"Wouldn't that be an expedition worth making?" said Frank to Fred, after they had read the account in Mr. Stephens's book. "Just think of it! to be able to discover the mysterious city which no white man has ever returned from!"
"Yes, that's the tradition concerning it," was the reply. "Several white men have gone there, but no one has ever returned from it to tell the story of what he saw."
"Writers on the subject are not very encouraging," said Frank, "as they assert that the Indians in this mysterious city murder every white man who comes within their boundaries. Not even the Spanish padres are permitted to enter, and they are usually able to go where no other white man dare try to penetrate."
Frank read and reread all the attainable descriptions of the mysterious city, and his imagination was fired almost to the degree of explosion. "The inhabitants understand," he remarked, "that a white race has conquered the rest of the country, but they are determined not to be conquered. They have no coin or other circulating medium, no horses, cattle, mules, or other domestic animals except fowls, and they keep these underground so that the crowing of the cocks will not be heard."
Probably Frank's belief was largely influenced by the circumstance that such a careful explorer as Stephens accepted the story as true; in speaking of it he uses these words: "I conceive it to be not impossible that in this secluded region may exist, at this day, unknown to white men, a living, aboriginal city, occupied by relics of the ancient race, who still worship in the temples of their fathers."
SEEKING THE MYSTERIOUS CITY.
In writing an introduction to the narrative of the travels of Arthur Morelet, who spent several years in that country, and evidently believed in the existence of the mysterious city, Mr. E. G. Squier says as follows:
"There is a region lying between Chiapas, Tabasco, Yucatan, and the Republic of Guatemala, and comprising a considerable portion of each of those States, which, if not entirely blank, is only conjecturally filled up with mountains, lakes, and rivers. It is almost as unknown as the interior of Africa itself.... Within its depths, far off on some unknown tributary of the Usumasinta, the popular tradition of Guatemala and Chiapas places the great aboriginal city, with its white walls shining like silver in the sun, which the cura of Quiche affirmed he had seen with his own eyes from the tops of the mountains of Quezaltenango."