Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/546

538 The third group is the most interesting, since not only are the outside walls cut in mosaic, but there are several rooms and courts, the sides of which are a labyrinth of grecques. The lintels of this and the adjacent ruin are immense blocks of porphyry, one of which is nineteen feet in length, a solid block of stone, raised to its present position by some lost process of engineering, certainly by one that is unknown to the Indians of to-day. The rooms are narrow, and at present open to the sky, but were once undoubtedly protected by a roof. But what distinguishes the ruins of Mitla from all other remains of Mexican architecture is, as stated by Humboldt, six columns of porphyry, fourteen feet in height, which are ranged in line in the centre of a great hall. They are very simple, having neither pedestal, capital, nor architrave, but stand as almost the only examples of the kind found in American ruins.

Above these ruins is a stone church, in the central portion of this bench of the foot-hills on which they are built. We entered the curacy adjoining the church, which was simply the old building of the Indians, roofed with tiles, and were hospitably received by the cura, who recounted to us the traditions respecting his strange abode. This ruin is larger than the others, being 284 feet long and 108 wide, with walls five or six feet thick. Two great stone pillars, twelve feet high, stood in front of the doorway. The walls had the same ornamentation of diagonal mosaics, and the portion used as a stable contains the best preserved fragments of paintings in the ruins, of characters resembling the Egyptian, exquisitely colored in red and black, the colors yet fresh and bright. The cura was very intelligent, though he had Indian blood in his veins, and he had very clear ideas as to the uses of the various buildings. The first group, he said, was probably used as quarters for the troops; the second, the largest and most elaborate, was the palace of the king of the Zapotecs, who came here two or three months in each year, as to a buen retiro; the third and highest building, from which and out of which the church was built, was used by the priests, and these paintings that adorned the panels in the walls were probably hieroglyphical, and in their custody.