Page:Researches in the Central Portion of the Usumatsintla Valley.djvu/20

12 light. Now, of course, no one can surmise in what part of the huge pyramid of ruins, overgrown with trees, this table stood. We must perforce be content, therefore, with the mutilated fragment here discovered.

The table is chiselled out of the finest limestone. Its breadth is sixty-two centimetres, the length of the part found is seventy-five, the width of the band of glyphs is seven, but the general thickness of the stone is somewhat more. The incised inscription of the top formerly consisted (according to my calculation) of twenty-four squares containing glyphs in two rows of twelve each. Of the first row eight are preserved, and of the second six. The missing squares belong to the broken-off corner. The first seven glyph-squares of the outer band were preserved; then, on the same side, there were probably four more, and around the broken-off corner, on the long side, probably six more; then followed seven well-preserved squares to the edge where the missing portion of the table formerly joined.

I have taken photographs of the bands of glyphs preserved on the narrow frontal faces (Plate II), and have made a tracing of the incised inscription on the upper face (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. —

Adjoining the north side of the ruined pyramid is an extensive palace with several courts. On one side of the main court there is a row of narrow entrances, which are arched over with triangular arches flattened at the top. These entrances, I think, did not lead to actual apartments, but only to a passageway by which chambers in the rear and at the sides may have been reached, while the horizontal stone roof formed an elevated passage to adjoining terraces.

Climbing over the ruins of the fallen chambers, which lie opposite the structure with the flattened triangular arches, we came to further remains of buildings and to a covered passageway, which must have led to chambers now filled with débris. Traces of painting (red scroll work) were still visible on the plastered walls of this passageway (or anteroom), but they had become so indistinct that it was impossible for me to copy the design.

Since the principal façades of this group of edifices, especially that of the temple, must have faced the west, I carefully searched the ground in