Excerpt from The Inscriptions at Copan When Stephens, the American traveler and explorer, first visited Copan in 1839 the valley was buried in a dense tropical forest, the haunt of the monkey and jaguar.1 According to information gathered by Gordon from the oldest inhabitants of the small modern village of Copan, this forest was cut down some time during the sixties of the last century by colonists from Guatemala, who were attracted thither by the fertility of the region.2 These colonists and their successors completely cleared the valley, leaving only a small grove standing on the Acropolis at the Main Structure; and to-day all that remains of this once magnificent jungle are a few giant ceiba and cedar trees, Whose lofty foliage spreads a grateful shade over the general desolation. The region was peculiarly adapted to intensive aboriginal occupation. The climate is salubrious for the tropics, the elevation being such as largely to eliminate the excessive humidity of the coast plain. Toward the end of the dry season, particularly in April and May, the heat is intense in the middle of the day, but the mornings and evenings are always cool and refreshing, and indeed the climate is more healthful than that of almost any other Maya site. The water-supply is abundant, and the water itself is potable. The rainy season begins about the middle of May and lasts until the end of December, reaching its height in July.3 The river is subject to annual freshets, when it overflows its banks and inundates the low bottom lands, making the soil exceedingly fertile. The region enjoys a rich and varied tropical flora. There are many useful indigenous species, both cultivated and wild, only a few of the more important of which can be enumerated here. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.