Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/528

450 The engraving, No. 59, represents the same building cleared from forest and restored, and, according to our division, marked on the photo No. 1. In the plate are given the ground-plan (beginning at the bottom), the front elevation, a section showing the position of tables within, and the front elevation on a smaller scale, with the pyramid's structure on which it stands.

The building is 76 feet in front and 25 feet deep. It has five doors and six piers, all standing. The whole front was richly ornamented in stucco, and the corner piers are covered with hieroglyphics, each of which contains 96 squares. The four piers are ornamented with human figures, two on each side, facing each other, which are represented in the following engravings in the order in which they stand upon the piers.

The first, No. 60, is that of a woman with a child in her arms; at least we suppose it to be intended for a woman from the dress. It is enclosed by an elaborate border, and stands on a rich ornament. The head is destroyed. Over the top are three hieroglyphics, and there are traces of hieroglyphics broken off in the corner. The other three following are of the same general character; each probably had an infant in the arms, and over each are hieroglyphics.

At the foot of the two centre piers, resting on the steps, are two stone tablets with what seemed interesting figures, but so encumbered with ruins that it was impossible to draw them.

The interior of the building is divided into two corridors, running lengthwise, with a ceiling rising nearly to a point, as in the palace, and paved with large square stones. The front corridor is seven feet wide. The separating wall is very massive, and has three doors, a large one in the centre, and a smaller one on each side. In this corridor, on each side of the principal door, is a large tablet of hieroglyphics, each thirteen feet long and eight feet high, and each divided into 240 squares of characters or symbols. Both are set in the wall so as to project three or four inches. In one place a hole had been made in the wall close to the side of one of them, apparently for the purpose of attempting its removal, by which we discovered that the stone is about a foot thick. The sculpture is in bas-relief. The tablets are represented in the engravings, Nos. 64, 65.

The construction of the tablets was a large stone on each side, and smaller ones in the centre, as indicated by the dark lines in the engravings.

In the right-hand tablet one line is obliterated by water that has trickled down for an unknown length of time, and formed a sort of stalactite or hard substance, which has incorporated itself with the