puzzled many times at not having found any traces of the country ever having been inhabited. There had been no signs of Indians, no ruins, no monuments, not even inscribed rocks since we had passed that great statue of Chac-Mool in the pool of the crocodiles. If in the long ago the Mayas had passed this way, surely, I thought, they would have left some traces. Hardly had the thought crossed my mind when, rising above the trees ahead, I saw the remains of stone buildings. The ruins were in bad shape, the walls had fallen apart, but they were unquestionably ancient Mayan. But there was one thing about them that puzzled me. In several places were sculptured figures and symbols unlike anything I had ever seen, and in one doorway was a true arch. The Mayas, I knew, had never--as far as known--discovered the arch. They joined their walls either by “stepping in” the stones until they met, or they connected them by means of wooden beams or lintels of stone. But here was an arch, without a keystone to be sure, formed of stones cemented together, and that still remained, though the walls about it had crumbled and fallen. I had made an epochal discovery--though it was of little value to me or to the scientific world, but it whetted my desire to find the hidden city. If the ruins I was examining were the remains of the work of the people of Mictolan--as I felt sure they were--then those people had developed beyond the other Mayas and, in the many centuries that had passed since they had been separated from the rest of their race, they might have reached most astounding heights and have made most remarkable discoveries.