Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/362

 356 and with arched ceilings twenty-three feet high. This, in brief, is a hasty description of the great "Governor's House"—Casa del Gobernador—of Uxmal. The engravings will convey more faithful pictures than pages of text, and to them the reader is referred.

But this is only one of the ruined structures that abound in Uxmal. On one of the terraces supporting this ruin is a smaller one, known as the "House of the Turtles"—Casa de las Tortugas—from a beaded cornice containing a row of stone tortoises of large size.

Chief of the structures is the "Palace of the Nuns," an immense quadrangular building, its high and elaborately chiselled walls surrounding a great court two hundred and fourteen feet wide by two hundred and fifty-eight feet long. The interior facades are mazes of wonderful sculpture, and on one wall is a representation of the deity, Quetzalcoatl, the symbolical "feathered serpent," stretching its plumed body across the entire length of the court.

Other buildings lie in ruins, and heaps of stone alone tell where many others formerly stood. The "House of the Pigeons" is one, the "House of the Old Woman," and the "Nameless Mound," all lie within sight of the central structures. There is one pyramid here, crowned by a long narrow building called the "House of the Dwarf," which is reached by one hundred steps, each one foot high. The entire mound is eighty-five feet high, two hundred and thirty-five feet long by one hundred and fifty-five wide, and the crowning structure is seventy-two feet by twelve.

All around Uxmal are ruins, the surface being literally covered with them, showing that this region was at one time densely inhabited. This section was that in which dwelt the Tutul Xius, last immigrants to Yucatan before the Spanish invasion. South and southeast of this are many more vestiges of cities, once inhabited, but now