ISSG.] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 171 



From the Governor's liousc we look nortliwiird ui)on a palace 

 of 102 rooms, and having descended from the great terraces, 

 after a five minutes' walk, lind ourselves in an archway that leads 

 to an interior court. In the upper part of the arch there are 

 traces of red, blue, and yellow paint, as well as various red hands. 

 Similar imprints are seen in several buildings, because it was 

 customary for those who used or owned tlie edifice, to dip their 

 hands in red liquid and press the palm against the wall to invoke 

 a divine blessing for tiie house and inmates, and also to denote 

 ownership. Tiie hands were evidently pressed on the walls even 

 before the plastering was done, because in places where the 

 the stucco has fallen, we Occasionally see such perfect impres- 

 sions that the furrows of the. palm of the hand are plainly dis- 

 cernible. The red hands are of more interest than would at 

 first sight appear, for by means of them we are enabled to know 

 the stature of those peojile. 



Whenever the natives are questioned about the old houses, they 

 say, " The pygmies built them," but the red hands do not verify 

 this. On the contrary, some of the hands are very large, one 

 that we found being thirty centimetres, or about twelve inches 

 long, though the greater number were of medium size. At the 

 same time it must be confessed that the natives probably had 

 well-founded traditions that cause them to talk of pygmies ; for 

 on the east coast of the peninsula and in adjacent islands we 

 found ruined cities where all the houses — built of white lime- 

 stone — are so small that only pygmies could have lived in them, 

 the doorwa3's being but three feet high and one and a half wide, 

 while every part of the structure is proportionately small. 



The palace of 102 rooms forms a quadrangle open at all 

 the angles. All the facades are elaborately ornamented, and each 

 is quite different from the others. That on the west side of the 

 court is the most destroyed, though it was undoubtedly the most 

 interesting. Two large feathered serpents extended from one 

 end of the fa9ade to the other, along the upper and lower edge 

 of the entablature. At regular intervals the snakes are entwined, 

 and intersect the other designs, forming, as it were, })anels. At 

 each end of the fa9ade there was a serpent head, the tail of the 

 other drooping above it. They have seven rattles, and just above 

 them an ornament like a peculiar urn with a long plume depend- 

 ent from it. The heads were crowned, and in the distended 

 jaws of the one yet in place, there is a bat's head, recognizable by 

 the little trunk-like prominence seen on the snout of the species 

 of bat found in Yucatan. 



The bat's mouth is open, and in it is the face of a woman, wife 

 of King Can who built the palace. Her name was Zoo, which 

 means bat. Amonar the debris we found the snake-head that 



