Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/536

458 stone, and which we could not remove, though perhaps it might detached by some chemical process. In the other tablet, nearly a half of the hieroglyphics are obliterated by the action of water and decomposition of the stone. When we first saw them both tablets, were covered with a thick coat of green moss, and it was necessary to wash and scrape them, clear the lines with a stick, and scrub them thoroughly, for which last operation a pair of blacking-bruhes that Juan had picked up in my house at Guatimala, and disobeyed my order to throw away upon the road, proved exactly what we wanted and could not have procured. Besides this process, on account of the darkness of the corridor, from the thick shade of the trees growing before it, it was necessary to burn candles or torches, and to throw a strong light upon the stones while Mr. Catherwood was drawing.

The corridor in the rear is dark and gloomy, and divided into three apartments. Each of the side apartments has two narrow openings, about three inches wide and a foot high. They have no remains of sculpture, or painting, or stuccoed ornaments. In the centre apartment, set in the back wall, and fronting the principal door of entrance, is another tablet of hieroglyphics, four feet six inches wide and three feet six inches high. The roof above it is tight; consequently it has not suffered from exposure, and the hieroglyphics are perfect, though the stone is cracked lengthwise through the middle, as indicated in the engraving, No. 66.

The impression made upon our minds by these speaking but unintelligible tablets I shall not attempt to describe. From some unaccountable cause they have never before been presented to the public. Captains Del Rio and Dupaix both refer to them, but in very few words, and neither of them has given a single drawing. Acting under a royal commission, and selected, doubtless, as fit men for the duties entrusted to them, they cannot have been ignorant or insensible of their value. It is my belief they did not give them because in both cases the artists attached to their expedition were incapable of the labour, and the steady, determined perseverance required for drawing such complicated, unintelligible, and anomalous characters. As at Copan, Mr. Catherwood divided his paper into squares; the original drawings were reduced, and the engravings corrected by himself, and I believe they are as true copies as the pencil can make: the real written records of a lost people. The Indians call this building an escuela or school, but our friends the padres called it a tribunal of justice, and these stones, they said, contained the tables of the law.

There is one important fact to be noticed. The hieroglyphics are the same as were found at Copan and Quirigua. The intermediate