At any rate, there are numerous-inscriptions to be recovered. The more of these sources our experts have for study and comparison, the easier will be the task of deciphering the many hieroglyphs that still baffle us.

As this is published Dr. Spinden, the other members of our party and myself are travelling northward along the eastern coast of Yucatan, retracing in a schooner with powerful gasoline engines the track of the clumsy high-pooped vessels of the first Spanish discoverers. Although most of Mexico has greatly progressed, this region of the earliest American civilization is far from well known. For example, few naturalists have been here, and one of our number, Ludlow Griscom, Assistant Curator of Birds at the American Museum of Natural History, expects to get important new data on the ornithology of these parts.

Coast Line is Dangerous

The desolate coast line has shallow ports which we must enter, trusting to defective charts, mostly based on surveys by British warships before 1840. We have reason to think, therefore, that our hydrographer, Commander Ogden T. McClurg, will be able to gather much information of value to future navigators of these coral-torn waters.

We are as certain that there are in this strip important Maya ruins unvisited by archaeologists as men can be certain of things they have not seen. Rumors of such cities have repeatedly come from the natives who are the descendants of the race that built Tulum, Chichen Itza and Copan.

That such unfound archaeological treasure probably exists so near, civilized parts of Central America is due to the long hostility of the independent Indians, who had repelled previous explorers. That hostility has largely disappeared; we are proceeding with confidence on advices that we shall be allowed to penetrate the interior unmolested.

We may not find the wonderful city which the lineal descendant of a proud clan that once ruled a Maya province reported to Mr. Gann. But with fair luck we hope to return to the United States with some worth-while contribution to modern knowledge of this old world in the New World, this civilization that had already passed its splendid prime when Columbus and Cortez came.