96 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
and most remarkable ruins in all Mexico. Who the people were that 
erected the buildings and whether the structures were intended for 
palaces or temples is unknown, but the architects and builders were 
wonderful for skill and boldness in design and execution, and they were 
not averse to work. They brought the trachyte from the hills, a stone 
that is soft and easily broken into great blocks, but yet is tough and 
durable; they obtained adobe from the immediate vicinity to be used in 
the foundations in setting the stone; they transported lime, probably 
from some outcrop in the valley, and mixed it with gravel to make cement 
or concrete for the laying of floors and pavements; they procured paints, 
mainly by mixing whitish earth and iron oxides, the colors preferred 
being white and several shades of red, and they cut great trees to get logs 
for long spans in ceilings and roofs. Because of the limit set by the 
length of a single roof beam, they built most of their chambers long and 
narrow, though they sometimes set stone columns through the middle 
of a chamber to double the span. 
In raising the walls they cut the margins of the stone blocks so 
accurately that the joints required little or no mortar. ‘The wonderful 
fact is that they did little simple stone laying, but instead prepared every 
block to fit into a particular place, so that each additional layer in the 
walls differed from its neighbors above and below in width, angle or 
projection. Most remarkable of all is the manner in which these builders 
ornamented their structures with geometric designs made out of innu- 
merable little pieces of stone, each of which was cut and shaped to fit into 
the formal pattern of the mosaic. It is estimated that about 15,000 
pieces of hewn stone were used for the inside walls of one of the small 
chambers of the Quadrangle of the Grecques. 
To appreciate the new restaurant fully, we must know the plan on 
which the Mitla temples that furnished its inspiration were built. There 
are traceable in the ruins five groups of structures. ‘Vhroughout these 
the ground plan is a formal quadrangle, presenting a series of central 
courts each surrounded by four chambers. The best preserved of the 
structures is the so-called Group of the Columns, particularly interesting 
because its great central court (about 150 feet square, probably once 
holding a shrine at its center) was supposedly bounded by four wide 
halls, each of which gave entrance into a smaller quadrangle of four 
rooms around a less spacious court. The best preserved of these wide 
halls is that on the north, the so-called Hall of the Six Columns. It is 
