RUINS IN YUCATAN.
"Yucatan is the grave of a great nation that has mysteriously passed away and left behind no history. Every forest embosoms the majestic remains of vast temples, sculptured over with symbols of a lost creed, and noble cities, whose stately palaces and causeways attest in their mournful abandonment the colossal grandeur of their builder. They are the gigantic tombs of an illustrious race, but they bear neither name nor epitaph. The conscience-stricken awe with which the Indian avoids them as he relates a confused tradition of a whole people extinguished in blood and fire by his forefathers—a ferocious and cannibal race delighting in human sacrifices—are all that even conjecture can say of the manner in which the ancient occupants of Yucatan were blotted, en masse, from the page of existence. The barbarous exterminators remained the masters of the country, and built them rude huts under the shadow of those immense edifices which are still the marvel and the mystery of Yucatan. On many of these singular edifices is stamped the blood-red impress of a human hand—a fit symbol of the rule of blood to which it has so constantly been the victim. This 'bloody hand' was imprinted with evident purpose on the still yielding stucco of the new-built walls, and presents every line and curve in life-like distinctness; but the explanation of the symbol is unknown."—New York Sun, June 8, 1848.