From Vera Cruz, the first city they built in the reputed new world, at the head of the Mexican Gulf, they pursued their triumphant way around a south-easterly branch of the Cordillera Mountains, directly to the great valley and city of Mexico. Hence the antiquities spoken of were left far on their left. The subsequent conquest of Peru, under Pizarro, led them still farther from these scenes of ancient greatness. In the conquered territories themselves, crowded as they were with magnificent specimens of primitive genius and wealth, they may be supposed to have had a field sufficiently large, and objects numerous and valuable enough, for their cupidity, while the innumerable vassals--before, the proud and happy lords of the finest country under heaven--afforded them ample scope for robbery and tyranny. These ruins, then, being removed from the first settlements of the Spanish, is one reason why they were not made known to Europeans at an earlier date. The natives themselves, from a just reverence for the relics of their ancestors, and a religious regard for the objects of their worship, withheld all intelligence respecting them from their cruel tyrants, and the occupants of their favored soil. At length, however, the facts in relation to the Palenquan city were revealed by some Spaniards, who, having penetrated into the dreary solitudes of a high and distant desert, discovered, to their astonishment, that they were surrounded by the remains of a once large and splendid city, the probable capital of an unknown and immeasurably remote empire! These facts were communicated by them to one of the governors of a neighboring province, who, on ascertaining the truth of the representations from the natives, wrote to his royal master, the king of Spain, to induce him to command an exploration of these strange ruins.