The Aztec Treasure-House

Departimiento y ha entre los engaños. Catales y ha que son buenos, e tales que malos, e buenos son aquellos que los omnes fazen a buena fe e a buena intencion.—Alonzo el Sabio, Setena Partida, Titulo xvi., Ley ii.

Who'd hear great marvels told— Come listen now! Who longs for hidden gold— Come listen now! Who joys in well-fought fights, Who yearns for wondrous sights, Who pants for strange delights— Come listen now!
For here are marvels told To listen to! Here tales of hidden gold To listen to! Here gallant men wage fights, Here pass most wondrous sights, Here's that which ear delights To listen to!
God sends nuts to them who have no teeth: which ancient Spanish proverb of contrariety comes strongly to mind as I set myself to this writing.
By nature am I a studious, book-loving man, having a strong liking for quiet and orderliness. Yet in me also is a strain that urges me, even along ways which are both rough and dangerous, to get beyond book-knowledge, and to examine for myself the abstractions of thought and the concretions of men and things out of the consideration whereof books are made. And I hold that it is because I have thus sought for truth in its original sources, instead of resting content with what passes for truth, being detached fragments of fact which other men have found and have cut and polished to suit themselves, that I have gathered to myself more of it, and in its rude yet perfect native crystals, than has come into the possession of any other modern investigator. In making which strong assertion I am not moved by idle vanity, but by a just and reasonable conception of the intrinsic merit of my own achievement: as will be universally admitted when I publish the great work, now almost ready for the press, upon which, in preparatory study and in convincing discovery, I have been for the past ten years engaged. For I speak well within bounds when I declare that a complete revolution in all existing conceptions of American archæology and ethnology will be wrought when Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North America , by Professor Thomas Palgrave, Ph.D. (Leipsic), is given to the world.