Page:A Glimpse at Guatemala.pdf/199

Rh The result was not a little to my advantage, but as at the time I knew nothing of the cause, my astonishment may be imagined when, on arrival at Copan, I entered the village under triumphal arches, and was received by a guard of honour of barefooted soldiers, and by an ex-Minister of State and a professor from the Government College, who presented me with an official-looking document addressed to "El Sabio," which informed me that they had been appointed by the President of the Republic of Honduras as his commissioners to assist me in my labours. These gentlemen had already been awaiting my arrival for more than a week, and it was an evident relief to the villagers when, at the end of another week, I was able to impress upon them the value of the work they had accomplished, and recommend them to rest from their labours and return to their homes. Of General Bogran's good intentions and really sympathetic interest in my work I had afterwards ample proof, but pleasant and genial as were his commissioners, they were not persons altogether suited to carry out the task entrusted to them. After the departure of the commissioners it needed some tact to get on good terms with the villagers, who had learnt to look on me with suspicion; but at the end of a few weeks we became the best of friends and remained so ever afterwards.

The sketch map at the beginning of this Chapter will give a fairly accurate idea of the site of the ruins. The surrounding hills are somewhat sparsely clothed with pine-trees, but the level land of the river valley has long been used as planting ground by the villagers, and, where it is not actually under cultivation, is covered with an almost impenetrable growth of scrub. Our first task was to clear away this scrub, which completely hid from view the monuments in the Great Plaza, and the next task was to mark out and carefully measure a base-line for the proposed survey. The beautiful grove of trees which covered the principal group of mounds and terraces had been left untouched by the natives, as the ground on which it stood was totally unfit for cultivation, and we did not find it necessary to do more than remove the undergrowth and clear the surface of the ground, leaving the great trees undisturbed to afford us their grateful shade.

It must be remembered that up to the time of this expedition in 1885 no trace of any house or temple had been discovered amongst the ruins at Copan; but I found it difficult to believe that the great masses of masonry could have been built up unless they were intended to serve as foundations for temples such as I had already seen crowning the great pyramids at Tikal. As the work of clearing proceeded and we gained a better view of the great stairways and the outlines of the mounds my hope of finding some trace of temple buildings was strengthened by seeing that each of the higher mounds had usually a marked depression running across its summit, which S