Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/167

Rh By sailing up the river Tabasco, a point may be reached, in the season of high water, whence a journey of two days overland will bring one to those grandest of Mexican ruins, the group of Palenque; and it is but a few days' travel to Chiapas and the Pacific.

"Unlike Copan, yet buried, too, 'mid trees, Upspringing there for sumless centuries, Behold a royal city, vast and lone, Lost to each race, to all the world unknown, Like famed Pompeii, 'neath her lava bed. Till chance unveiled the 'City of the Dead.' Palenque! seat of kings! as o'er the plain, Clothed with thick copse, the traveller toils with pain, Climbs the rude mound the shadowy scene to trace, He views in mute surprise thy desert grace. At every step some palace meets his eye, Some figure frowns, some temple courts the sky: It seems as if that hour the verdurous earth. By genii struck, had given these fabrics birth, Save that old Time hath flung his darkening pall On each tree-shaded tower and pictured wall."

The poet has not exaggerated the beauties of Palenque, nor has pen yet adequately described them: they are indescribable. The buildings are situated eight miles from the small village of Palenque, and, though Cortes must have passed quite near them on his march to Honduras, in 1524, neither he nor his garrulous companion, Diaz, makes mention of them, and it was not till 1750 that they were discovered.

In 1787 they were explored, by order of the king of Spain, by Captain Antonio del Rio, whose report was only finally published in London in 1822. In 1807 they were investigated by Captain Dupaix, at the instance of Charles IV. of Spain; but his laborious work was not given to the light till 1834-35, in Paris. It is to the American traveller, J. L. Stephens, that we owe the best account of their present appearance, this gentleman having visited them in 1839-40, when on his way, for the first time, to Yucatan.

In Palenque we find those mounds, or terraced hillocks, upon