First Sentence

"IN ages long lost in the abyss of time, when Aryan colonists had not yet established their first settlements on the banks of the river Saraswati in the Punjab, and the primitive Egyptian settlers in the valley of the Nile did not fancy, even in their most hopeful day-dreams, that their descendants would become the great people whose civilization was to be the cradle of that of Europe, there existed on the Western Continent a nation-the Maya-that had attained to a high degree of culture in arts and sciences."