Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/162

96 both of which are well sculptured. The preceding engraving is a representation of it.

Opposite is a circular altar with two grooves on the top, three feet high, and five feet six inches in diameter, an engraving of which is here given.



The next three engravings, Nos. 30, 31, and 32, are the front, back, and side view of the monument marked L, distant seventy-two feet north from the last, with its front toward the west, twelve feet high, three feet in front, two feet eight inches on the side, and the pedestal is six feet square. Before it, at a distance of eleven feet, is an altar very much defaced, and buried in the earth.

The front view is a portrait. The back is entirely made up of hieroglyphics, and each tablet has two hieroglyphics joined together, an arrangement which afterwards we observed occasionally at Palenque. The side presents a single row of hieroglyphics, joined in the same manner. The tablets probably contain the history of the king or hero delineated, and the particular circumstances or actions which constituted his greatness.

We have now given engravings of all the most interesting monuments of Copan, and they may be relied on as accurate and faithful representations. We have purposely abstained from all comment. If the reader can derive from them but a small portion of the interest that we did, he will be repaid for whatever he may find unprofitable in these pages.

Of the moral effect of the monuments themselves, standing as they