The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1869-10-17

Some Of the gentlemen who carry tape In
the service Of Uncle Sam, and who are
engaged in locating on the face Of this Con-
tinent those painfully straight township lines
that make the maps so very embarrassing.
have just stumbled on some of the ruins Of the
halfburied Mexico Of the past, and they seem
to fancy they have made great discoveries.
They have found region Astounding in ruins
0. elaborate and sometimes magnificent struc-
lures, together with relics Of obliterated races,
possessing knowledge Of the arts and manu-
factures;" region, moreover, clearing EVIL
dence of having been formerly under high
state Of cultivation for centuries" These
gentlemen are so far from having made any
notable discovery that the ruins they describe
have been for some years set down in docu-
ments having so little Of antiquity In them as
the Land Office maps.
II is known that OF the different divisions OF
the ancient Mexican people that which
inhabited the country on the ella river was
one peculiarly advanced In the arts Of life,
and possessed in q superior degree Of what are
called in this age the moral virtues. 1t gave
another evidence, if one were needed, that the
men who live in the best country will be tho
best men Of any given family-another instance
to assist the establishment, by induction, Of the
law in human history that man rises or falla
according to the climatic conditions in which he
lives and the soil from which he derives nutri-
ment. All the views taken of the peopling OF
Mexico admit, we believe, the theory of migra-
tons. Indeed, migrations appear so constantly
in ancient Mexican tradition that antiquariea
cannot help themselves. There is also gene
raj acceptance of the thought that the move
ment was from north to south. It has been
argued, but not generally accepted, that race
from Asia, having its seat anywhere on tho
upper Pacific slope, and growing or moving
toward the east, came into the Mississippi
valley, and perhaps made the structures that
arc found in Ohio, Illinois and Kentucky, but
that, coming in contact with the warlike race OF
red men, they were driven to the west. Assum-
ing the fact of such movement, and that IL
was always along great water courses, it may
be traced by the ruins Of ediices that were
built in the centuries Of struggle. They
bVVA
illustrations of many on the Rio Grande, in the
account Of the military reconnaissance into the
Navajo country made by the United
States troops under Colonel Washington.
The country on the ella river might well be-
come the permanent seat of such race, as the
sea would stop further westward progress
and the mountains behndw would be an efficient
barrier against the baIbarous, buffalo eating
| enemy. II might be even the true valley Of
Anahuac, from which were subsequently to 60
out the builders of the city of Mexico; for il is
never said in the traditions that the builders
of that city were driven from their country by
an enemy. They went out from s'the land Of
the heron" as colony, and became an over
teeming population May it not have been the
monument-strewn and weLworked region that
Uncle Sans surveyors are rubbing their eyes
| at ia this nineteenth century,