New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1859-04-12

lisbed in the AntiqHuts Merieain,s, sd EKped,-
tiop, plate Sc, and copied IN Lord KrcssbOrough,
| vol. ". Sd part Of Dupair's Pictures, No ALL
There the srtist gives the crucfsrm portion high
relief not possessed By the original; the possH
supporting the projecting arm' are suppressed; the
person bearing tho offering depressed about half
bead, % e. TO briog bin further below the bird,
| a. il he might be presenting the offering to ia
| pedestal, and not to IT, But Dupsix does no. say
| the person "oHers to it the erossl . child Of
cir gular shspe;" but, "ofers upon his upraised
.rps q new born child Of fantastic form"
(Dupai1, teri 30 Elk, p. 25.) Dupaix, ~hje be
tan, the bird in bis drawing sdroity suggests, but
! does not assert, that the offering is made TO the
cross, and not to the bird. Mr.. Wilson,
who 10 informed Of the fraud perpetrated BY Du-
| pax-for he acknowledges in bis preliminary note,
at page ii, that be has consulted Stephens in
relation to this very pic!ure-still adopts the
f.bIicstsd drawing Of Dupai1 as the basis Of new
fraud; denudes it Of its " great complication"
mentioned BY DupsiI; cuts of ih peculiar pro-
jectipg extension; removes its outside ornaments;
b.iebtens its relief by destroying its background Of
the same color; banishes the strange bird sur
mouDtI 9 it" and then publishes it A. represen-
tation Of infants sacrlfced to the cross This iu-
position is carried one step further in the fronts
piece 1.-THE sacrifices TO Moloch or Saturn are
distinctly to be recognized on tho walls Of Pa
lepQuo. An old priest in the act Of offering
child, is opposite q younger Official, who is also
making an offering Hilson, p 1917 1t has
hitherto been debated point whether Moloch was
Saturn or not (Calm.t MoIoeh) but Mr. Wisoa
settles the matter with dash. We turn TO that pic
ture, also, at the fronti,piece in Stephsnss Central
America, vol. II. Are those offerings children
Dupsix did well to omit this picture, which CON-
pletely d.molistes bis "child of fantastic form"
offered to tte cross. What, then, are they Mr.
Stephens, in the engraving, in Central America,
voi. H., p. 1853, and Dupaix, in the Antiquitts
M,zicain.s I'D Expedition, plate IS, afford Us
the solution. Those plates represent one of the
persons belonging TO the pictures above referred to-
Among bis ornaments, hanging down behind,
and in Stephens picture, attached to his
eirdls by chain, is grotesque, pismy-
like human figure. IL this "child OF
fantastic formi" or is it only an image, such
in the other pictures, are offered to inferior del
tes in the one case to the strange bird, and in the
other, probably, to the mask Of some demigod'
For, Is We have seen, "e'ery object had god,
ano BerDal Disz found on the coast "iuages Of
ducks and fishes" which had been offered to
their gods This is doubtless tue true solution
for not one OF the supposed children has that re-
semblance to human progeny which is necessary to
Justify the theory Of infant sacrifice on the occa-
si0Ds portrayed. So this cross, and Saturn, and
their infant sacrifices and all the frauds foisted
upon the public, vanish into thin air. And the
"MadoDnas" with them-for pictures of women
with children are, happily, too common to sustain
any such copjectures. Mr.. Stephens in one of the
last pages of bis last work, denies EN- pba.icaly
that the cIoss was ever recognized a. symbol OF
worship by ice natives of Yucatan.-( Yueatan,
Vol. H., p. 37s.)
TIE RUINS OF CENTRAL AMERICA NOT ANCIENT.
With equal certainty is IT settled that the ruins
of Central America neither ancient nor Oren-
tai Ferguson decides mott ausbo 'itatively that
they are uncounected with any known style:
(Hand- Book of Architecture, Vol. l., p. l47, and
only one remove from the original wooden con-
structon of early tines (b. 1917; and that it s i'm
possible to sscrbe any great antiquity to buildings
containing so much wood in their construct m.
90. 1853 Mr.. Stephens frequently mentions the
wooden lintels, and denies the antiquity of the
buildings, ascribiug them to the races eristing
there at the time Of the Conquest (Yueatan, Vol.
l., %, 324, 4O3; IT,, 375. Central Ameriea, H.,
80, 43O, H4, 442, 445) HIS facts seem to fully
sustain bis conclusions.
But the recent date Of some Of these building
and ,bore the most msgni6cent-s clearly demon
strable. The only arch attained BY the builders OF
these edifce,, WAS the horizontal arch, formed by
stone,, whose successive courses projected beyond
TIE vertical line until the two sides met above
in the centre, or came near enough together to be
covered with fiat stone. In Sfephenss Yaeatan,
vol H. p 3l7,) sni in Ferguson, (vOl. l., p 1872
We have an instance OF this. But this arch FORM
ing vaulted room in this instance, is sustained
upon beam, of wood which extend from pillar to
pusr. Evidently then, this vault his been built
90 recently that there beams have no! had time to
decay; and, at the time Of their construction, the
naiiye architects had 70. learned to dispense with
hutes Of wood that 10, had not learned to arch
the space between tao columns as we'll as the vault
of the roof. But in Stphsnss Central america,
vol. H., p. 35l,) We find an Instance where the
architect had advanced this requisite step, dispens.
Ing " IT'D the wooden beams between the pillars, BY
ncbDg the space, thus forming By its intersee-
ton with the vaulting Of the roof groin precisely
lssous to the groined radiatiDg arch. But, as
in art there are no steps backward the wooden