Volume 4 — CHAPTER V. ANTIQUITIES OF YUCATAN. (continued 2)

Further north, in the north-eastern corner of the rectangle which contains our central group of ruins, are Akil and Mani, the relics of the former locality, so far as known, being chiefly built into the walls of modern buildings. Mani was a prominent city at the time of the conquest, and the modern village stands on the remains of the aboriginal town, mounds and other relics not described being yet visible. Mr Stephens here found some documents, dating back to the coming of the Spaniards, which are of great importance in connection with the question of the antiquity of the Yucatan ruins, and will be noticed when I come to speak of that point. The only monuments of the central group remaining to be mentioned are those of Chunhuhu, in the extreme south-western corner of the rectangle. These are very extensive, evidently the remains of a large city, and several of the buildings were sketched by Mr Catherwood, being of one story, and having grotesque human figures as a prominent feature in their exterior decoration. One is plastered on the outside, as Mr Stephens thinks all the Yucatan buildings may have been originally—that is, on the plain portions of their walls. One front has the frequently noticed line of close-standing pilasters, with full-length human figures at intervals, which stand with uplifted hands, as if supporting the weight of the upper cornice.[V-70]

RUINS OF CHICHEN ITZA.

The next, or eastern, group of Yucatan antiquities includes little beside the ruined city of Chichen Itza,[V-71] a city which was famous in the ancient traditionary annals of the Mayas, whose structures served both natives and Spaniards as fortifications at the time of the conquest, and whose ruins have been more or less known to the inhabitants of the country since that epoch. The ruins lie twenty miles west of Valladolid, the chief town of the eastern portion of the state, on a public road in plain view of all travelers by that route. In this case the original Maya name has been retained, Chichen meaning 'mouth of wells,' and Itza being the name of a branch of the Maya people, or of a royal family, which played a most prominent part in Yucatan history. The name Chichen comes probably from two great senotes which supplied the ancient city with water, and which differ from the complicated underground passages noted in other parts of the state, being immense natural pits of great depth, with nearly perpendicular sides, the only traces of artificial improvement being in the winding steps that lead down to the water's surface, and slight remains of a wall about the edge of the precipice. So far as explored, the remains may be included in a rectangle measuring two thousand by three thousand feet, and their arrangement is shown in the plan on the next page, made by Mr Catherwood.[V-72]

PLAN OF CHICHEN-ITZA

View larger image.

CHICHEN—NUNNERY.

Perhaps the most remarkable of the Chichen edifices is that known as the Nunnery, marked H on the plan.[V-73] Of course in this and other buildings I shall confine my description chiefly to points of contrast with ruins already mentioned, and well known to the reader. Supporting the Nunnery, instead of a pyramid, we have for the first time a solid mass of masonry one hundred and twelve by one hundred and sixty feet rising with perpendicular sides to a height of about thirty-two feet. On the summit, with a base one hundred and four feet long, is a building in two receding stories, of which the upper, whose summit was sixty-five feet above the ground, is almost entirely in ruins. The first story is better preserved, and its front was decorated with sculpture of which no drawings have been made. In the centre of the northern side a stairway fifty-six feet wide leads up, with thirty-nine steps, to the top of the solid basement, which forms a broad promenade round the superimposed building, and continues with fifteen additional steps to the roof of the first story. One room in this first story is forty-seven feet long; several contain niches in their walls, extending from floor to ceiling and bearing traces of having been covered with painted figures, some of them human with plumed heads; and some of the apparent doorways are false, or walled up, evidently from the date of their first construction. Attached to the eastern end of the solid structure is a projecting wing, shown in the plan, sixty feet long, thirty-five feet wide, and twenty-five feet high, consisting of only a single story, and divided into nine apartments, several of which are filled up with solid masonry. The lintels throughout the Nunnery are of stone, and the interior walls of the rooms are plastered. The exterior walls of this eastern wing are covered with rich sculpture, both above and below the cornice, but this sculpture presents no contrasts with that of Uxmal, or other cities, sufficiently striking to be verbally described. Only a few feet from the eastern end of the Nunnery, and indeed described by Charnay as wings of that edifice, are the two small buildings a and b of the plan. The former is thirteen by thirty-eight feet, and twenty feet high; the latter, sometimes known as the Iglesia, or Church, is fourteen by twenty-six feet, and thirty-one feet high, containing only one room. These structures present a most imposing appearance by reason of their great height in proportion to their ground dimensions.[V-74]

CHICHEN—AKAB-TZIB.

The building G of the plan, instead of standing on an artificial mound, rests on the level plain, but the usual effect is produced by excavating the surface about it, thus giving it the appearance of resting on a raised foundation. It measures forty-eight by one hundred and forty-nine feet, and its outer walls are perfectly plain. The roof is reached by a stairway forty-five feet wide in the centre of the eastern front, while, corresponding with the stairway, on the western front is a solid projection thirty-four by forty-four feet, of unknown use. The floor of the inner range of rooms is one foot higher than that of the outer, and on the under surface of a lintel in one of the interior doorways is the sculptured design shown in the cut on the following page, surrounded by a row of hieroglyphics, of which only a small portion are included in the cut, but which are of the same type as those we have seen at Copan. The subject seems to be some mysterious incantation or other sacrificial rite, and the hieroglyphics, known as the 'writing in the dark,' in Maya akab-tzib, have given their name to the building.[V-75]

Sculptured Lintel at Chichen.

CHICHEN—THE CASTLE.

Serpent Balustrade at Chichen.

Carved Door-Jamb in the Castle.

In the northern part of the city, at B, is the Pyramid, or Castle, of Chichen. Its base is one hundred and ninety-seven by two hundred and two feet; its height about seventy-five feet; and its summit platform sixty-one by sixty-four feet. A stairway thirty-seven feet wide leads up the western slope to the platform, and on the north is another stairway of ninety steps forty-four feet wide, having solid balustrades which terminate at the bottom in two immense serpent's heads ten feet long, with open mouths and protruding tongues as in the opposite cut. On the platform stands a building forty-three by forty-nine feet, and about twenty feet high, having only a single doorway in the centre of each front. These doorways have all wooden lintels elaborately carved, and the jambs,—probably of stone, although Norman says they are of wood—are also covered with sculpture. The upper portion of one of these sculptured jambs is represented in the cut, and the designs on the others are of a similar general character. The northern doorway, which seems to have been the principal entrance, is twenty feet wide and its lintel is supported by two columns, each eight feet and eight inches high, with projecting bases, and having their entire surface decorated, like the jambs at the sides, with sculptured figures. The interior plan of this building differs materially from any we have met; since the doorways on the east, west, and south open into a corridor six feet wide, which extends without partition walls round the three corresponding sides of the edifice; while the northern doorway gives access also to a corridor forty feet long and six and a third feet wide. Through the centre of the rear wall of this corridor a doorway leads into a room twelve feet nine inches by nineteen feet eight inches, and seventeen feet high. This room also differs widely from any before described, for its ceiling, instead of being formed by a single triangular arch running lengthways, has two transverse arches supported by immense carved zapote-beams stretched across the room, and which rest, each at its centre, on two square pillars whose dimensions are twenty-two inches on each side and nine feet in height. The cut shows the ground plan of this remarkable structure, the squares at a representing the feet of the interior pillars, and the circles at b, the pillars that support the lintel of the northern doorway.[V-76]

Ground Plan of the Castle.

Stone Ring at Chichen.

Painted Boat in the Gymnasium.

CHICHEN—THE GYMNASIUM.

The building at A of the plan is called by the natives the Iglesia, by Norman the Temple, by Charnay the Cirque, and by Stephens the Gymnasium. The latter names were applied from the supposition that the structure served for a peculiar game of ball to which the Aztec kings, at least, if not the Mayas, were much addicted. Landa seems, however, entitled to the honor of having invented this theory, since he speaks of buildings in this part of Chichen devoted to amusements.[V-77] This structure is very similar to the one marked H on the plan of Uxmal. It consists of two parallel walls, thirty by two hundred and seventy-four feet, twenty-six feet high, and one hundred and twenty feet apart. The inner walls facing each other present a plain undecorated surface, but in the centre of each, about twenty feet from the ground, is fixed by means of a tenon, a stone ring four feet in diameter and thirteen inches thick, with a hole nineteen inches in diameter through the centre, surrounded by two sculptured serpents intertwined as in the following cut. M. Charnay found only one of these rings in place at the time of his visit. The south end of the eastern wall served as a base to superimposed buildings or ranges of apartments erected on it after the manner of all the Yucatan structures of more than one story. The upper range has a part of its exterior wall still standing, covered with sculpture, which includes, among other devices, a procession of tigers or lynxes. In the interior, massive sculptured pillars and door-posts, with carved zapote lintels appear, but what seemed to Mr Stephens "the greatest gem of aboriginal art which on the whole Continent of America now survives," was the series of paintings in bright colors which cover the wall and ceiling of one of the chambers. The paintings are so much damaged and the plaster so scratched and fallen, that the connection of the whole cannot be made out, but detached subjects were copied, one of which is the boat represented in the cut, inserted here because of the rarity of all species of watercraft in our surviving relics of aboriginal decoration. The other paintings represent human figures in various postures and occupations, battles, processions, houses, trees, and other objects. Blue, red, yellow, and green are the colors employed, all the human figures moreover being tinted a reddish brown. It is, however, the supposed resemblance of these figures to some of the Aztec sculpture and picture-writings that gave this room and the one below it in the same building their great importance in Mr. Stephens' eyes. We shall be better qualified to appreciate this resemblance after our study of Mexican antiquities in a future chapter. The lower room referred to has its inner surface exposed to the open air, the outer wall having fallen. It is covered with figures sculptured in bas-relief, also originally painted, of which a specimen is shown in the cut, consisting of human forms, each with plumed head-dress, and bearing in his hand what seems to be a bunch of spears or arrows, marching in a procession, or as the natives say, engaged in a dance. One hundred feet from the northern and southern ends of the parallel walls, and very probably connected with them in the uses to which they were by their builders applied, are the two small buildings at c and d of the plan. The southern building is eighty-one feet long, the northern only thirty-five, containing a single apartment. Both are much ruined, but each presents the remains of two sculptured columns, and one of them has carvings on the walls and ceilings of its chamber besides. A horizontal row of circular holes in the exterior walls are conjectured by M. Viollet-le-Duc to have held timbers which supported a kind of outer balcony or sun-shade.[V-78]

Sculptured Design in the Gymnasium.

Red House at Chichen.

The building at E on the plan is called by the natives Chichanchob, or Red House; Charnay terms it the Prison. It's front is shown in the cut, the whole being in an excellent state of preservation. The three doorways lead into a corridor extending the whole length of the building, forty-three feet, through which three corresponding doorways give access to three small apartments in the rear. Over these doorways, and running the whole length of the corridor, is a narrow stone tablet on which is sculptured a row of hieroglyphics, of which the first and best preserved portion is shown in the cut. Their similarity to, if not identity with, the characters at Copan, will be seen at a glance. There are traces of painting on the walls of the three rear rooms.[V-79] The building D presents nothing of particular interest.

Hieroglyphic Tablet at Chichen.

CHICHEN—THE CARACOL.

At F is the Caracol, or winding staircase, called also by Norman the Dome, a building entirely different in form and plan from any we have seen. Of the two supporting rectangular terraces, the lower is one hundred and fifty by two hundred and twenty-three feet, and the upper is fifty-five by eighty feet. A stairway of twenty steps, forty-five feet wide, leads up to the former, and another of sixteen steps, forty-two feet wide, to the latter. The lower stairway had a balustrade formed of two intertwined serpents. On the upper platform is the Caracol, a circular building twenty-two feet in diameter and about twenty-four feet high, its roof being dome-shaped instead of flat. The annexed section and ground plan illustrate its peculiar construction. Two narrow corridors, with plastered and painted walls, extend entirely round the circumference, and the centre is apparently a solid mass of masonry.[V-80]

The Caracol at Chichen.

The only remaining monument at Chichen which demands particular mention is that at C on the plan. Here occur large numbers, three hundred and eighty having been counted, of small square columns from three to six feet high, each composed of several separate pieces, one placed on another, standing in rows of from three to five abreast, round an open space some four hundred feet square, and also extending irregularly in other directions in connection with various mounds. The use of these columns is entirely unknown; but any structure which they may have supported must have been of wood, since absolutely no vestiges remain.[V-81] Besides the monuments described, there are the usual heaps of ruins, mounds, fallen walls, and sculptured blocks, scattered over the plain for miles in every direction. Chichen was evidently a great capital and religious centre, and its ruins present, as the reader has doubtless noticed, very many points of contrast with those of the central or Uxmal group.[V-82]

Ruins are mentioned by Mr Wappäus as existing at Tinum, a short distance north-west of Chichen; and are also indicated, on Malte-Brun's map already referred to, at Espita, still farther north, and at Xocen, a few miles south of Valladolid. At Sitax, near Tinum, a vase, 'something of the Etruscan shape,' from some of the ruined cities, was seen by Mr Norman. At Coba, eastward from Valladolid, the curate of Chemax, in a report of his district prepared for the government, described slightly ranges of buildings in two stories. They are said to be built of stones, each of which measures six square yards; this is very likely an error, and no other peculiarities were spoken of worthy of mention. The same cura discovered on the hacienda of Kantunile far north-eastward toward the coast several mounds, and in one of them three skeletons, at whose head were two earthen vases. One of these was filled with the relics shown in the cuts on the following page, consisting of implements, ornaments, and two carved shells. The shell carvings are in low relief, and the arrow-heads, with which the other vase was nearly filled, were of obsidian, a material not known to exist in Yucatan, and which must consequently be supposed to have been brought from more northern volcanic states of Mexico, where it formed the usual material of knives and many other aboriginal implements and weapons. Besides these different articles, was a horn-handled penknife in the same vase, proving that this burial deposit was made subsequently to the coming of Europeans.[V-83]

NORTHERN GROUP.

RELICS AT TICUL.

I now come to the northern group of Yucatan Antiquities, which is separated from the Uxmal group by the low sierra before mentioned as running from north-west to south-east across this portion of the state. First in this group are the ruins of the ancient Ticul, on the hacienda of San Francisco close to the modern town of Ticul, and just across the sierra from Nohcacab. Here are thirty-six mounds, or pyramids, all visible from one of the highest when the trees are free from foliage. Most of the elevations support buildings, but these are so completely ruined that nothing can be known of the original city, save that it must have been of great extent. These ruined piles have served as quarries to supply building material at Ticul, which is almost entirely built of stone. Many relics are preserved in the town, but the only one particularly noticed is the earthen vase shown in the cut. It is five inches in diameter and four and a half inches high, and the reader will notice a similarity of style between the figures on its front and those carved on the burial relics of Kantunile previously shown. Between two of the mounds of San Francisco, a square stone wall filled with earth and stones was opened, and in it, under a large flat stone, was found a skeleton sitting with knees against the stomach and hands clasping the neck, facing the west. In connection with this skeleton were found a large earthen vase, or water-jar, empty, and a deer's-horn needle, sharp at one end and having an eye at the other. Mr Norman calls this group of mounds Ichmul, supposes them all to be sepulchres, and says that several have been opened and disclosed sitting skeletons, with pots at their feet, and even interior rooms. M. Waldeck briefly mentions in many parts of his work the ruins of Tixualajtun, which may possibly be identical with Ticul, and which bear carved stones, indicating by their number and position in the walls an age of at least three thousand years.[V-84]

Sepulchral Relics from Kantunile.

Earthen Vase from Ticul.

Mound at Mayapan.

RUINS OF MAYAPAN

Circular Structure at Mayapan.

About ten miles northward of Ticul, and twenty-five miles southward of Mérida is the rancho of San Joaquin, included in the hacienda of Xcanchakan, on which are the remains of Mayapan, the ancient Maya capital. According to the traditional annals of the country Mayapan was destroyed by an enemy, in one of the many civil conflicts that desolated Yucatan, not much more than a century before the Spanish conquest. Numerous mounds, scattered blocks, and a few ruined buildings are all that remain to recall the city's ancient splendor. The best preserved mound is that shown in the preceding cut, one hundred feet square at the base, and sixty feet high, with a stairway twenty-five feet wide in the centre of each side. The top is a plain stone platform, with no signs of its ever having supported any building. Most of the sculptured fragments contain only parts of ornamental designs and are fitted with tenons by which they were probably secured on the front walls, as at Uxmal. One building of the ordinary type was sufficiently entire to show the triangular ceiling. A circular building similar to that described at Chichen was also noticed. It is twenty-five feet in diameter, and twenty-four feet high, with only a single doorway facing the west. A single corridor only three feet wide runs entirely round the edifice, the outer wall being five feet thick, and the inner wall is a solid circular mass of stone and mortar nine feet in thickness. The interior walls of the corridor are plastered with several coats of stucco, and yet retain vestiges of yellow, blue, red, and white paint. The preceding cut shows the exterior of this structure, and also gives a good idea of the similar one at Chichen. On a terrace of the mound which supports this dome, are eight round columns, two and a half feet in diameter, and each composed of five stones placed one upon another. Among the sculptured blocks with which the country for miles around is strewn, are some which differ from those mentioned as parts of façade decorations. They are rudely carved, and each represents a subject complete in itself. Two of these, one four and the other three feet high, together with some of the decorative fragments alluded to, are shown in the cut on the opposite page. An idol was also found in one of the subterranean passages of a senote. The inhabitants of the locality report that the ruins extend over the plain within a circumference of three miles, and that the foundations yet remain of a wall that once surrounded the city.[V-85]

Mayapan—Sculptured Fragments.

RELICS OF TIHOO AT MÉRIDA.

Mérida, the capital of Yucatan, was built by the Spanish conquerors on the ruins of the aboriginal city of Tihoo, the ancient mounds furnishing material to the builders of the modern town. Only very slight vestiges of Tihoo remain; yet in the lower cloisters of the Franciscan convent, which is known to have been erected over an ancient mound and building, the Spanish architects left one of the peculiar aboriginal arches intact, unless we suppose that they imitated such an arch in their own work, which is most unlikely. Bishop Landa describes and illustrates with a ground plan one of the largest and finest of the Tihoo structures, as it was in the sixteenth century. In most respects his description agrees exactly with the ruins of the grander class already mentioned. The supporting mound has two retreating terraces on all sides except the western, which side seems to have been perpendicular to its full height. Stairways running the whole length of the mound lead up to the eastern slopes, and on the summit platform is a courtyard surrounded by four buildings, like the Casa de Monjas at Uxmal. A gateway leads through the centre of both eastern and western buildings, and one of these gateways is represented by Landa as having a round arch, the other being of the ordinary form. The buildings are divided into a single range of small apartments opening on the court, except the southern, which has two large rooms, and in front of which was a gallery supported by a row of square pillars. A round building or room is also mentioned in connection with the western range. Landa also mentions several other structures, including the one over whose ruins the Franciscan convent was built. M. Waldeck mentions an excavation in a garden of the city, which is twenty-three by thirty feet, and fifteen feet deep, with double walls three and six feet thick, where the bones of a tapir and other bones were dug up. He also saw here several idols collected from different parts.[V-86]

PYRAMID AND COLUMNS OF AKÉ.

Some twenty-five miles east of Mérida, at a place called Aké, barely mentioned in the annals of the conquest as the locality where a battle was fought between the Spaniards and Mayas, are the ruins of an aboriginal city; ruins which, according to Mr Stephens, their only visitor, have a ruder, older, and more cyclopean air than any others seen. Some of the stones here employed are seven feet long. One remarkable feature is a pyramid, whose summit platform is fifty by two hundred and twenty-five feet, and supports thirty-six columns, each four feet square, and from fourteen to sixteen feet high. These columns are arranged in three parallel rows, ten feet apart from north to south, and fifteen feet from east to west. Each column is composed of several square stones. A stairway one hundred and thirty-seven feet wide, with steps seventeen inches high, and four feet five inches deep, leads up the southern slope. Of this mound Mr Stephens says: "It was a new and extraordinary feature, entirely different from any we had seen, and at the very end of our journey, when we supposed ourselves familiar with the character of American ruins, threw over them a new air of mystery." Between Mérida and Mayapan is mentioned a stone wall, which crosses the road and extends far on either side into the forest. Near by is also an aguada, said by the inhabitants to be of artificial formation.[V-87]

Cara Gigantesca at Izamal.

RUINS OF IZAMAL.

Izamal, something more than twenty miles further eastward, was a city of great importance in aboriginal times, as we shall see in the following volume. Two or three immense pyramids are all the vestiges that remain of its former greatness. The largest mound is between seven and eight hundred feet long, and between fifty and sixty feet high, and Mr Stephens "ascertained beyond all doubt" that it has interior chambers, concerning which he very strangely gives no further information. M. Charnay's photograph shows that this mound was in two receding stages, on the slopes of the upper of which steps are still to be seen. The modern town is built on the site of the ancient city, and the mounds as elsewhere have furnished the material of the later structures. The upper portion of a pyramid facing the one already mentioned was leveled down, and on the lower platform was erected the Franciscan church and convent. Another smaller mound is in the courtyards of two private houses, and on its side near the base is the cara gigantesca, or gigantic face, shown in the cut. It is seven feet wide and seven feet eight inches high. The features were first rudely formed by small rough stones, fixed in the side of the mound by means of mortar, and afterward perfected with a stucco so hard that it has successfully resisted for centuries the action of air and water. There were signs of a row of similar stucco ornaments extending along the side of the mound; and either on this mound or another near by, M. Charnay photographed a similarly formed face, which is twelve feet high. These colossal stucco faces are the distinctive features of the ruins of Izamal, nothing of the kind appearing elsewhere in Yucatan, although a slight resemblance may be traced to the gigantic faces in stone at Copan. Bishop Landa describes one of the Izamal structures as it appeared in his time, and adds a plan to his description. He represents the supporting pyramid as being over one hundred feet high, with a very steep stairway and very high steps, being built in a semi-circular form on one side. According to his statement the edifices were eleven or twelve in number, standing near together. Lizana, another of the early writers on Yucatan, mentions five of the sacred mounds supporting buildings which were already in ruins in his time, and he also gives the Maya name of each temple with its meaning. It should be noted, moreover, that Izamal is, according to the annals of Yucatan, the burial place of Zamná, the great semi-divine founder of the ancient Maya power.[V-88]

SENOTE OF BOLONCHEN.

I now come to the southern group of Maya antiquities, over which I may pass rapidly, beginning with the ruins of Ytsimpte near the village of Bolonchen, some fifteen miles south of Chunhuhu, the most south-western ruin of the central group. By the kindness of the cura and the industry of the natives this ruined city was cleared of all obstacles in the shape of vegetation, and its thorough exploration was thus rendered easy; but unfortunately no corresponding results followed, since no new features whatever were discovered. Here are undoubtedly the remains of a great city, but most of the walls, and all of the sculptured decorations have fallen. Bolonchen means 'nine wells,' so named from a group of natural wells in the plaza. These fail for several months in the dry season, and then the inhabitants resort to a senote in the neighborhood, which, as one of the most wonderful in the peninsula, is shown, or rather one of its several passages is shown, in the cut. By a series of rude ladders water is brought from springs over fifteen hundred feet from the opening at the surface, and at a perpendicular depth of over four hundred feet.

Senote at Bolonchen.

Ground Plan of Labphak Structure.

Sculptured Tablet at Labphak.

RUINS OF LABPHAK.

Labphak is about twenty miles further south, and is one of the grandest of the Maya ruins, although the single brief exploration by Mr Stephens, its only visitor, is barely sufficient to excite our curiosity respecting its unknown wonders. Only one building was examined with care; this has three receding stories. The western front was carefully cleared, and, sketched by Mr Catherwood, resembling very closely the other three-storied structures before described. But at the last moment it was discovered that this was only the rear wall, and that the eastern front "presented the tottering remains of the grandest structure that now rears its ruined head in the forests of Yucatan." The dimensions and arrangement of rooms of the lower story, differing from any that have been met further north, are shown in the accompanying ground plan, together with the stairways that lead up to the second story. Besides the grand central eastern staircase, there are two interior stairways, each in two flights, leading up to the platform of the second and third stories from the rooms of the western range. This is the first instance of interior stairs, but the method of their construction is not explained. The western wall of the third story has no doorways. On the platform of the second story stand two high buildings like towers, ornamented with stucco, and on the third platform two similar structures at the head of the stairway before the central entrance. These upper rooms have plain walls and ceilings. The lower ones present numerous imprints of the ever-present red hand, and one of them has a painted stone in the tier over the arch, as at Kewick. At the points marked a in the plan, are sculptured tablets of stone fixed in the exterior walls, one of which is shown in the cut. Each tablet is composed of several pieces of stone, and the sculptured figures are naturally much worn by exposure to the air and rain. Two circular openings to chultunes, or cisterns, like those at Uxmal and elsewhere, were found near by. Another Labphak structure formed a parallelogram, surrounding a courtyard, and presenting two peculiarities; the entrance to the court was by stairways leading over the flat roof of one of the ranges of buildings; and the ornamentation of the court façades was in stucco instead of sculptured stone. With this slight description I am obliged to leave this most interesting city, whose solitude, so far as I know, has remained undisturbed for thirty years and more since Messrs Stephens and Catherwood spent two days in the halls of its departed greatness. Now as then, "it remains a rich and almost unbroken field for the future explorer."

At Iturbide, the south-western frontier town of modern Yucatan, there is a mound of ruins in the plaza, and also a well some four feet in diameter, and twenty-five feet deep, stoned with hewn blocks without mortar; its sides polished by long usage, and grooved by the ropes employed in drawing water. This well is considered the work of the antiguos, and another similar one was seen near by. In the outskirts of Iturbide the plain is dotted with the mounds and stone buildings of the ancient town of Zibilnocac. Thirty-three mounds were counted, but the walls of the buildings had all fallen except one, which presented the peculiarity of square elevations, or towers, with sculptured façades, at each end and in the middle. Its rooms also preserved traces of interesting paintings, representing processions of human figures whose flesh was colored red.

AGUADAS OF THE SOUTH.

At the rancho of Noyaxche, a few miles distant, is a seemingly natural pond, which, being explored by the proprietor during a very dry season, proved to have an artificial bottom of flat stones many layers thick, pierced in the centre with four wells, and round the circumference with over four hundred small pits, or cisterns. At Macoba, twelve or fifteen miles eastward is another similar aguada, and ruined buildings are also found, actually occupied by the natives as dwellings. Mankeesh is another locality in this region where extensive ruins are reported to exist. At the rancho of Jalal is an aguada similar to the one mentioned at Noyaxche, the forms of the wells and cisterns, pierced in its paved bottom being illustrated by the cut. Upwards of forty deep wells were discovered by the natives in the immediate neighborhood. Yakatzib is another place near by, where ruined buildings were seen. Becanchen is a town of six thousand inhabitants, and owes its existence to the discovery of a group of ancient wells, partially artificial, and a stream of running water. Fragments of ancient structures are built into the walls of the town.[V-89]

Aguada at Jalal.

Only the monuments found on or near the coast of the peninsula remain to be noticed, and in describing them I shall begin in the south-east and follow the coast northward, then westward, and again southward to Lake Terminos. For a description of Maya structures, as found by the earliest Spanish voyagers on the eastern coast, I refer the reader to the chapter on Central American buildings in volume II. of this work.[V-90] M. Waldeck, giving no authority for his statement, mentions the existence of ruined buildings at Espíritu Santo Bay, and at Soliman Point, but no description is given.[V-91]

RUINS OF TULOOM.

Plan of Tuloom.

Tuloom is the most important city of antiquity on the eastern coast, standing in about 20° 10´. It is undoubtedly one of the many aboriginal towns whose 'towers' excited so much wonder in the minds of the first European voyagers along this coast. It presents several marked contrasts with the other monuments that have been described, not only in the construction and arrangement of its edifices, but in its site, since it is built on a high bluff on the very border of the sea, commanding a view of wild and diversified natural scenery, differing widely from the somewhat monotonous plain that constitutes for the most part the surface of the peninsula. Tuloom has only been visited by Mr Stephens, and his exploration was nearly at the end of his long journey, when the keen edge of his antiquarian zeal was naturally somewhat blunted by fatigue, sickness, and a desire to return home. Moreover, countless hordes of mosquitos, with a persistent malignity unsurpassed in the annals of their race, scorning the aid even of their natural allies in the defense of Central American ruins, the garrapatas and fleas, proved victorious over antiquarian heroism, and drove the foreign invaders from their stronghold. The annexed cut is a ground plan of the ruins so far as explored, and we notice at once a novel feature in the wall A, A, that bounds them on three sides—the first well-authenticated instance which we have met of a walled Maya town. A precipitous cliff rising from the waters of the ocean makes a wall unnecessary on the eastern side, but on the other sides the wall is in excellent preservation, stretching six hundred and fifty feet from east to west, and fifteen hundred feet from north to south, from eight to thirteen feet thick, and built of rough flat stones without mortar. The height is not stated. On each of the inland corners at C, C, is a small structure, twelve feet square, with two doors, which may be considered a watch-tower, and which is shown in the cut on the next page. Five gateways, each five feet wide, at B, B, B, give access to the city. Within the walls the largest and most imposing structure is that at D, known as the Castle, which stands on the cliff overlooking the sea. A solid mass of masonry thirty feet square and about thirty feet in height, ascended on the western side by a massive stairway of the same width with solid balustrades, supports on its summit a building of the same size as the foundation, and about fifteen feet high. The doorway at the head of the stairway is wide, and its lintel is supported by two pillars. Over the doorway are niches in the wall, one of which contains fragments of a statue. The interior is divided into two corridors connected by a single doorway, the front one having what are described as 'stone benches' at the ends, and the rear range having a similar bench along one of its sides. The rear, or sea, wall is very thick and has no doorways, but several small openings of oblong shape form the nearest approach to windows found in Yucatan. The corridors have ceilings of the usual type, the doorways are furnished with stone rings for the support of doors, and the imprint of the red hand appears on the interior walls. Against each end of the solid foundation is built a wing in two stories, thirty-five feet long, making the whole length of the Castle one hundred feet. The upper story of each wing consists of two apartments, one of which is twenty by twenty-four feet. Two columns, ornamented with stucco, stand in the centre of the room, of which the ceiling has fallen, although a succession of holes along the top of the walls indicate that it had been flat and supported by timbers. The building north of the Castle, at E, contains a single room seven by twelve feet, with a raised step or bench at each end, and much defaced painted ornaments in stucco on its walls. Over the doorway on the outside is the figure we have met before, standing on the hands with legs spread apart. The building close to the Castle on the south has four columns in the centre of a room nineteen by forty feet, and also in another room are fragments of a sculptured tablet. A senote with artificial steps, which supplied water to the ancient inhabitants, is included within the enclosure at K. At H is a building remarkable for its roof, which differs radically from the usual Maya type. Four timbers fifteen feet long and six inches thick stretch across the room from wall to wall, and crossways on these timbers are placed smaller timbers ten feet long and three inches thick close together, and the whole covered with a thick layer of coarse pebbles in mortar. Several other buildings evidently had similar roofs originally, else it might be suspected that this one had undergone modern improvements, especially as an altar was found in it with traces of use at no very remote period. In this building also sea-shells take the place of stone rings at the sides of the doorways. One of the structures marked G on the plan has two stories. The front is decorated with stucco, and the doorway of the lower story occupies nearly the whole front, its top being supported by four pillars. The interior plan is similar to that of the Castle at Chichen Itza, since a corridor extends round three sides of a central apartment. The interior walls of both room and corridor are painted, and in the latter is an altar on which copal is supposed to have been burned. The second story, which has no stairway or other visible means of approach, differs from all other upper stories in Yucatan, in standing directly over the central lower room, instead of over a solid mass of masonry as elsewhere. Among other ruins near this, two stone tablets with indistinct traces of sculpture were noticed. The cut shows one of several small structures found at Tuloom outside the walls, and probably intended as altars or adoratorios. This building is twelve by fifteen feet and contains a single room where a copal altar appears. Tuloom was undoubtedly one of the cities seen by the early voyagers along this coast, and from the perfect state of preservation of many of the monuments, especially of the stucco ornament resembling a pine-apple shown in the last cut, Mr Stephens believes that the city was occupied long after the conquest of other parts of the peninsula. At Tancar, a few miles north of Tuloom, are many remains of small ancient edifices, much dilapidated and not described.[V-92]

Watch-Tower at Tuloom.

Tuloom Relics.

RUINS ON THE EASTERN COAST.

Building at Cozumel.

The island of Cozumel has not been explored, by reason of the dense growth which covers its surface, but in a small clearing on the shore two buildings were discovered. One of them is shown in the preceding cut. It is sixteen feet square, with plain exterior walls formerly plastered and painted. A doorway in the centre of each side opens into a corridor only twenty inches wide, extending round a central chamber five by eight and a half feet, with one doorway. The other is similar but larger. One of the dome-shaped cisterns was also found on the island. Here is also a ruined Spanish church, which very probably furnished the cross with a crucified Christ, preserved in Mérida as an aboriginal relic, and much talked of by enthusiasts who formerly believed that Christianity was introduced into America long before the Spaniards came. On the main land opposite the island ruined stone buildings are also visible from the sea, as they were to Grijalva and Córdova in the sixteenth century. Pole, or Popole, is one of the localities somewhat further north where ruins are located on the maps.[V-93]

At Point Nisuc Mr Stephens locates ruins on his map, as does Malte-Brun at the mouth of the River Petampich a little further south, and the former also mentions stone buildings as visible on the barren island of Kancune. On the northern point of Mugeres Island, known to the early voyagers as Point, or Cape, Mugeres, are two small buildings of the usual type. One of them, fifteen by twenty-eight feet, resting on a solid foundation with perpendicular sides in which a narrow stairway was cut, is located on a cliff at the extreme point of the island.[V-94]

At Cayo Ratones is a ruin according to Malte-Brun's map; and Cape Catoche was the location of one of the cities seen by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, this early discovery being perhaps the only authority for M. Waldeck's statement that a ruined city may there be found.[V-95]

NORTHERN COAST RELICS.

Following the coast westward, an ancient mound is seen at Yalahao, the map shows another at Emal, and Monte Cuyo is a lofty mound, reported to have no traces of buildings, visible from far out at sea. This latter may perhaps be identical with "a small Hill by the Sea, call'd the Mount," mentioned by the old English voyager Dampier, who says: "I was never ashore here, but have met with some well acquainted with the Place, who are all of opinion that this Mount was not natural, but the Work of Men."[V-96] Two pyramids are reported further east, near the Rio Lagartos, but their existence rests on no very reliable authority.[V-97] Two mounds, once covered with buildings, at the port of Silan, are the only other monuments to be mentioned on the northern coast. One of these latter is of great size, being four hundred feet long and fifty feet high. The padre could remember when the building on the other, known as the Castle, was still standing.[V-98]

On or near the western coast are few monuments of antiquity worthy of note. At Maxcanú, some twenty-five miles north-west from Uxmal, a locality visited by Stephens during his trip toward the coast, are several mounds covered with ruins, which present no peculiarities. But in the interior of one of these mounds was found a gallery four feet wide and seven feet high, with triangular-arched ceiling, extending several hundred feet with many branches and angles. Before Mr Stephens' visit this was supposed by the inhabitants of the region to be a subterranean passage, or cave, known as Satun Sat, or the Labyrinth. The presence of this gallery of course suggests the idea that others of the Yucatan pyramids may contain similar ones, and that their exploration might lead to important results. On the hacienda of Sijoh, a few leagues nearer the coast, is a large group of ruined mounds and buildings, presenting nothing new, except that the stones of one of them were much larger than usual, one being noticed that was three by six feet. In a kind of courtyard in the midst of these mounds are standing many huge stones, resembling in their situation and size the monoliths of Copan, but they bear no marks of sculpture, being rough and unhewn as if just taken from the quarry. The largest is fourteen feet high, four feet wide and a foot and a half thick. At Tankuché one apartment of a ruined building has its walls and ceiling decorated with paintings in bright colors, but the room was filled up with rubbish, and nothing definite could be made out respecting the designs, except in the case of one ornament which seemed to resemble a mask found at Palenque. Ruins are reported also at Becal, in the same region.[V-99] At the mouth of the Rio Jaïna a tumulus, with pottery and spear-heads on its surface, is mentioned by Waldeck and Norman, and perhaps at the same place under the name of Chuncana, ruins are indicated on Malte-Brun's map.

Campeche Idol in Terra Cotta.

MONUMENTS OF CAMPECHE.

RELICS AT CAMPECHE.

Campeche Idols in Terra Cotta.

Further south, in the region extending from Campeche to Laguna de Terminos there is only the vaguest information respecting antiquities. The city of Campeche itself is said to be built over extensive artificial galleries, or catacombs, supposed to have been devoted by the ancient people to sepulchral uses; but I find no satisfactory description of these excavations. On the Rio Champoton, some leagues from the coast, ruins are reported concerning which nothing definite is known. From the tumulus mentioned, "and other places contiguous to ruins of immense cities, in the vicinity of Campeachy," Mr Norman claims to have obtained "some skeletons and bones that have evidently been interred for ages, also a collection of idols, fragments, flint spear-heads, and axes; besides sundry articles of pottery-ware, well wrought, glazed, and burnt." The cuts on the preceding pages show five of these idols, which are hollow and have small balls within to rattle at every movement. Padre Camacho is also said to have collected at Campeche a museum composed of many relics from different localities, many of them interesting but not particularly described.[V-100]

MAYA CALZADAS.

Besides the monuments that have been described, the remains of ancient paved roads, or calzadas, have been found in several different parts of the state. The traditionary history of the country represents the great cities and religious centres as connected, in the time of their original splendor and prosperity, by broad smooth paved ways, constructed for the convenience of the rulers in sending dispatches from place to place. These roads are even reported to have stretched beyond the limits of the peninsula, affording access to the neighboring kingdoms of Guatemala, Chiapas, and Tabasco. Modern discoveries lend some probability to these reports. Cozumel was one of these great religious centres from which roads led in every direction, and Cogolludo says that in his time "were to be seen vestiges of calzadas which cross the whole kingdom, said to end at its eastern border on the sea-shore." The cura of Chemax, speaking of Coba, far eastward of Chichen toward the coast, says "there is a calzada, or paved road, of ten or twelve yards in width, running to the south-east to a limit that has not been discovered with certainty, but some aver that it goes in the direction of Chichen Itza." Bishop Landa mentions "a fine broad calzada extending about two stone's throw to a well" from one of the Chichen structures. Izamal was another much-frequented shrine, from which Lizana tells us "they had constructed four roads, or calzadas, towards the four winds, which reached the ends of the county, and even extended to Tabasco, Guatemala, and Chiapas; and even now are seen in many places portions and traces of these roads." Landa also states that between Izamal and Mérida, "there are to-day signs of there having existed a very beautiful paved way." In the same locality, running parallel to the modern road for several miles, M. Charnay found "a magnificent road, from seven to eight mètres wide, whose foundation is of immense stones surmounted by a concrete perfectly preserved, which is covered with a coating of cement two inches thick. This road is everywhere about a mètre and a half above the surface of the ground. The coating of cement seems as if put on yesterday;" the whole being buried, however, some sixteen inches deep in soil and vegetable accumulations. The Cura Carillo and party found in 1845 one of these paved roads four and a half varas wide, running parallel with the modern road south-eastward from Uxmal, and said by the natives to connect the latter city with Nohpat. It is perhaps the same calzada, in Maya Sacbé, 'a road of white stone,' that has given a name to the Sacbé ruins, and is described by Mr Stephens as "a broken platform or roadway of stone, about eight feet wide and eight or ten inches high, crossing the road, and running off into the woods on both sides," reported to extend from Uxmal to Kabah.[V-101]

GENERAL RÉSUMÉ.

Having now completed my detailed description of Maya antiquities in all parts of the peninsula where aboriginal relics have been seen or reported, I have thought it best to give in conclusion a general view of these antiquities, their peculiarities, the contrasts and similarities which they present among themselves and when compared with more southern monuments, together with such general remarks and conclusions as their examination may seem to warrant.

The comparatively level and uniform surface of the peninsula left the aboriginal builders little choice in the location of their cities and temples, yet a preference for a broken hilly region may be traced in the fact that the central, or Uxmal, group, the most crowded with ancient monuments, corresponds with the principal transverse ranges of the peninsula; likewise the eastern coast cities rest generally on elevated bluffs overlooking the sea. In the selection of sites, however, as in the construction of their cities, security against enemies seems to have been not at all, or at best very slightly, considered. None of the cities on the plains are located with any view to defence, or have any traces of fortifications to guard their approaches. Tuloom, on the eastern coast, was indeed surrounded by a strong wall on which watch-towers were placed; but of all the Yucatan cities this is best guarded by its natural position and would seem to have least need of artificial defences. Some slight remains of walls are seen at Uxmal and Mayapan, but insufficient to prove that these were walled cities. A wall more or less perfect is also reported at Chacchob. No structure has been found which partakes in any way of the nature of a fort, or which appears to have been erected with a view to military defense. It is true the numerous pyramids and their superimposed buildings would serve as a refuge for non-combattants, as well as property, and would afford facilities for defense in a hand-to-hand conflict, or perhaps against any attack by men armed with aboriginal weapons; but would in nowise serve as a protection to the dwellings or fields of the populace which must be supposed to have dotted the plains for a wide extent about the palaces of the nobility and temples of the gods.

In the laying out both of cities and of individual structures, no fixed plan was followed that can now be ascertained, except that a majority of the edifices face in general terms the cardinal points; that is, as nearly as these points would naturally be determined by observation of the rising and setting sun. The oft-repeated statement that all the temples and palaces were exactly oriented is altogether unsupported by facts.

The materials employed by the Maya builders were limestone, mortar, and wood. The limestone used is that which, covered with a few feet of sand or soil, forms the substratum of the whole peninsula. It is soft and easily worked, and may be readily quarried in any part of the state. Somewhat strangely, none of the quarries which supplied the stone for building, or for sculptured decorations and idols, have ever been found;—at least none such have been reported by any explorer.[V-102] With very few exceptions, such as in the case of the city wall at Tuloom, the stone employed, whether rough or hewn, was laid in mortar. Cement was also used on roofs and floors; plaster on interior walls; and stucco in exterior decorations. Mortar, cement, plaster, and stucco were presumably composed of the same materials, lime and sand, mixed in different proportions according to the use for which it was designed. No satisfactory analysis seems to have been made of the mortar, nor is anything definite known respecting the method of its manufacture, or the source from which lime was obtained. That the material was of excellent quality is proved by the resistance it has offered for at least three centuries to tropical rains and the inroads of tropical vegetation. It is nearly as hard as the stone blocks which it holds together, and to its excellence the preservation of the Yucatan monuments is in great measure due.[V-103]

Wood was employed by the Maya builders only for lintels, for timbers of unknown use stretched across the rooms from side to side of the ceilings, in one case at Chichen for beams to support the regular stone arches of the roof, and, at Tuloom only, for the support of a flat cement roof. The only wood mentioned is the zapote, native to some parts of the peninsula, extremely hard and heavy, but not resinous or particularly well fitted to resist decay or the ravages of worms. It seems remarkable that any portion of this woodwork should have survived even their three or four centuries of unquestioned age;—and, indeed, few or none of the lintels of outer doorways exposed to the weather have remained unbroken.

Having fixed upon a site for a proposed edifice, the Maya builder invariably erected an artificial elevation on which it might rest. And this peculiarity is observed, not only in Yucatan, but, as we shall see in many other portions of the Pacific States, no less universally in regions where natural hills abound than on level plains. In several places, however, the artificial structure rests on a natural hill of slight elevation, as at Chack and Zayi; in other cases advantage is taken of a small hill to save labor in the accumulation of material, as at Uxmal; and in one instance at Chichen the appearance of a mound is gained by excavating the surrounding earth. Buildings resting on the natural surface of the earth are unknown, as are also subterranean apartments or galleries of artificial construction, excepting only the reported catacombs under the city of Campeche. The bases of the foundation structures, or pyramids, are usually rectangular, the largest dimensions being fifteen hundred feet square at Zayi, while many have sides of three to eight hundred feet. They diminish in size towards the summit, from twenty to fifty feet high in the case of the larger mounds, and from sixty to ninety feet in some of the smaller ones. Most of the larger mounds have two or more terrace-platforms on their slope. The mass of the mound is composed of rough stones and fragments generally in mortar, making a coarse concrete; the outer surface is faced with hewn stones, not generally laid so as to form steps, as seems to have been the case at Copan, but so as to present a smooth surface on the slope. It is uncertain whether some of the larger terrace-platforms were paved with regular blocks or not. The corners are often rounded. Sculptured decorations occur in a few instances, as on the Pyramid at Uxmal; and at Izamal a row of faces in stucco adorn the base. A stairway always occupies the centre of one side, often of more than one side. Some of these stairways are over a hundred feet wide, and their steps are rarely arranged with any reference to convenience in mounting. Balustrades remain on some stairways, ornamented in a few instances by sculptured monsters' heads. There is nothing to show that the surface of the slopes or the steps were covered with cement. The supporting stone structure of one building at Chichen and also of one at Tuloom has perpendicular instead of sloping sides. All the pyramids are truncated, none forming a point at the top, although there is one or more in every group of ruins whose summit platform presents no traces of ever having supported buildings of any kind. Interior galleries were explored in a mound at Maxcanú, and chambers in the body of that at Izamal were reported; others are solid so far as known, except that a few small chambers have been mentioned with a vertical entrance at the top, which may have been cisterns.

The edifices supported by the mounds are built either on the summit platform, or in receding ranges, one above another, on the slope. In the latter case these receding ranges form the nearest approach on the part of the Mayas to buildings of several stories, except in one instance at Tuloom, where one room is directly over another. In one building at Kabah the outer wall rises from the foot of the mound, and the inner from the summit. One building usually occupies the summit; but in several cases four of them enclose an interior courtyard. The buildings are long, low, and narrow. Thirty-one feet is the greatest height, thirty-nine the greatest width, and three hundred and twenty-two the greatest length. The roofs are flat and, like the floors, covered with cement. The walls are, in proportion to the dimensions of the buildings, very thick, usually from three to six feet, but sometimes nine feet. Like the pyramids, the buildings consist of a mass of concrete, stones and mortar, faced with hewn blocks of nearly cubical form, and of varying dimensions rarely exceeding eighteen inches, but found at Sijoh and Aké as large as three by six and seven feet. Only one building has been noted whose exterior walls are not perpendicular, but the corners are in most cases rounded.

The interior has generally two, often one, and rarely four parallel ranges of rooms, while in a few of the smaller buildings an uninterrupted corridor extends the whole length. Neither rooms nor corridors ever exceed twenty feet in width or height, while the ordinary width is eight to ten feet and the height fifteen to eighteen feet. Sixty feet is the greatest length noted. The walls of each room rise perpendicularly for one half their height, and then approach each other, by the stone blocks overlapping horizontally, to within about one foot, the intervening space being covered with a layer of wide flat stones, and the projecting corners being beveled off to form a straight, or rarely a curved, surface. In a few instances, as at Nohcacab, the sides of the ceiling form an acute angle at the top; and once, at Uxmal, the overlapping stones are inclined instead of lying horizontally, forming a slight, but the nearest, Maya approach to the true arch. This is the only kind of ceiling found in Yucatan, except one at Tuloom which is flat and supported by timbers stretched across from wall to wall. I have followed Stephens and applied the name of 'triangular arch' to this structure of overlapping stones, although the term may by a strict interpretation be liable to some criticism.[V-104]

The tops of the few gateways discovered are constructed by means of the same arch as that employed in the ceilings. One solitary arch unconnected with any other structure has been noted at Kabah; and in the Castle at Chichen two interior arches rest on beams supported by stone columns instead of the usual perpendicular walls. In some of the buildings at Kabah and Chichen the floor of the inner range of rooms is higher than that of the outer, being reached by stone steps. Small round timbers extend from side to side of the ceiling in nearly all rooms, and at Tuloom stone benches are found along the sides and ends.

Rarely do more than two rooms communicate with each other. The doorways are on an average perhaps four feet wide and eight feet high, with square tops formed by zapote beams or stone lintels, which rest on stone jambs composed of two or three pieces, or are built into the regular wall of the building. At Chacchob a doorway is reported wider at the top than at the bottom. Many exterior doorways are wide and divided into two or more entrances by stone pillars supporting the lintels. Stone rings, or hooks, replaced at Tuloom by shells, near the top on the inside, and in a few cases at both top and bottom, are the only traces of the means by which the entrances were originally closed. Wooden lintels are almost exclusively employed at Uxmal, but elsewhere stone is more common; a few both of wood and stone are covered with carved devices, as are also some of the door-posts. Besides the doorways the rooms have no openings whatever, no chimneys, windows, or ventilators being found, if we except the oblong openings in the rear wall of the Castle at Tuloom.[V-105]

Respecting the rooms, aside from their decoration, nothing remains to be noticed except the casas cerradas, or rooms filled with solid masonry, and the interior stairways of unexplained construction at Labphak. Exterior stairways supported by a half arch lead up to the top of such of the buildings as have more than one story, and also to the summit of the few mounds that have perpendicular sides; in one case the entrance to the courtyard is by stairways leading over the roof of one of the enclosing edifices. The only important exceptions to the usual type of Yucatan buildings are the circular structures with conical roofs, at Chichen and Mayapan, and the gigantic walls composing the so-called gymnasiums at Chichen and Uxmal.

It will be noticed that the strength of these structures depended to a great extent on the excellence of the mortar by which the blocks were united, since the latter are not usually laid so as to break joints, although carefully placed so that the plummet line applied to such walls as are uninjured, rarely detects any departure from perfect regularity. A Maya custom of inserting projecting stones, or katunes, in the walls of their buildings as a record of time and in commemoration of great events is spoken of by many authors; and by certain stones which he identifies with the katunes, M. Waldeck computes the age of some of the ruins, but I am unable to tell which are the stones meant, unless they be those already mentioned as elephants' trunks.

Besides the columns mentioned in connection with doorways, many others are found whose use in most cases is not understood. They are both round and square, and usually, if not always, composed of several pieces placed one upon another. Among them may be mentioned the row of round columns on the terrace of the Governor's House at Uxmal, sixteen columns at Xul from the ruins of Nohcacab, thirty-six square columns on the summit platform of the pyramid at Aké, three hundred and eighty short pillars, also square, arranged round a square at Chichen, eight round pillars on the terrace of the round house at Mayapan, the reported line of square columns originally supporting a gallery at Mérida, and finally the monoliths of Sijoh, which latter may have been idols.

I now come to the interior and exterior decorations of the Yucatan buildings. In some apartments, particularly at Uxmal, the walls and ceilings present only the plain surface of the hewn blocks of stone. Most, however, are covered with a coating of fine white plaster, and in many this plastered surface is wholly or partially covered with paintings in bright colors. The paintings are much damaged in every case, but seem to have been executed with much care and skill. They are, apparently, never purely ornamental, but represent some definite objects, oftener than otherwise human beings in various attitudes and employments, battles, processions, and dances. In one or two localities, as at Kewick, a single stone is decorated with painting, while the rest of the surface is left plain. Niches in the walls of a room at Chichen, benches along the sides and ends at Tuloom, and a reported inner cornice at Zayi vary the usual interior monotony of the Maya apartments.

Interior sculptured decorations are of comparatively rare occurrence. A few of the lintels and jambs in each of the cities are covered with carvings; the steps leading up to the raised inner room at Kabah, together with the base of the walls at their sides, are sculptured; small circles are cut on the walls of the Casa del Adivino at Uxmal; a tablet of hieroglyphics stretches over the inner doorways of a corridor at Chichen; and a sculptured procession covers the wall and ceiling of a room on the Gymnasium wall at the same city. Hieroglyphic inscriptions are not very numerous, but are apparently identical in character with those we have seen at Copan. The only instance noted of interior decoration in stucco is that of the stucco birds in a room at Kabah, and a few stuccoed columns.

The exterior walls have almost invariably a cornice extending over the doorways round the whole circumference, and another near the roof. Several buildings have one or two additional cornices. Besides the cornices a very few fronts are plain; most are so below the lower cornice, but are decorated in their upper portions, as several are from top to bottom, with a mass of complicated sculptured designs, of which the reader has formed a clear idea by the drawings that have been presented. These ornaments, or the separate parts of each, are carved on the faces of cubical or rectangular blocks which are built into the face of the wall, each carved piece fitting most accurately into its place as part of a most elaborate whole. Some parts of the decoration are also joined to the walls by means of long tenons. In the human faces represented in profile among the ornamental carvings the flattened forehead, or contracted facial angle, is the most important feature noticed, and this is not as strongly marked as in many other regions of America. Excepting the phallus, which is prominent in many of the decorations, and which was probably a religious symbol, no ornaments of an obscene nature are noticed. Instead of stone, stucco is employed at Labphak in exterior decorations, and to a slight extent at Tuloom also. Over the front wall of some buildings, and from the centre of the roof of others, rises a lofty wall, sometimes in peaks, or turrets, apparently intended only as a basis for ornamentation. At Kabah this supplementary wall is plain and resembles from a distance a second story; on the Nunnery at Uxmal the ornamentation is in stone; but in other cases stucco is employed. Only one exterior wall, at Chunhuhu, is plastered; but all the exterior decorations are supposed to have been originally painted, traces of bright colors still remaining in sheltered positions.[V-106]

MAYA IDOLS.

The scarcity of idols among the Maya antiquities must be regarded as extraordinary. The double-headed animal and the statue of the Old Woman at Uxmal; the nude figure carved on a long flat stone and the small statue in two pieces, at Nohpat; the idol at Zayi reported as in use for a fountain; the rude unsculptured monoliths of Sijoh; the scattered and vaguely mentioned idols on the plains of Mayapan; and the figures in terra cotta collected by Norman at Campeche, complete the list; and many of these may have been originally merely decorations for buildings. That the inhabitants of Yucatan were idolators there is no possible doubt, and in connection with the magnificent shrines and temples erected by them, stone representatives of their deities carved with all their aboriginal art and rivaling or excelling the grand obelisks of Copan, might naturally be sought for. But in view of the facts it must be concluded that the Maya idols were small, and that such as escaped the destructive hands of the Spanish ecclesiastics, were buried by the natives, as the only means of preventing their desecration. Altars are as rare as idols; indeed, only at Tuloom are such relics definitely reported, and then they are of small size and of simple construction, merely hewn blocks on which copal was burned.

The almost complete lack of pottery, implements, and weapons is no less remarkable. Earthen relics, so abundant over nearly the whole surface of the Pacific States, even in the territory of the wildest tribes, where no ruined edifices are to be seen, are rarely met with in Yucatan and Chiapa, where the grandest ruins indicate the highest civilization. No trace of any metal has been found in Yucatan, although there is some historical evidence that copper implements were used by the Mayas to a slight extent in the sixteenth century, the material for which must have been brought from other parts of the country. Besides spear and arrow heads of flint or obsidian which have been found in small numbers in different parts of the state, and the implements included in the Camacho collection at Campeche already mentioned, there remains to be noticed "a collection of stone implements, gathered by Dr. J. W. Veile, in Yucatan," spoken of by Mr Foster as resembling in many respects similar relics from the Mississippi Valley. "The material employed is porphyry. Some of them are less than two inches in length, and the edges are polished as if from use. At the first glance it would be said that many of these implements were too small for practical purposes, but when we reflect that the material out of which the ancient inhabitants of that region cut their basso-relievos, was a soft coralline limestone, I find, by experiment, that such a tool is almost as effective as one of steel. Some of the implements, however, are cylindrical in shape, with the convex surface brought to an edge, and the opposite side ground out like a gouge."[V-107] There can be little doubt that the Maya sculpture was executed with tools of stone, although with such implements the complicated carvings on hard zapote lintels must have presented great difficulties even to aboriginal patience and skill.

THE MAYAS AS ARTISTS.

With respect to the artistic merit of the monuments of Yucatan, and the degree of civilization which they imply on the behalf of their builders, I leave the reader to form his own conclusion from the information which I have collected and presented as clearly as possible in the preceding pages. That they bear, as a whole, no favorable comparison with the works of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Assyrians, and perhaps other old-world peoples must, I believe, be granted. Yet they are most wonderful when considered as the handiwork of a people since lapsed into a condition little above savagism. I append in a note some quotations designed to show the impression these monuments have made on explorers and students.[V-108]

ANTIQUITY OF THE MAYA MONUMENTS.

Finally I have to consider the antiquity of the Yucatan monuments. As in the case of all ruined cities and edifices, the questions, when and by whom were they built? are of the most absorbing interest. In Yucatan the latter question presents no difficulties, and the former few, compared with those connected with other American ruins. It was formerly a favorite theory that the great American palaces and temples of ancient times, whose remains have astonished the modern world, were the work of civilized peoples that have become extinct, probably of some old-world people which long centuries ago settled on our coasts and flourished for a long period, but was at last forced to succumb to the native races whose descendants occupied the land at the coming of Europeans in the sixteenth century. The discussion of the origin of the American people and of the American civilization, as well as of the possible agency of old-world elements in the development of the latter, belongs to another part of my work; still it may be appropriately stated here that the theory of extinct civilized races in America, to which our ruined cities may be attributed, rests upon only the very vaguest and most unsubstantial foundation, while so far as the Yucatan cities are concerned it rests on no foundation at all.

The traditional history of the peninsula, which will be given in the following volume, represents Yucatan as constituting the mighty Maya empire, whose rulers, secular and religious, reared magnificent cities, palaces, and temples, and which flourished in great, if not its greatest, power down to within a little more than a century of the Spaniards' coming. Then the empire was more or less broken up by civil wars, an era of dissension and comparative weakness ensued, some of the great cities were abandoned in ruins, but the edifices of most, and especially the temples, were still occupied by the disunited factions of the original empire. In this condition the Spaniards found and conquered the Maya people. They found the immense stone pyramids and buildings of most of the cities still used by the natives for religious services, although not for dwellings, as they had probably never been so used even by their builders. The conquerors established their own towns generally in the immediate vicinity of the aboriginal cities, procuring all the building material they needed from the native structures, destroying so far as possible all the idols, altars, and other paraphernalia of the Maya worship, and forcing the discontinuance of all ceremonies in honor of the heathen gods. A few cities escaped the damning blight of European towns in their vicinity, and kept up their rites in secret for some years later; such were Uxmal, Tuloom, and probably others of the best preserved ruins. All the early voyagers, conquistadores, and writers speak of the wonderful stone edifices found by them in the country, partly abandoned and partly occupied by the natives. To suppose that the buildings they saw and described were not identical with the ruins that have been described in these pages, that every trace of the former has disappeared, and that the latter entirely escaped the notice of the early visitors to Yucatan, is too absurd to deserve a moment's consideration. That the Mayas were found worshiping in the temples of an extinct race is a position almost equally untenable. The Spaniards forced the Mayas to accept a new faith, utterly crushed out their ancient spirit by a long course of oppression, and then together with other Europeans resorted to the theory of an extinct old-world race to account for the wonderful structures which the ancestors of the degraded Mayas could not have reared. The Mayas are not, however, the only illustrations of a deteriorated race to be seen in Yucatan, as will be understood by comparing the present Spanish population of the peninsula with the proud Castilian conquerors of the sixteenth century.

Mr Stephens, to whom many of the Spanish and Maya documents relating to Yucatan history were unknown, sought carefully for proofs in support of his belief that the cities were constructed by "the same races who inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest, or by some not very distant progenitors." He was entirely successful in establishing the truth of his position, which rested on the statements of the historians with whose works he was acquainted, and on the following points, many of them discovered by himself, and whose only weakness is the fact that they were not really needed to justify his conclusions. 1st. The Maya arch in the foundations of the Franciscan convent at Mérida, built in 1547, with the historical statement that Mérida was built on the mounds of ancient Tihoo. 2d. The traditional destruction of Mayapan in 1420. 3d. The custom of the Spaniards to locate their towns near those of the natives, together with the almost uniform location of the ruins, near the modern towns. 4th. The skeletons and skulls dug up at Ticul were pronounced by Dr Morton to belong to the universal American type. 5th. Sr Peon's deed to the Uxmal estate, dated in 1673, states that the natives still worshiped in the stone buildings; that a native then claimed the estate as having belonged to his ancestors; that at that time there were doors in the ruins which were opened and shut; and that water was then drawn from the aguadas. 6th. The sword in the hands of the kneeling sculptured figure at Kabah, which has already been mentioned as almost identical with an aboriginal Maya weapon. 7th. A map dated 1557 was found at Mani, on which Uxmal is designated by a different character from all the other surrounding towns, being the only one that is not surmounted by a cross. 8th. With the map was found a document in the Maya language, also dated 1557, announcing the arrival of certain officials with interpreters at, and their departure from, Uxmal. Now there never was a Spanish town of Uxmal, and the hacienda was not established until one hundred and forty-five years later. 9th. The gymnasiums at Chichen and Uxmal, agreeing with those traditionally described in connection with certain aboriginal games of ball. 10th. Many scattered resemblances to Aztec relics and customs. 11th. The European penknife discovered in a grave with aboriginal relics at Kantunile. 12th. The comparatively fresh appearance of the altars and other relics at Tuloom.[V-109]

It may then be accepted as a fact susceptible of no doubt that the Yucatan structures were built by the Mayas, the direct ancestors of the people found in the peninsula at the conquest and of the present native population. Respecting their age we only know the date of their abandonment—that is the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Nothing in the ruins themselves gives any clue to the date of their construction, and this is not the place to discuss the few vague historical traditions bearing on the subject. The data on which different writers have based their speculations, and claimed for these monuments greater or less antiquity are the following. 1st. The immense trees that are found growing on the ruins, and the accumulation of soil and vegetable matter on the roofs and terrace platforms; but to persons acquainted with the rapid growth of trees in tropical countries, these constitute no evidence of antiquity. 2d. The ignorance of the natives respecting the builders of the monuments; the investigations of Indian character in the preceding volumes of this work, however, show conclusively enough that two generations, to say nothing of three centuries, are amply sufficient to blot from the native mind everything definite concerning the past. 3d. Comparisons of the Yucatan ruins with different old-world remains; the argument being that if an American monument is more dilapidated than an Egyptian one, it must be older. 4th. And on the other hand, against a great antiquity, the destructiveness of the tropical vegetation and tropical rains. 5th. The softness of the building material. 6th. The perfect preservation in many places of wood and paint. 7th. The rapid decay of the ruins between the periods of the earliest and latest visits.

It will be at once noted that the preceding points all bear on the date of abandonment and not at all on the date of construction. Explorers may marvel, according to the view they take of the matter, either that the buildings have resisted for three or four hundred years the destructive agencies to which they have been exposed; or, that three or four short centuries have wrought so great ravages in structures so strongly built; still the fact remains that the buildings were abandoned three or four hundred years ago. M. Waldeck's theory, by which he computes the antiquity of some of the ruins by certain stones peculiarly placed in the walls, or by the small houses—calli, or house, being one of the signs of the Aztec calendar—over the doorways of the Nunnery at Uxmal, like Mr Jones' argument that the structures must have been reared before the invention of the arch, is mere idle speculation, utterly unfounded in fact or probability. The history of the Mayas indicates the building of some of the cities at various dates from the third to the tenth centuries. As I have said before, there is nothing in the buildings to indicate the date of their erection,—that they were or were not standing at the commencement of the Christian Era. We may see how, abandoned and uncared for, they have resisted the ravages of the elements for three or four centuries. How many centuries they may have stood guarded and kept in repair by the builders and their descendants we can only conjecture.[V-110]