When the energy and skill of Columbus were crowned with success, and the storm-tossed Atlantic was found to lave the shores of a western continent, reflecting minds in Europe were much interested in the strange stories they heard of the inhabitants of the New World. On the one hand Spanish adventurers told scarcely credited stories of populous cities, temples glittering with gold and silver ornaments, and nations possessed of a barbaric civilization scarcely inferior to their own. On the other hand were accounts of morose savages, cruel and vindictive in nature, depending on fishing and the chase for a livelihood. Nearly four centuries have elapsed since that time. The aboriginal inhabitants have nearly disappeared, leaving their origin and prehistoric life almost as great a riddle to us as it was to the early colonists. But in endeavoring to unroll the pages of their history, we have chanced upon some strange discoveries. The Aztecs, that people whose culture is to-day such an enigma to our scholars, are known to be a late arrival in the valley of Anahuac. They were preceded in that section by a mysterious people, the Toltecs, whose remains excite our liveliest curiosity, but of which we have yet learned but little. Yucatan is shown to have been for many centuries the home of a people whose advancement equated that of the Aztecs at their palmiest day. Like important discoveries attended the labors of explorers in the North. The entire valley of its great river is known to have been the home of a numerous population, that, from the nature of their remains, we call the Mound-builders. Who these people were, when and whence they came, and whither they went, are questions whose solution is by no means accomplished. Nor are such discoveries the only results. A study of their institutions has done much in revealing the constructions of ancient society, and thereby throwing light on some mysterious chapters of man’s existence.