Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/610

526 manner. The part represented in the engraving embraces about twenty feet of the Casa del Gobernador. The whole exterior of this building presents a surface of 700 feet; the Casa de las Monjas is 2,000 feet, and the extent of sculptured surface exhibited by the other buildings we are not able to give. Complete drawings of the whole would form one of the most magnificent series ever offered to the public, and such



it is yet our hope one day to be able to present. The reader will be able to form some idea of the time, skill, and labour required for making them; and, more than this, to conceive the immense time, skill, and labour required for carving such a surface of stone, and the wealth, power, and cultivation of the people who could command such skill and labour for the mere decoration of their edifices. Probably all these ornaments have a symbolical meaning; each stone is part of an allegory or fable, hidden from us, inscrutable under the light of the feeble torch we may burn before it, but which, if ever revealed, will show that the history of the world yet remains to be written.