Rambles in Yucatan; or, Notes of Travel Through the Peninsula

Rambles in Yucatan; or, Notes of Travel Through the Peninsula - Including a Visit to the Remarkable Ruins of Chi-Chen, Kabah, Zayi, and Uxmal. 2nd ed

To those who intend to bestow upon the following pages the honor of a perusal, it may seem almost supererogatory for the author to mention, that it has formed no part of his purpose to prepare a book which should owe its leading interest to its literary merits. His life has been necessarily more devoted to the dissemination of books than to the study of their internal fabrication; he has had but slender opportunities for the cultivation of letters, and little of the preparation requisite for a task, to the results of which he now solicits the candid consideration of the public. Circumstances, however, of which all that is worthy of detail will be found in the following pages, brought under the authors observation a portion of our continent which was strewed with gigantic and monumental ruins of ancient cities, and which, to the several departments of Cosmogony, Archology, and Ethnography, appeared in his eyes to be of vast importance. Impressed with this conviction, although the author left his country without the remotest intention of making a book upon any subject whatever, or even of seeing the wonderful places he has attempted to describe, yet, with very inadequate scientific qualificationswithout instruments, except a knife and compass, and without a companion, save an Indian boyentirely ignorant of the country and its peoplehe was enabled to explore many objects of interest and curiosity; and he has resolved to present the substance of his observations and researches, in as succinct a manner as possible, that those who are competent to avail themselves of his labors may digest and present them to the public in such a form as will most contribute to the advancement of true science. 4It is, therefore, to the facts which it has been the authors privilege to witness and reveal, and not to the garniture of those facts, that he looks, for the interest which he desires to awaken in the minds of his readers, and upon which he relies for his own justification in having for once trespassed ultra crepidam into the charmed circle of literary enterprise. The almost universal curiosity which has manifested itself in every quarter through which public feeling has utterance, concerning the vast and unexplained ruins of our hemisphere, found in Central America and Yucatan, has not been, in modern times at least, excelled by that upon any subject not involving some immediate and practical interest, not even excepting the discoveries of modern antiquarians in Egypt. It is neither the authors duty nor purpose to analyze this movement, or to discern its cause; it only concerns him to show that he had good reason for presuming that further developments of, and explorations among these mysterious relics of antiquity, could not fail to awaken some portion of that interest which the public mind, in this country at least, has already manifested. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 57074
Author: Norman, Benjamin Moore
Release Date: Apr 30, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English