CHAPTER Y. 



The next morning we set out for the ruins of Labna. 

 Our road lay southeast, among the hills, and was very 

 picturesque. A damp fog hung over everything, and the 

 air was quite cold. It was in fact a most dismal day. 



At the distance of two 

 leagues we reached a field of 

 ruins hidden in the dense 

 forest. The first building we 

 saw was the most curious and 

 ^^^^Q extraordinary structure we 

 had yet seen, surmounting a 

 A voLAN cocHE. pyramidal mound forty-five 



feet high. The steps had fallen, and trees and Maguey plants 

 were growing out of the place where they had stood. A nar- 

 row platform formed the top of the mound. The building 

 faced the south, and when entire measured forty-three feet 

 in" front and twenty feet in width. It had three doorways, of 

 which one, together with ten feet of the whole structure, 

 had fallen, and now lay a mass of ruins. The center door- 

 way opened into two chambers, each twenty feet long and 

 six feet wide. 



Above the cornice of the building rose a gigantic per- 

 pendicular wall thirty feet high, which had once been or- 

 namented from one side to the other with colossal figures, 

 now broken and in fragments, but still presenting a curious 

 appearance. Along the top, standing out on the wall, was 

 a row of deaths' heads; underneath were two lines ot 

 human figures in alto relievo. Over the center doorway 

 was a colossal seated figure, of which only detached portions 

 now remained. The wall was tottering and ready to fall, and 



