Jungle of Stone: The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya by William Carlsen

Author:William Carlsen [Carlsen, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-04-25T22:00:00+00:00

Title page from Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatán.

“We close this book with regret,” wrote the reviewer in the London Quarterly Review. “From the first page to the last, the animation, the characteristic energy, and the buoyant spirit of the author remain undiminished. The political details . . . would in themselves be sufficient to render the work one of high interest and permanent value.”12 As they had with his earlier book on Egypt and the Holy Land, the critics succumbed again to the charm of Stephens’s persona. “There is something exceedingly agreeable to a reader in the manner of Mr. Stephens,” noted one reviewer; “there is a good humor, a bonhomie about him, which is irresistibly fascinating. He is the very Democritus of travelers, laughing at inconveniences, which would make some men gnash their teeth and tear their hair in anguish, making the best of everything that turns up.”13

The accolades were not confined to the book reviewers—or to comments on Stephens’s writing and persona. Historian William Hickling Prescott, then hard at work on his pioneering study of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, was greatly impressed. Four years earlier, publication of his book The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella had established him as a master of narrative history, renowned for his deep research, impartiality, and elegant writing. Publication of his Conquest of Mexico in 1843 would catapult him into the rank of one of the greatest historians of his time. Because of blindness he worked almost exclusively from his home in Boston, dictating his prose and relying on researchers in Spain. But he had traveled in 1838 to New York, where he and Stephens met for the first time right after Stephens’s debut book appeared.14 A friendship grew with their mutual interest in Spanish America.

In a quick exchange of letters following his return from Mexico, Stephens summarized for Prescott some of his findings, which the historian found invaluable for his own book. Stephens told him the quality of the Central American ruins were equal to “the finest of the Egyptians” and “the buildings at Palenque and Uxmal are very large and really one can hardly help speaking of them extravagantly.”15 Prescott replied, expressing his astonishment that the structures were “so well executed.” He fully agreed with Stephens that the then-preeminent historian of the Americas, William Robertson, was probably wrong in his insistence that Native Americans were too primitive to have developed an advanced civilization.16 When Stephens’s book came out, Prescott dashed off a long letter to Stephens: “I cannot well express to you the satisfaction and delight I have received from your volumes. I suppose few persons will enjoy them more, as very few have been led to pay much attention to the subject. You have indeed much exceeded the expectations I had formed, which were not small.”17

Prescott and other scholars were impressed with Stephens’s conservative approach regarding the portrayal of the ruins: not exaggerating their size or age as others had done but describing and showing them just as he and Catherwood found them.

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