But if there is little similarity between the minuter architectural details of the Mayan and Buddhist buildings, we believe that, carefully studied, the former, and particularly, as we should have expected, those at Copan and Quirigua, exhibit distinct survivals of Buddhist influence. Mr. Maudslay, in his superb series of photographs of stelae (Biologia Centrali-Americana), shows clearly in the hands of nearly every figure what he calls a "manikin staff"—a short stick surmounted by a human figure issuing from feathers or leaves. He cannot explain it, but we believe that it may be nothing less than a much corrupted survival of the sacred lotus held by Buddhist images. In photographs of carvings at Bharahat and also at Boro Budor, the Buddhas and their attendants appear to hold just such short staves, really the rubbery stem, surmounted by the lotus-flower, out of which seems to issue in some instances a kind of face. There appear, too, in the grasp of many figures on the friezes at Bharahat short sticks surmounted by manikins seated on bannerets. The "manikin staves" at Copan may be a blended memory of these two Buddhistic symbols.

Again, Mr. Maudslay noticed a detail of Mayan decoration which has escaped other students. He points out that at Palenque and elsewhere is represented a plant which he calls a water plant because fish are seen feeding on the flowers. "The leaves and flower-buds," he writes, "are very clearly drawn, and have somewhat the appearance of those of a water lily." He is probably right: it is a water lily—the Buddhist lotus—which figures, often with fish swimming round, in almost every carving at Boro Budor and the ruined Buddhist cities. The drawing he gives of the Palenque carving is so exact a copy of the Buddhist lotus as to be quite amazing.

The figures on the stelae at Copan and Quirigua, in many instances have across their breasts what looks like a broad band. We believe this to be another Buddhist survival—viz. the ola or palm-leaf book which Buddha is nearly always shown holding, and which appears in the famous rock statue of King Parakrama in the ruins of Polonnaruwa (see H. W. Cave, Ruined Cities of Ceylon), exactly as portrayed in Guatemala.

The headdresses of the stelae statues are most reminiscent of the triple tiara of Buddhist images. The large square or round ear-ornaments at Quirigua are precisely like those in the sculptures of Boro Budor and in the island of Madura, a report on the ruins of which latter was published in 1904 by the Dutch Government (Archaeologisch Onderzoek op Java en Madura). A plate in the latter work represents stelae found in Madura in feature and decoration so amazingly like those of Quirigua that one might be forgiven for thinking one was looking at one of Mr. Maudslay's superb photographs. The latter noted at Copan curious forehead marks which suggest to us the sacred Buddha markings. On the north face of the gigantic monolithic turtle at Quirigua is a cross-legged figure which in Mr. Maudslay's plate exhibits in the fullest manner many Buddhist survivals.

At Palenque, again, there are the very peculiar Temples of the Cross and the Foliated Cross, which appear to have no parallels in other Mayan ruins. We suggest that here too is a Buddhist survival, namely that the "Crosses" (it is more obvious in the foliated one) are crude representations of the Sacred Tree of Buddhism, the "Tree of Wisdom," traditionally a pippul-tree, beneath which Gotama attained Buddha-hood, and which occurs again and again on the Boro Budor friezes and on all the ancient Buddhist carvings, and around which figures are grouped in adoration as are those in the Palenque reliefs. As the Palenque tablets suggest that the "Cross" is the direct object of worship, it may be worth while here to mention that in the oldest Buddhist sculptures Buddha himself is never represented directly, but always under a symbol; either the sacred footprints—Buddha-pats—or the tree beneath which his meditations led him to divine knowledge.

But the faces of the statues will take us a step further: for they seem to be representations of those human types peculiar to Cambodia, Siam, and the Malay Peninsula, as will be seen from the illustrations. They have the elongated, somewhat oblique eye of those peoples; they have not the American, but the Siamese nose. They are beardless (for this reason some have declared them to be women), and they wear an Oriental headdress such as is found in none of the admittedly Mayan ruins, and which we believe we have identified as the ancient Indian turban shown clearly in the carvings at Bharahat.

But we must revert directly to the all-important evidences afforded by a study of Copan. Here, following up our argument that the peculiar characteristics of the invading builders would tend to weaken as they mixed more with the Indians, or as their lessons, perhaps after their deaths, were adapted to purely native ideas and designs, we find an illustration in point in Piedras Negras, a ruined city on the Usumacinta discovered by Herr Teobert Maler. Here, some way from their first settlement, the distinctly Oriental influence is on the wane, but it is still strong. A carving there unearthed by Herr Maler is so reminiscent of Buddhist monuments that it must appeal to the most undiscerning. The figure of the seated god is, in truth, the best the sculptor could do from memory.

Again, at Palenque the influence of the East is fading still more from the work; yet is there some remaining. The figures have the characteristic features of the Americans, and the native headgear; but the attitude is the typical Buddhist one, and there is moreover one figure which takes us back to the purer orientalism of Copan. "The principal figure," says Stephens, "sits cross-legged on a couch ornamented with two leopard's heads; the attitude is easy, the physiognomy the same as that of the other personages, the expression calm and benevolent.... The headdress differs from most of the others at Palenque in that it wants the plume of feathers" (Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, vol. ii., p. 318). In the Buddhist carvings Buddha is often represented seated on a couch carved in the form of a tiger or lion, or really two, for the body is double-headed. This seat is spoken of in the Sanskrit as Simhasana, literally "the seat of lions," so called from the crouching animals, which, however, appear in all carvings as only two. Too much must not be made of this singular circumstance, perhaps, because such animal seats have been found at Persepolis, and again in the island of Cyprus, and the Greeks got the idea from Assyria. Stephens found one of these animal couches at Uxmal, but on this there was no figure. There may not be anything in the occurrence of these seats in America; but we think it at least suggestive.

At Palenque in the Cross Tablets we have the chief figures standing on dwarf crouching human forms. At Tikal, northeast of Lake Peten, a carved wooden lintel discovered by Mr. Maudslay depicts two figures standing on two crouching bodies which he believed to represent prisoners. Elsewhere in Mayan ruins the design prevails. Now in the Indian, Cambodian, and Javanese ruins recur again and again these crouching figures, acting as footstools for the chief personages of the sculpture. Sometimes they are human, sometimes apes or demons. They are the equivalents—it is believed—of the Hindu Garudas, who took in Hindu myth many forms; and we suggest that the Mayan fondness for this queer design was another heritage from their architectural tutors.

In our description of Palenque we have mentioned one of the most curious of all the reliefs—that representing, according to Stephens, women with children in their arms. The Oriental survivals would seem to be specially strong at Palenque, and it would not surprise us if in these women-figures there is hidden a cogent proof of the origin of America's first architects. In Buddhist Art in India, Professor A. Grünwedel writes: "At Sikri, Yusufzai, excavated by Major H. A. Deane in 1888, was found a statue of a woman accompanied by three children, one of which sits astride of her right hip in true Indian fashion, and which she is about to suckle. Among sculptures at Lahore Museum is a statue of a woman completely draped and holding on her left arm a child. It is suggested that these are forms of Haritri—'Mother of the Demons.' She was the mother of five hundred demons or yakshas, to feed whom she daily stole a child. Buddha rebuked and converted her. An image of her was found sitting in the porch or in a corner of the dining-halls of Indian monasteries holding a babe in her arms." Why should not the Palenque figure be a representation of the Hindu goddess Haritri?

A still more remarkable similarity is illustrated by a tower-like building at Yaxchilan into which is let at about the middle a huge human face. This queer edifice has probably replicas as yet undiscovered in the forests of Guatemala. If it could be shown to have a counterpart in the Malay Peninsula, that would be a connecting-link between the two civilisations which would need some explaining away, would it not? Well, we have traced such a counterpart just where it ought to occur, if our theory is to hold good, viz. in the forests of Cambodia. At Angkor there are several such structures built of large blocks of hewn stone. Of these extraordinary towers M. L. Fournereau in Des Ruines d' Angkor (Paris, 1890) gives some excellent photographs. It would need a bold man to say that the fact of these Cambodian towers having such a striking replica at a spot near the earliest settlements of our supposititious Oriental architects is due to coincidence.

Then there are the curious figures carved on the walls of the Nunnery at both Chichen and Uxmal and on other Mayan ruins. They sit cross-legged in Buddhistic fashion in niches in the walls surrounded by an oval-shaped ornamentation. These are like the images in the niches of the temples of all great Buddhist buildings; the oval-shaped ornamentation may easily be, it really looks exactly like, the aureole which invariably surrounds the figure of the Buddha at Boro Budor and elsewhere. Moreover these figures in Yucatan have a nimbus too, just like the Buddhas. We are not of course endeavouring to show that the Yucatecan figures represent Buddha; but we are suggesting that the Oriental pattern and designs for religious statuary had sunk deep into the Mayan mind.

Though the sculptures of the two civilisations are not, as has been said, strikingly alike in detail, they are similar in subjects. They represent, for the most part, when not strictly religious, processions, battle-scenes, and pictures of the daily life of the people. There are, too, bas-reliefs showing the conquered submitting to the conqueror, the details being much like those of the famous carving on the rock at Behistun. There is not much in such similarities, as the carvings of any race would tend to be stereotyped in a common form. Where valuable evidence would be looked for is in the fields of religion and mythology. So far, wherever we have been able to show similarities between the architectures of America and the East, Buddhism has been the prevailing religion of the part of the latter in question. Do we then find any likeness between the religion of the Mayans and Buddhism?

In entering upon this part of our inquiry, we must remember that the religion of a mere handful of invaders, as we must presume the Oriental builders to have been, would not appeal to the natives so much as would their arts. When you have admitted the conservative tendencies of all peoples in matters religious, it gives an added weight to any genuine parallels which are traceable between two religions in such an argument as the present. We believe we can show such genuine parallels; but first we must refer once more to the suggestion that the elephant was sacred to the Mayans. We have shown that no reliance can be placed on the zoological deductions made from the so-called elephant-trunk ornaments on the Mayan buildings. But on the general question, the fact that the elephant has apparently never been indigenous to America would seem to settle the matter. No race has ever been shown to have worshipped an animal they have never actually seen. Some writers have tried to prove that the elephant or its congener, the mammoth, existed in America contemporaneously with man. Professor Newberry, in an article "The Ancient Lakes of Western America" (U.S. Geological Survey Report, Washington, 1871), writes: "The elephant and mastodon continued to inhabit the interior of our continent long after the glaciers had retreated beyond the upper lakes, and when the minutest details of surface topography were the same as now.... It is even claimed here as on the European continent that man was a contemporary of the mammoth and that here, as there, he contributed largely to its final extinction."

For this view there would seem little real evidence. The so-called elephant figures dug up during the excavation of mounds in Wisconsin and Iowa in 1880, although declared by their finders to be miniature representations of elephants, have no tusks and are far more like the tapir of Central America. This is the American animal nearest approaching in form the elephant of Asia. That the tapir was worshipped by the Mayans there is no doubt: ample proof exists. It is certainly possible enough that this was an indigenous cult, and cannot be held to be reminiscent of an earlier worship of the elephant. What would seem to militate against such an explanation is the nature of the tapir. Animal-worship undoubtedly arose in the majority of cases from one of two motives: fear or gratitude for utility. The former motive is illustrated in the adoration of the larger carnivora; while the worship of the whale, the horse, and the cow are examples of the latter. But the tapir is neither feared (he is very shy, has no tusks or other means of offence, and lives entirely in the swampy woods, never willingly meeting man); nor is he of the least use, though it is possible his flesh has on occasions been eaten. With this, we will finally leave the elephant-cult question, with the suggestion that the tapir being the nearest approach to the elephant in the New World, may have been adopted as its successor by the invaders and afterwards became a deity of the Mayans.

Now let us see what are the parallels between Buddhism and the Mayan religion, whether in legend, doctrine, or ritual.

The Buddhist priests lived during certain parts of the year in monasteries. They had no food but what they received from the people; were not allowed to marry; fasted on certain days; and spent their time in meditation, writing up their religious records, and teaching the people. This is almost the precise life led by the Mayan priests. They lived apart from the people in separate houses, and, most noteworthy of all, Acosta in his Historia de los Indios says that they lived entirely by begging, or rather from the voluntary contributions of the people.

Of the Buddhist monks, Sir Monier Williams in his Buddhism, p. 312, describing their daily life, writes: "Arranging themselves in line, they set out with the abbot at their head to receive their food. Silently they move on through the streets, fixing their eyes steadily on the ground six feet before them, meditating on the vanity and mutability of things, and only halting when a layman emerges from some door to pour his contribution of rice or fruit or vegetable into their alms bowls."

The Mayan priests were not only bound to celibacy, but they were never allowed to come into contact with women. This was the Buddhist rule, though slowly to be much relaxed. Sir Monier Williams, p. 152, says, "There is evidence that among certain monkish communities in Northern countries the law against marriage was soon relaxed. It is well known that at the present day Lamaseries in Sikkim and Thibet swarm with children of monks, though called their nephews and nieces." A further curious parallel is that women took part in the ritual of both Mayans and Buddhists. Gautama had an early order by which women were admitted to nunneries under the same rules as men. Among the Mayans, women were ministrants in the temples, as at Isla de Mujeres, while at Chichen, Uxmal and other cities, there were large nuns' houses.

Sir Monier Williams on p. 83 says, "The eating at midday the one meal and at no other time" was the custom of the Buddhist priests, and they "fasted on prescribed days." H. Bancroft, in his Native Races of the Pacific States (1875-6, New York), says that among the priests of Mexico "fasting was observed as an atonement for sin, as well as a preparation for solemn festivals. An ordinary fast consisted of abstaining from meat for a period of one to ten days, and taking one meal at noon; and at no other hour could so much as a drop of water be touched." Sir Monier Williams (p. 313) says, "When the midday meal is over, all return to work. Some undertake the teaching of the boy scholars. Others read the texts of the Tripitaka with their commentaries, or superintend the writers who are copying manuscripts. Some of the older members sink into deep meditation." Father Torquemada, a leading historian of Mexico, tells us that the priests "passed much of their time in contemplation and in writing the annals of the country." It may be here worth mention that the Zapotecan (Mayan) priests obtained their inspiration by a species of auto-suggestion terminating in an ecstatic trance. This would certainly seem to be a parallel to the Buddhist trance.

Sir M. Williams on p. 506 says, "Everywhere throughout the Buddhist countries the supposed impressions of the Buddha's feet are as much honoured as those of the god Vishnu by Vaishnavas.... No true Vaishnava will leave his house in the morning without marking his forehead with the symbol of Vishnu's feet." The Jains worship the footprint on Mount Parasnath in Bengal; while there are sacred footprints of Buddha at Bharahat, Sanchi, Amaravati, and the famous Adam's Peak in Ceylon and at Phra Bat in Siam, the latter two supposed to represent the right and left feet respectively as he stepped in one stride from Ceylon to Siam.

Now it is a very strange fact that there is this legend of sacred footprints in America, and more curiously still, the legend associates itself with the East. In his Hero Myths, p. 220, D. G. Brinton says, speaking of the arts of the Muycas of New Granada, "The knowledge of these various arts they attributed to the instruction of a wise stranger who dwelt among them many cycles before the arrival of the Spaniards. He came from the East.... In the province of Ubaque his footprints on the solid rock were reverently pointed out long after the Conquest." A second footprint was found by Dupaix at Zachilla, the ancient capital of the Zapotecs, a Mayan tribe; while a third which Brinton examined in Nicaragua, an account of which is given in his The Ancient Footprints in Nicaragua, was simply the footprint of an ordinary man impressed on volcanic rock before the lava hardened. Brinton points out that the foot which made the mark was sandalled, showing that it was done by a native. But that these legendary marks had very commonplace origins does not affect the curious community of legend which thus appears to have existed between Central America and Buddhist lands.

Many minor habits and customs might be cited to show how strangely alike the Mayans were, and still are, to some Buddhist peoples. Thus all Mayan mothers carry their babies sitting a-straddle of their hips, though other American Indian women carry the little ones Apache-fashion in a cradle-board, or in a bundle like the Mexican Aztecs, slung on their backs; and this carrying on the hip, peculiar to the Mayans, is the invariable manner of carrying the child in India, Burma and Siam to-day. Another point is that the manuscripts in both countries are folded peculiarly, namely in a zigzag way. Dr. Brinton says in his Maya Chronicles (1882), "The Maya MSS. consisted of one long sheet of a kind of paper made by macerating and beating together the leaves of the maguey and afterwards sizing the surface with a durable white varnish. The sheet was folded like a screen (i.e. zigzag) forming pages about 9 × 5 inches. Both sides were covered with figures and characters painted in various brilliant colours. On the outer pages boards were fastened for protection." This might be an account of the Buddhist olas as they exist today and as doubtless they have always existed.

Again, the system of Castes—peculiar to the East and unknown to the North American Red Indians—existed among the Mayans, as we have described in Chapter XIV. The ancient Mayans, too, had two languages—one for use in addressing superiors and one for inferiors, and this was the case in Cambodia and Java.

Many minutest customs of the two peoples show parallels which are hard to explain except as the result of intercourse. Thus baby-girls in Java wore a string round the waist, from which hung a shell, the removal of which during maidenhood and until the marriage night was regarded as sinful. This had its exact replica among the Mayans, whose girl-children often still wear the shell. The Mayan carvings of priests' figures always show a carved medallion of jade or stone worn hanging by a chain round the neck. Almost without exception this badge-like ornament hangs round the neck of the ancient Buddhist figures sculptured in the East, and is said to be still worn by the priests in Siam and Burma to-day. In the East, as in Mexico, the points of the compass were represented by colours, though it is not proved they followed the same sequence. In Buddhist countries a piece of green jade is sometimes buried with the dead, and this has been proved to have been a Mayan custom, the stone being thought to have magic properties in speeding the deceased to another world. Such minute similarity of custom and belief as is shown by these examples cannot be mere coincidence. Taken separately, there is not one that would prove the affinity between the East and America; but when taken together, they certainly form striking evidence.

But there is one thing yet lacking, a missing link in the chain of evidence binding together the Buddhist East and Tropical America. Professor E. Morse, in his paper Was Middle America Peopled from Asia? has justly pointed out that "to go straight across the ocean (Pacific) is one matter, but to go from latitude 30° on one side of the Pacific almost to the Arctic Ocean and down on the other side nearly to the Equator is quite another exploit." Most truly said, for such a voyage is possible, but most improbable. Those who would have us believe that Middle America was peopled from Asia have agreed in assuming that it was via the Behring Straits or the Aleutian Islands. We agree with Professor E. Morse (if we have read his pamphlet correctly) that if some means of getting Eastern invaders across the Pacific and not round it were shown, it would go far to prove the Asiatic origin of Central American civilisation.

The Japan Current (Kuro Siwa) has been the route accepted by all who believe that Central American civilisation hails from Japan and China. It runs swiftly along the coast of China and Japan towards the Behring Straits, and there bifurcates, one part running into the Arctic Ocean and the other turning down and running parallel with the coast of America. This current has proved irresistibly attractive, for it is certain that those swept on by it would have land in sight the whole way, and Charles Waldcott Brooks has shown in his report to the California Academy of Science on the Japanese Vessels wrecked in the North Pacific Ocean, that ships from Asia could easily reach the Oregon and Californian coasts by drifting, as he has proved in the case of several derelicts.

This Japan Current is such a simple solution of the thorny transit problem for those who favour the Asiatic theory, that they have all agreed to adopt it, and have never been able to tear themselves away from it for a moment and look elsewhere. What if there were other currents? What if there was a direct current communication between the Malaysian portion of Asia and Central America? We take no credit for discovering currents. We have simply looked to see whether, if our theory is otherwise good, the invading architects would have an advantage of a current in their long voyage. And we have found one.

The prevailing winds blow six months of the year west to east, and the currents would seem at first to be coast currents. But all are not so. There is the great Equatorial Current rising on the Peruvian coast (where it is known as the Peru Current) between south latitude 30° and 40°. For a time it keeps by the coast, running in a N.N.W. direction until it reaches the Equator, where it turns and runs in an almost direct line across the Pacific between the Equator and 10° south latitude. This powerful current will not, of course, serve the purpose of our argument, as it goes in the wrong direction. But there is another current known as the Counter Current, running north of the Equator east to west. It is first noticeable among the many small island currents in the Indian Archipelago, and then takes a course to the E.S.E. of Borneo and south of the Philippines and out into the Pacific. On its course it runs through the Caroline Islands and the Marshall Group. At between 160° and 170° longitude west Greenwich it is reinforced by a branch of the southern Equatorial Current which runs swiftly round Christmas and Fanning Islands and turns on a backward course. On an average its rate for the whole distance is about two knots per hour, or nearly as fast as the Japan Current. It spends itself on the coast of Central America between the Equator and 10° north latitude, part of it turning south until it is swallowed up again by the Equatorial currents, the other half turning north and eventually merging into the Mexican Current coming down from the north. This current fulfils all the requirements of our argument. It would naturally land emigrants from Malaysia on the coast of Central America between 10° and 14° north latitude.

The most ambitious of Sea Migrations in early times are perhaps those of the Polynesians. Starting, it is assumed from their own traditions, from Samoa, their present distribution over the Southern Pacific shows that they did not hesitate to make immense sea journeys under circumstances which to our modern minds seem almost impossible. For the Polynesians had no boats but the open canoe or dug-out still used by the islanders to-day. These Polynesian migrations are fact, not theory; and thus when we come to reflect upon the problem of a migration from, say, Java to Central America, we begin to see how really practicable it all is. For the ships in the East were not dug-outs, but were actually built of planks. The Chinese traded with India and the Malaysian islands during the fifth and sixth centuries, and used decked boats for the trade. They knew of the compass from the earliest times, and actually used it for navigation from the third and fourth centuries onward. From them the peoples of India and Malaysia learnt shipbuilding, if they had not already developed it. Thus our migrating architects would, in all probability, have quite decent-sized vessels in which they could make the voyage to America.

But it may be asked what impulse to migration these peoples could have had. If our dates are accurate, the case is a fairly clear one. Buddhism started, as every one knows, in India. During the fourth and fifth centuries the persecution of the Buddhists began, and ended finally in their being driven out of India. As an early result of the movement which was bringing about their expulsion, they established themselves in Burma. Buddhism was acknowledged in China, as the third religion of the Empire, as early as 65 A.D. The religion spread into the Indian Archipelago soon after it reached Burma and the Malay Peninsula, and the building of the Buddhist Temple at Boro Budor in Java was begun between 600 and 700 A.D., though, owing to wars and invasions, it was not finished until about 1430.

But the course of Buddhism did not run smooth in Java. The Buddhist settlers were involved in wars with neighbouring Malay peoples, and the building of the great temple was, it is certain, much interrupted. The disturbed condition of their tenure would tend to drive some of the settlers into fresh migration. Probably about the eighth century a band of these undertook a voyage in search of a new home. There is ample evidence to show that the disturbed state of Malaysia was such at this time as to cause constant kaleidoscopic changes of population. On the mainland in Cambodia, Angkor Vhat, which, as we have shown, resembles the ruins of Central America, was probably at that time inhabited. The Khmers who built it have never been properly traced. They were possibly swallowed up in the great racial cataclysm which was then taking place thereabouts. Some of them may have been driven into the islands, and were possibly the designers of Boro Budor. Perhaps the band of immigrants who reached America were Khmers; but this, of course, must remain mere surmise. Our theory involves the assumption that some Eastern people professing Buddhism, and skilled in the type of architecture associated with early Buddhist buildings, did reach Central America.

We have tried to show that such a voyage was possible, and now let us follow their route. Taking Java as their starting-point, we have shown how the currents cross the Pacific to the Caroline Islands. This group, lying directly in the course of a migrating people, would be certain to be a resting-place on their journey. They might, perhaps, stay some weeks, perhaps months there, possibly leaving some of their number behind them when they finally started out again. Here, then, one would expect to find some trace of their culture, and that is exactly what we do find. There are architectural remains in the Carolines, though these have never yet been properly studied. But there is evidence that they are just such relics as we should expect of the men who were to be the tutors of the Mayans. F. W. Christian, in his book The Caroline Islands (London, 1899), says on p. 80, speaking of the ruins on the east coast of Ponape, "Somewhat similar in character would be the semi-Indian ruins of Java and the Cyclopean structures of Aké and Chichen Itza in Yucatan. A series of huge rude steps brings us into a spacious courtyard, strewn with fragments of fallen pillars, encircling a second terraced enclosure with a projecting frieze or cornice of somewhat Japanese type." The tradition of the Ponapeans in regard to these ruins is, Mr. Christian tells us, "Two brothers, Ani-Aramach, Godmen or Heroes, named Olo-chipa and Olo-chopa, coming from the direction of Chokach, built the breakwater of Nan-Moluchai and the island city it shuts in. By their magic spells one by one the great masses of stone flew through the air like birds, settling down into their appointed place."

From the photographs reproduced by Mr. Christian it would seem that the ruins were distinctive of no special type of architecture, but were such as one would expect to be put up by those who had only made the islands their home for a very short period, or, as is far more likely, did not even stop to build but imparted a slight knowledge to the natives, whose subsequent productions would be thus uncouth. Their next halting-place would be the Marshall Islands, but whether there are any ruins there we do not know. It is almost next to certain that intelligent search would reveal such.

The distance between Java and the coast of Central America at the point which we wish to indicate as the likely landingplace is about 9,000 miles. The Caroline Islands are about 700 miles from the south-east corner of the Philippines, the last sight of land a people migrating from Java by the route we adopt would get. The Carolines would be in their route for 1,500 miles, as this archipelago is a specially widespread one. From the Carolines to the Marshall Islands is about 450 miles; and then on to the American coast is about 6,000 miles, with the smaller unnamed islands lying north of Christmas Island between longitude 160° and 175° west of Greenwich intervening for about 1,000 miles of their course. Between this point and the American coast would be the longest stretch of open sea the migrators would have to face.

We do not suggest that they would come over in great numbers. They followed the course of the current to America, and would be thrown on the coast where it struck in its greatest force. The Pacific Counter Current turns off into two branches on nearing the coast at about 10° north latitude, part going to the south and part north. If they took the southern branch they would come in contact with the Equatorial Current coming up from Peru, and inevitably be carried out to sea again. On the other hand, if they took the northern branch, they would be carried for some miles along the coast until about latitude 13°, where the current runs in closest, and there would be the most probable spot for them to land.

CHAPTER XVII
THE AGE OF THE RUINS

The very natural temptation to assign a romantically great age to the ruins of Central America has proved too much for most writers and students of the subject. We, too, would like to think that these Mayan buildings rival in antiquity those of Egypt; but we have been unable to blind ourselves to certain facts, which are as commonplace as they are convincing. The proper way to judge the age of a building is not to stand in front of it in an attitude of reverence like a pre-Raphaelite before an Old Master, but to look at it with the critical eye of a mason, if you can. If you are not a mason, or know nothing about masonry, then you should take an expert with you. If the many students of Mayan edifices had taken the trouble to put them to this very simple test, noting how they were built, and then making due allowance for the friability of the material and so on, we should have heard less of the fairy tales which have gained undeserved currency in past years.

If the theory which we have put forward in our last chapter is as sound as we believe it to be, it would seem satisfactorily to fix a maximum date for Central American buildings. But we cannot too emphatically point out that our view as to the age of the ruins has not been evolved to suit our theory as to who were America's first architects, but is based upon entirely practical tests which are by their nature final.

We have imagined that the architects reached the coast of Central America at about 13° north latitude. It is probable that they would not begin to build directly they landed, but would first look for a suitable site on which they might found a settlement. They possibly numbered two or three hundred; more than this is most unlikely. In such small numbers they could not possess themselves of any likely spot irrespective of the American tribes already inhabiting the country. The chance is that it was some little while before they finally founded a city. But somewhere within reasonable distance of the portion of the coast where they would be most likely to land, we ought to find ruins having all the chief characteristics of their architecture, with figures for the most part typical of their race in face and feature, in costume and ornament, and such ruins should be very distinctly differentiated from those deeper in the country, and erected after the invaders had been some time in contact with the natives, whose own mode of living and disposition would modify the orientalism of the designs.

And this is precisely what we do find. We find that Copan is well within 150 miles of the site of their probable landing. Here, as we pointed out on p. 268, are carvings so strikingly Oriental that one cannot doubt their origin. The faces of the figures on the stelae are the faces one can see to-day in Cambodia and Siam. The dress, the ornamentation, the turban-shaped headdress (found on no other carvings but these) are all purely ancient Indo-Chinese. Couple all this with the fact that nowhere else have the counterparts of the peculiar monuments of Copan been found in Central America except at Quirigua, which, but a few miles distant, was probably almost synchronous in its building, and it must be admitted that there is much in our suggestion; and that here we are able to locate one of their earliest, if not actually their earliest, settlement.

The traditions of the Mayans all agree that Copan was built by the Itzas, the tribe inhabiting Chichen, who had temporarily migrated thence. If this tradition is true, then why do we not find the same characteristic monuments in both places? As far as architectural ornamentation and monuments are concerned, no two sets of ruins could be further apart. At Copan we find a uniform type in costume and feature. There is not a single sign of a warrior or the feathered headdress common in all the monuments of Yucatan. The battle scenes characteristic of Mayan carvings are entirely lacking. But what of Chichen? In all the carvings there you do not find one that resembles in the least those at Copan. The features are the features of another race; and there is not a suggestion of the Copan headdress, but all the figures wear the befeathered American-Indian type. The scenes in the bas-reliefs and paintings invariably depict warriors in battle array.