Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/326

Rh sites of the ancient habitations, fronting upon four parallel highways. In some of the houses the walls are still three or four feet high, but of most of them there is nothing but an outline tracery of the mere foundations. On the south, there are the remains of a long and narrow wall, which defended the city in that quarter.

North of the town there is a tongue of land, occupied in the centre by a mound, or cemetery. On the left slope of the hill by which the ruins are reached, there are, also, twelve circular sepulchres, two yards and a half in diameter, and as many high; the walls are all of neatly cut stone, but the cement with which they were once joined has almost entirely disappeared. In these sepulchres several bodies were found, parts of which were in tolerable preservation.

Two stones—a foot and a half long, by half a foot wide—were discovered, bearing hieroglyphics, which are described, in general terms, as "resembling the usual hieroglyphics of the Indians." Another figure was found representing a man standing; and another, cut out of a firm but porous stone, which was intended to portray a person sitting cross-legged, with the arms also crossed, resting on his knees. This, however, was executed in a very inferior style. Near it, were discovered many domestic utensils, which were carried to Vera Cruz, whence they have been dispersed, perhaps, to the four quarters of the globe.

It is thus, in the neglect of all antiquities in Mexico, in the midst of her political distractions and bloody revolutions, that every vestige of her former history will gradually pass to foreign countries, instead of enriching the Cabinets of her University, and stimulating the inquisitiveness of her scientific students.

I will close this notice of Mexican Architectural Remains, with an account of the ruins of M, as described by Mr. Glennie, and Baron Humboldt, from whose great work the sketch of one of the mural fragments opposite the next page, has been taken.

In the Department of Oaxaca, ten leagues distant from the city of that name, on the road to Tehuantepec, in the midst of a granitic country, surrounded by sombre and gloomy scenery, lie the remains of what have been called, by the general consent of antiquarians, the Sepulchral Palaces of Mitla. According to tradition, they were built by the Zapotecs, and intended as the places of sepulture for their Princes. At the death of members of the royal family, their bodies were entombed in the vaults beneath; and the sovereign and his relatives retired to mourn over the loss of the departed scion, in the chambers above these solemn abodes, screened by dark and silent groves from the public eye. Another tradition devotes the edifices to a sect of priests, whose duty it was to live