that is never visited by tourists and is foreign even to most
Mexicans. Primitive people are becoming scarce on the globe. On the
American continents there are still some left in their original
state. If they are studied before they, too, have lost their
individuality or been crushed under the heels of civilisation, much
light may be thrown not only upon the early people of this country
but upon the first chapters of the history of mankind.

In the present rapid development of Mexico it cannot be prevented that
these primitive people will soon disappear by fusion with the great
nation to whom they belong. The vast and magnificent virgin forests
and the mineral wealth of the mountains will not much longer remain
the exclusive property of my dusky friends; but I hope that I shall
have rendered them a service by setting them this modest monument,
and that civilised man will be the better for knowing of them.

That I have been able to accomplish what I did I owe, in the
first place, to the generosity of the people of the United States,
to their impartiality and freedom from prejudice, which enables
foreigners to work shoulder to shoulder with their own advance
guard. I wish to extend my thanks in particular to the American
Geographical Society of New York, and still more especially to
the American Museum of Natural History of New York, with whom I
have had the honour of being connected more or less closely for ten
years. To its public-spirited and whole-souled President, Mr. Morris
K. Jesup, I am under profound obligations. I also take pleasure in
acknowledging my indebtedness to Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who initiated
my Mexican ventures with a subscription of $1,000; furthermore to the
Hon. Cecil Baring, Mr. Frederick A. Constable, Mr. William E. Dodge,
Mr. James Douglass, Mrs. Joseph W. Drexel, Mr. George J. Gould, Miss