be thoroughly investigated. They exhibit the greatest skill in architecture, carving in stone and designing displayed in the remains of the early Americans in either North or South America. The buildings are of massive stone work, and comprise extensive corridors, numerous courts, subterranean vaults, huge stone tablets covered with sculptures and hieroglyphics and ornamented with bas-reliefs. The intricacy and delicacy of the carved designs, the extent of the remains and the accuracy with which the whole is constructed, are astonishing when examined in drawings and photographs, and testify to an advance in the arts which is simply wonderful.

Lo, o'er the dense, black mass of giant trees,
The moon upsprings and sighs the midnight breeze:
Now looks Palenque — ruin on ruin piled —
August, yet spectral, beautiful, yet wild!

Such ruins give to New Mexico and Central America an interest not less than that of Egypt.

In South America we come to the remains of another people to whom the term Incas has generally been applied. The Spaniards exhausted their language in attempting to describe the wondrous architecture of the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco. But besides this, Peru contains remains of extensive aqueducts, bridges and roads, and the most remarkable remains of a former civilization to be found on the American continent are on Lake Titicaca, which lies about thirteen thousand feet above the sea, between Peru and Bolivia. On the islands in the lake are many ancient ruins of massive buildings of stone, and at the southern portion of the lake are the famous

SOUTH AMERICAN REMAINS.

65

ruins of Tiahuanaco, which are so old that the Peruvians of the time of the Conquest knew nothing of their

origin. The buildings were constructed with great skill, and show evidence of considerable artistic taste. The sculptures are different from any others that

have been found on the continent. Further south the evidences of culture are gradually lost, and in Brazil and Patagonia there are tribes resembling the North American Indians, while in Terra del Fuego the people are probably the most degraded of any on the Continent of America.

They left no history, but lived and died

Like the wild animals round them which they slew;
The woods and streams their ravenous wants supplied,
To hunger and to thirst were all they knew.
The skins of beasts about their loins they drew,
And made themselves rude weapons out of stone,
Sharp arrow-heads and lances.

CHAPTER IV.

DE SOTO ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

THE

HE next chapter in the progress of adventure in the New World, leads us into the same realm of romance that the visions of Columbus had opened. The natives of Porto Rico had a tradition that there lay far

ON THE ROUTE OF PIZARRO. out in the ocean an island named Bimini, on which there was a fountain possess ing the power of restoring youth to the aged.

The leafy Bimini,

A land of grottos and bowers
Is there; and a wonderful fountain
Upsprings from its gardens of flowers.
That fountain gives life to the dying,
And youth to the aged restores;

They flourish in beauty eternal,

Who set but their foot on its shores!

A knowledge of this tradition came to Fernando De Soto, one of the companions of Pizarro, at about the time that another adventurer of the company, Francisco Orellana, became infatuated with the belief that there was a land of fabulous wealth in the heart of

South America called El Dorado (the Golden Land). In 1540, Orellana set out to find the Golden Land. He travelled through the valley of the Amazon, discovering that river, which for a time bore his name, and then went to Spain to get permission to colonize the country. On his return he was attacked by a fever, and died in 1549, on the banks of the river that he had discovered, a martyr to the delusive search.

In roaring cataracts down Andes' channelled steeps
Mark how enormous Orellana sweeps.

Monarch of mighty floods, supremely strong,
Foaming from cliff to cliff, he whirls along,
Swol'n with an hundred hills' collected snows:
Thence over nameless regions widely flows,
Round fragrant isles and citron groves,
Where still the naked Indian roves,
And safely builds his leafy bower.

De Soto was one of the more worthy of the followers of Pizarro. He had been educated in the University of Saragossa, and was an accomplished knight, as well as a scholar of no mean pretentions. He began his career as explorer as early as 1519, before he was twenty years old (for he was born in the year 1500, at Xeres, in Estremadura), and explored Darien, and Nicaragua, before 1528, when he was sent to Guatamala and Yucatan to find a strait which was supposed to connect the two oceans. He travelled seven hundred miles along the coast in this vain search. In 1532 it was that Pizarro invited him to join the party that went to conquer Peru. He performed many valorous deeds, and engaged in the scandalous plot to capture Atahuallpa, the Inca (king) of the country who had the same year usurped the throne of his