"Well, it isn't, though it might be," laughed
Tom. "Copan is a city, in the Department of
Copan, near the boundary between Honduras and
Guatemala. A fact I learned from the article
and not because I remembered my geography."

"I was going to say," remarked Ned with a
smile, "that you were coming it rather strong
on the school-book stuff."

"Oh, it's all plainly written down there," and
Tom waved toward the magazine at which Ned
was looking. "As you'll see, if you take the
trouble to go through it, as I did, Copan is, or
maybe was, for all I know, one of the most
important centers of the Mayan civilization."

"What's Mayan?" asked Ned. "You see I'm
going to imbibe my information by the deductive
rather than the excavative process," he added
with a laugh.

"I see," laughed Tom. "Well, Mayan refers
to the Mayas, an aboriginal people of Yucatan.
The Mayas had a peculiar civilization of their
own, thousands of years ago, and their calendar
system was so involved----"

"Never mind about dates," again interrupted