parts, that as i traveled in the forest of massachusetts, it seems to me a newfound goal -- newfound golgotha." this is from a book -- this is from mexico, from a kind of chronicle kept by some maya indians. the maya are the source of the best writing we have run any pre-contact culture. "great was the stench of the dead. after our fathers and grandfathers succumbed, after the people fled to the fields, the dogs and vultures devoured the bodies. the mortality was terrible. your grandfathers died, and with them died the son of the king and his brothers and kinsman. so it was that we became orphans. oh my son, so we became when we were yet young. we were born to die." well, did the transfer of microbes also go the other way? was it, in short, truly an exchange? there is one apparent instance of microbial transfer going from west to east, from america back to europe. there is one, it is important -- it is kind of notorious in its own right. venereal syphilis has long been thought to have originated in the new world, and then been taken to europe in return voyages from the first discovers perhaps