of the Bay of Honduras, where his vessels, with food and recruits, awaited him. From the old books and archives in the library of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, I have gathered the incidents of this wonderful campaign. Of necessity I have omitted many harrowing but interesting details, but have recorded sufficient to show what manner of men were these early Spaniards.

CHAPTER XVIII

HONDURAS-ON THE WAY TO COPAN

To rest you here, to muse on flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell
And mortal foot hath n'er or rarely been.

-Childe Harold.

ABOUT one hundred miles from its mouth, at the Bay of Honduras, there is an ugly gash in the side of the Motagua River. The streams, runlets and waters of the fever and hot, malarial lands of southern Honduras must some way force a passage back to the breasts of their mother, the great sea from which they were lifted by the mysterious power of the sun. They gathered in the valley of Chiquimula, united their forces and called themselves the Copan. Long ago, when torrential rains deluged the land, they moved northward, met the Motagua, tore open its side and ever since have right-of-way to the sea. Fifty miles from this opening, on the eastern bank of the Copan River, are the ruins of a dead city, buried in a dense thicket of exuberant vegetation. This is Copan. How old is it? When was the city built and by whom? Why was it abandoned? We know not. It was alive, for we have found the corpse.

When, in 1841, Stephens published an introduc

tory pamphlet to his great work, "Explorations in Central America," and told of these forest-buried cities of a civilized and vanished race, he was branded on a lecture platform in Boston as an impostor and a cheat. The tale was incredible. Then came Catherwood's wonderful drawings and illustrations, and those interested in antiquities were amazed. The discovery of the Rosetta stone and Champollion's decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics deepened antiquarian interest in Europe and scholars like Rouse and Cardinal Wiseman plunged into ethnological research. Then came the verification of the reports of the wonderful prehistoric cities of Central America, and learned men began to rearrange their ideas touching the origin of man. The French philosophers after contemptuously waving aside the inspirational record of man's origin, taught that original man was a savage, and that by his own unaided industry he rose to the perfection of his manhood and the perfect civilization then to be found in France, and only in France. The forest-shrouded cities of Central America told a different story, for here, at least, were proofs that the race descended from a high material civilization, and at the time of the discovery of America its people were drifting into barbarism and savagery. It is impossible to deny the civilization and vast antiquity of this land without using methods of criticism that would destroy the credibility of all history. But I am digressing into a thesis on ethnology and in a sense anticipating my mission.