Now that data are affixed to our brief historical period, and the occurrences of yesterday, in comparison with the actual history of our land, have settled down into a succession of well-known events, it becomes us to look back into those of long-lost time, and to inquire into the memorials of our country's antiquity; to glance at what it _was_, rather than what it _is_. Here the field opens into boundless extent, and the mind becomes bewildered by the strange and diversified objects which it presents. Unlike any other in the 'world's wide range,' it is seen to be crowded with unique monumental relics, such as men of modern date had little dreamed of. No where else do the same curious and magnificent remnants of ancient art start into view. Britain has her antiquities, but her archæologists find them associated with a people to whom history had before introduced them. They are furnished with keys by which to gain access to the relics of by-gone times. The Druids and the Romans are known to them; but who were they who raised the tumuli of western America, or the Pyramids of Chollula and of Papantla? The antiquities of Egypt, wonderful as they are, point with an index well defined, to their origin; but who can decipher the hieroglyphics of Tultica?--who read the buried monuments of Anahuac? Egypt has her history told--if not distinctly upon her storied columns--in language which we are little disposed to doubt. The tablets of Rositta have revealed to inquiring antiquarians a flood of light; and the secret volumes inscribed upon the huge and elaborate piles of her arts, have suddenly opened to the wondering gaze their richly-stored contents. They said, emphatically, 'Let there be light, and there was light!' But no revelation has burst from the tombs of our western valleys. No Champolion, Young, Rossellina, nor Wilkinson, has preached the mysteries of Copan, Mitlan, or Palenque. No! Thick darkness still hangs over the vast continent of America. No voice answers to the anxious inquiry, 'Who were the Tultiques?' no lettered tablet is found to reveal the authors of the noble vestiges of architecture and of sculpture at Mitlan, Papantla, Chollula, Otumba, Oaxaca, Tlascala, Tescoca, Copan, or Palenque! The veil of oblivion shrouds, and may perhaps for ever shroud, these relics of an ancient and innumerable people in impenetrable obscurity. The researches of Del Rio, Cabrera, Dupaix, Waldrick, Neibel, Galinda, nor Corroy, are yet known to have developed the secrets of the buried cities of Central America, though they have labored for many years, 'silent and alone,' amid these massive fragments of ancient greatness.