Note IV-44 — Chapter IV · ANTIQUITIES OF GUATEMALA AND BELIZE.

Col. Mendez, whom Gov. Tut preceded at Tikal by a day or two only, visited the ruins as commissioner of the Guatemalan government, to which, after a stay of four days, he made a report. This report, so far as I know, was never published in the original Spanish; but the MS. fell into the hands of Mr Hesse, Prussian envoy to the Central American governments, and was by him translated into German and published with the plates in the Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Erdkunde, 1853, tom. i., pt. iii., pp. 162-8. This translation, without the plates, and with some slight omissions of unimportant details respecting the journey, was also published in Sivers, Mittelamerika, pp. 247-54, 304-8, with notes by Messrs Hesse and Sivers. This is the source of my information. Mendez revisited Tikal in 1852, without obtaining any additional information of value so far as I know. The ruins are mentioned and more or less fully described, always from the same source, in Müller, Amerikanische Urreligionen, pp. 460-2; Buschmann, Ortsnamen, pp. 115-17; Ritter, in Gumprecht, tom. i., p. 3; Wappäus, Geog. u. Stat., pp. 247, 295.