Note 60 — CHAPTER THE SECOND

M. Degrand, in his “Ponts en Maçonnerie,” draws attention to the fact that arches of this elementary sort have been discovered in Mexico where they represent a dead civilization to which no date can be assigned. Degrand draws his information from two books; “Histoire du Royaume de Quito,” par Don Juan de Velasco, Paris, 1840, and “Monuments anciens du Mexique,” par de Waldeck et Brasseur de Bourbourg, Paris, 1866. At Palanqué, in a building supposed to be a temple of the sun, a large bay that opens into the sanctuary has an elliptic arch formed with courses of dressed stone that project one beyond the other: “un arc surbaissé formé d’assises de pierres de taille posées avec une forte saillie les unes par rapport aux autres.”