Page:Nicaraguan Antiquities (1886).djvu/23

. That the temples should have been open, as seems to think, I venture to doubt, on account of the above described form of the statues; this appears to show that they must have been united with one another by a wall, probably of cut stones.

Male, standing figure, in an easy posture, with the arms hanging straight down. It stood quite upright, but was buried in the earth to the elbows; by digging round it, it was laid bare to just below the knees. It was the finest and most nobly sculptured of all the Nicaraguan statues that I have had an opportunity of seeing. The face, neck, and chest were carefully elaborated, the mouth closed with full lips, the adam's apple marked out at the throat, the muscles of the chest, as well as of the arms, correctly rendered; the hands on the contrary were somewhat stiff, with the thumbs in the same plane with the other fingers. The shoulders, elbows, and hips were well formed (the arms were, however, not detached from the body), but passed gradually backwards into the plane-cut back of the stone. The head was covered with a large, rounded hood or cap, projecting above, and drawn out in rounded flaps at the sides of the neck. Upwards and backwards this hood passed into a kind of capital, ornamented at the sides with a semi-circular depression, bordered by a rounded rim, with globularly enlarged ends. The tenon-shaped projection above the head was unusually large, tapering upwards, surrounded in front by a double frame, at the sides by a simple, broad, sharply cut one. The statue was perfectly equilateral. It did not seem to have been exposed to any injury whatever, and was on the whole the best preserved of all in this locality. The whole length of the statue from the upper edge of the tenon to the knee was 225 cm., the breadth across the shoulders 58 cm., the length of the tenon 65 cm.

Female, standing figure, its head slightly bent forwards, and its arms hanging straight down. It was found erect, but imbedded in the earth to the