Civilization in ancient America rose to its highest level among the Mayas of Yucatan. Not to speak of the architectural monuments which still remain to attest this, we have the evidence of the earliest missionaries to the fact that they alone, of all the natives of the New World, possessed a literature written in “letters and characters, ” preserved in volumes neatly bound, the paper manufactured from the bark of a tree and sized with a durable white varnish.
