MODERN TRAVEL AND THE RUIN OF ANCIENT CITIES.

Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume 1, Issue 1, 1 January 1855, Page 25

MODERN TRAVEL AND THE RUIN OF ANCIENT CITIES.

The discovery of numerous and extensive cities, desolate and in ruins, of whose origin, inhabitants, fortunes, and final overthrow no chronicle has been procured, and whose very existence was previously unknown to the civilized world, is one of the remarkable events of the present age, due to the adventurous spirit of the American traveller, Mr. Stephens. Before the first of his two journeys in Yucatan, —the large peninsula which juts out from the northern part of Central America into the Gulph of Mexico, nearly four hundred miles in length, by two hundred in width, a vague idea prevailed that monuments of a departed race were extant towards its western side, in good preservation, and exhibiting in their execution a considerable degree of civilization. It came, however, upon us with all the charm of novelty, to find in this region, overgrown and entombed by the luxuriance of a tropical vegetation, not a few remnants merely of rude erections, but the crumbling remains of forty-four ancient cities, indicating a people possessed of power, wealth, and skill; while it amply corroborated the accounts of the early Spanish rulers, which had been usually deemed extravagant, respecting the population of the neighbouring state of Mexico, and its proficiency in the arts, at the period when Cortes leaped upon its shores.

No discovery of equal magnitude has ever rewarded individual enterprise in any part of our own hemisphere. But similar events have occurred in other parts of the world. Soon after the king of Ava ceded to the British in 1826, by the treaty of Yandaboo, the whole range of the Tenasserim provinces, an English gentleman, Mr. H. Gouger, crossed the Salveyn river at the city of Martaban. Hejfound a wide extent of country on the opposite bank completely covered with jungle and forest, of which wild beasts and reptiles had long been the only inhabitants. But evidence appeared of human occupancy in bygone time. In the very midst of the wilderness, stupendous walls were found, neatly and strongly built of brick, with large forest trees growing from their tops, or out of rents or fissures in their face; aud fragments of buildings showed that a very considerable city had once occupied the spot. This was Moulmein, of which the-Portuguese tra-j veller Pinto caught a glimpse in the middle ages, soon after the maratime route from Europe to the East had been opened. The site has been largely cleared j the town has been partly rebuilt and peopled; the great temple of the ancient city restored, forms a striking object from the river; and Moulmein, retaining its old name, bids fair to regain its former rank among the living cities of the globe. Babylon and the Banks of the Euphrates.