Note 279 — Chapter II · (continued 2)

Thus, of one of the idols at Copan, ‘The intention of the sculptor seems to have been to excite terror.’ Stephens's Central America, vol. i. p. 152; at p. 159, ‘The form of sculpture most generally used was a death's head.’ At Mayapan (vol. iii. p. 133), ‘representations of human figures or animals with hideous features and expressions, in producing which the skill of the artist seems to have been expended;’ and again, p. 412, ‘unnatural and grotesque faces.’