Note VI-26 — Chapter VI · ANTIQUITIES OF TABASCO AND CHIAPAS, RUINS OF PALENQUE.
Reading edition
Del Rio, p. 11, calls the height 16 yards in four stories, also plate in frontispiece. Galindo, in Antiq. Mex., tom. i., div. ii., p. 70, says it is somewhat fallen, but still 100 feet high. Id., in Lond. Geog. Soc., Jour., vol. iii., p. 61. Dupaix, p. 16, says 75 feet in four stories, and his pl. xv-vi., fig. 22, make it 93 feet in three stories. Kingsborough's text mentions no height, but his plates xvii-xviii., fig. 24, make it 108 feet in four stories. The other authorities mention no height, but from their plates the height would seem not far from 50 feet. See Waldeck, pl. xviii-xix., and all the general views of the Palace. Waldeck, p. iii., severely criticises Dupaix's drawings. 'Une tour de huit étages, dont l'escalier, en plusieurs endroits est soutenu sur des voûtes cintrées.' Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. Nat. Civ., tom. i., pp. 86-7. 'En el pátio occidental está la torre de tres cuerpos y medio: en el primero tiene cuatro puertas cerradas, y una que se abrió cuando el desmonte del capitan Rio, y se halló ser un retrete de poco mas de tres cuartas y lumbreras que se abrieron entónces.' Registro Yucateco, tom. i., pp. 319-20. 'Dominée par une tour quadrangulaire, dont il subsistait trois étages, separés l'un de l'autre par autant de corniches.' Morelet, Voy., tom. i., p. 266. 'It would seem to have been used as a modern oriental minaret, from which the priests summoned the people to prayer.' Jones, p. 83.