Page:A Glimpse at Guatemala.pdf/355

Rh probably the wood of the chico-sapote tree, and some of them are still in a perfectly sound condition; the greater number, however, have slowly rotted away, and buildings can be seen in every state of decay, many of them reduced to shapeless masses of hewn stone. The lofty foundation mounds of the principal temples are terraced and faced with well-wrought stone arranged in panels, somewhat in the same manner as that shown in the photograph of the Castillo at Chichén Itzá. At Tikál, however, access to the temple is



gained by a single stairway only, instead of by four stairways, one on each side of the mound, as is usual at Chichén. The accompanying woodcuts show the plan of the mound and Temple marked A (of which a photograph is also given on the following page), and a ground-plan and section of Temple B. The Temple marked C on the plan is somewhat larger than A or B, the base of the oblong foundation mound measuring 184 feet by 168 feet, and the stairway is 38 feet across. The height of the front slope (measured on the slope, which is very steep) is 112 feet. The base of the temple itself measures roughly 41 feet by 28 feet, and the height must be over 50 feet, but I was not able to measure it. The temples are all built on much the same plan; the thickness of the walls is very remarkable, as is also the method by which the length of axis is secured, by cutting across the parallel stone vaulted chambers and connecting them by square-headed doorways with wooden lintels, the thickness of the walls through which the doorways pass far exceeding the width of the vaulted chambers. Of the Temple D I took no measurements and have merely guessed at the size.