There are still many secret codes and ciphers in the world today. The Shugborough Hall Monuments inscrip-tion is one of them. In fact, it is one of the top ten unsolved ciphers. For over two hundred years, many intelligent men and women have tried to break its code, to no avail. Without the aid of ancient cryptology techniques and simple math it cannot be solved. Over the last six years my brother and I have worked diligently to put these old methods together to come up with a solution. Finally, we were able to name the author of the Shug-borough Hall Inscription and what his coded message revealed. The solution will surprise you, as it did us. The name of the man who was the brains behind the inscription is someone we have all read about in our history books.

Lieutenant Jose Cortes of the Spanish Royal Corps of Engineers was a keen observer of the native peoples of the Northern Borderlands of New Spain. Especially fascinated by the Apaches whom he observed at frontier presidios in the 1790s, he gleaned all possible information from veterans of the frontier service, and in the process grew from sympathetic inquirer to virtual advocate. Recognizing the strategic importance not only of the Apacheria but also of Indian peoples in the farthest reaches of New Spain, the zealous officer combed available archives, summarizing data reported over a quarter century by the closest observers of New Spain's frontier peoples from the Mississippi to the Pacific. Setting that information in a global strategic context, he paid particular attention--both admiring and cautionary--to the new Anglo-American republic, stressing the demographic factors making the United States such a dangerous neighbor to New Spain.His resulting Report on the Northern Provinces of New Spain provides the most closely informed, best organized understanding of Apaches available at the end of the eighteenth century. It also provides a rare glimpse of a sophisticated Spaniard's grasp of the dangers boding the end of Spanish empire in America.

Winner, Finalist, Soeurette Diehl Fraser Translation Award, Texas Institute of Letters, 2001 Texas was already slipping from the grasp of Mexico when Manuel Mier y Teran made his tour of inspection in 1828. American settlers were pouring across the vaguely defined border between Mexico's northernmost province and the United States, along with a host of Indian nations driven off their lands by American expansionism. Teran's mission was to assess the political situation in Texas while establishing its boundary with the United States. Highly qualified for these tasks as a soldier, scientist, and intellectual, he wrote perhaps the most perceptive account of Texas' people, politics, natural resources, and future prospects during the critical decade of the 1820s. This book contains the full text of Teran's diary-which has never before been published-edited and annotated by Jack Jackson and translated into English by John Wheat. The introduction and epilogue place the diary in historical context, revealing the significant role that Teran played in setting Mexican policy for Texas between 1828 and 1832.