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Squier and Davis also appear to have had no doubt whatever of the capabilities of the Mound-Builders in the direction of human portraiture.
Squier is peculiarly fitted to select and edit with judgment such documents of historical interest as his unrivalled opportunities have enabled him to collect. The Letter of Palacio is now for the first time published in the original, although it was largely used by Herrera in his "Historia General." "To me," says Mr. Squier, "the relation has a special interest.
If it should prove that but a small minority of the carvings can be specifically identified, owing to inaccuracies and to their general resemblance, he may indeed go even further and conclude that they form a very unsafe basis for deductions that owe their very existence to assumed accurate imitation. In 1848 Squier and Davis published their great work on the Mounds of the Mississippi Valley.
SYMBOLISM, SCIENCE OF. To what has been said in the text, may be added the following apposite remarks of Squier: "In the absence of a written language or forms of expression capable of conveying abstract ideas, we can readily comprehend the necessity, among a primitive people, of a symbolic system.
Compared with absurdities of this order, the wildest imaginings of M. Brasseur de Bourbourg are entitled to be ranked with the conjectures of a sane philosophy. Mr. Squier, as we have seen, gives no countenance to baseless speculations, and the publication of his book has, it is evident, fallen on them as a heavy blow and great discouragement.
We may imagine the straits to which the advocates of Lo are driven when they point to the absence of mortar or cement of any kind in such walls as a proof of rudeness and ignorance in the builders. But, as Mr. Squier reminds us, Humboldt found a true mortar in the ruins of Pullal and Canuar, in Northern Peru.
The alligator mound was described under this name for no other reason than because it was known in the vicinity as such, this designation having been adopted by Squier and Davis, as they frankly say, "for want of a better," adding "although the figure bears as close a resemblance to the lizard as any other reptile."
In Short's engraving, while the front side corresponds closely with the same view given by Squier and Davis, there is a notable difference observable on the reverse side.
E.G. SQUIER, our Charge d'Affaires to Central America, is now in New York, and will soon publish an essay upon the antiquities of that country, similar in design, probably, to his important volume on the remains of ancient works in the valley of the Mississippi, printed for the Smithsonian Institute.
His account has a permanent value from being the earliest known, and as proving that within fifty years after the Spanish Conquest they presented very nearly the same appearance as at present. Mr. Squier has enriched Talacio's Letter with numerous and important notes.
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