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80 CHAPTER X.

USPANTAN AND THE RIO NEGRO.

We had ridden on our way for about five miles over a fairly level plain covered with rastrojos and dried-up grass, relieved here and there by a few straggling ocote pines and mimosa shrubs, when we caught sight of some artificial mounds on the far side of a gully to the right of the track. Tying up our mules we climbed down to the banks of a small rushing rivulet, crossed the stream, and scrambling up on the other side found ourselves on a detached bare plain surrounded on all sides by barrancas. At one end of this plain the mounds were symmetrically arranged. There was a clearly defined plaza about fifty yards across with low mounds on three sides of it, and on the fourth side a mound about forty feet high, which showed some slight signs of having formerly supported a small stone-roofed temple; on its summit a few stones had been heaped together by the neighbouring Indians to form a little cave or grotto in which to burn incense. In the plaza in front of the temple mound was a small mound which may have been used as an altar. From the other end of the plaza mounds extended in fairly regular order for a considerable distance.

Two of the largest of the foundation-mounds had been dug into by a German priest, Father Heyde, who was formerly cura of Joyabaj, one of the neighbouring towns. These excavations showed us that the mounds themselves were formed of cores of earth covered over with a coating of rough stones, imbedded in mud, about 5 feet in thickness, and this again was faced with masonry of roughly squared stones and a thick coating of plaster. Patches of the outer casing of squared stones with the plaster facing still adhering to it could be seen where the surface had been left undisturbed. On the summit of one of the temple mounds we were able to trace, at the inner angle of the wall, the plaster flooring of the cue, or sanctuary, which showed us that the whole chamber measured only about five feet by seven.

Lying on the ground were two blocks of stone shaped into serpents' heads with human faces between their open jaws, undoubtedly of the same style and marked with the same conventional curves as those found at Copan and other more ancient ruins in Central America. Both of these carved stones had tenons about two feet long, by which they could be fixed into the masonry, and they had probably fallen from the balustrade of a stairway in front of the principal temple. We found one other carved stone of much