Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/161

Rh and tear the fibres out of the crevices. The paint is very perfect, and has preserved the stone, which makes it more to be regretted that it is broken. The altar is buried with the top barely visible, which, by excavating, we made out to represent the back of a tortoise.

The next engravings, Nos. 25, 26, 27, exhibit the front, back, and one of the sides of the monument N, distant twenty feet from the last. It is twelve feet high, four feet on one side, three feet four inches on the other, and stands on a pedestal seven feet square, with its front to the west. There is no altar visible; probably it is broken and buried. The front view seems a portrait, probably, of some deified king or hero. The two ornaments at the top look like the trunks of elephants, an animal unknown in that country. The crocodile's head is seven feet from it, but appears to have no connexion with it. This is four feet out of the ground, and is given in the plate as one of the many fragments found among the ruins.

The back presents an entirely different subject from the front. At the top is a figure sitting cross-legged, almost buried under an enormous head-dress, and three of the compartments contain tablets of hieroglyphics.

Not to multiply engravings, we have omitted side views, as they are, in general, less interesting. This is particularly beautiful. The tablets of hieroglyphics are very distinct.

At a distance of twenty-eight feet in the same direction is the statue



marked M, which is fallen, and lies on its back, with a tree across it nearly lengthwise, leaving visible only the outline, feet, and sandals,