Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/404

400 beyond. At present the rooms are not at all roofed over. On each side of the central entrance is a hole in the wall from which an idol has been removed. The court in front of the steps is of a concrete like that found on Monte Alban. Monoliths like the one in the foreground are fairly numerous. Another view of a court with buildings arranged about it is shown in Fig. 5.

The rooms of the buildings surrounding the courts are still very beautiful. Among these, the Hall of Mosaics (Fig. 6) seems to be the best preserved. If these long, narrow halls were ever covered by any heavy roof, the ventilation must have been bad, for even in their present open condition they are hot enough on a warm clay.

Another hall, considerably wider and with a row of six huge monoliths in the center, is called the Hall of the Monoliths (Fig. 7). These monoliths, which are about twelve feet high, seem to have supported some kind of a roof, and, judging from their strength, the roof must have been something more than cloth or palm leaves. The walls have no mosaic ornamentation, but seem to have been completely covered by a hard, thin coat of cement or plaster, which was painted a dark red. Just beyond the second monolith one sees in the wall a niche which may have contained an idol.

A well-preserved corner is shown in the following view (Fig. 8). Since the masonry has begun to crack, steel beams have recently been