1898-99.] | DECIPHERING HIEROGLYPHIC INSCRIPTIONS OF CENTRAL AMERICA, 103 
man in his turn, gave them back their rural abodes, he abandoning on 
their behalf his palaces and his temples as a souvenir of his sojourn and 
his power. 
If Votan was the founder of Palenque and its first buildings were his, 
his successors apparently completed what he had begun in adding to 
the splendour of this capital. The city extended along the foot of the 
mountains from east to west, a distance between twenty-one and twenty- 
four miles. It came down to the bank of the Michol, which laved its 
front, thus giving it a breadth of only two or two and a half miles. In 
the midst of the plain which stretches between the mountains and the 
river, there rises majestically upon a vast artificial mound the building 
which it has been agreed to call the palace of the kings. The periodical 
inundation which, from the month of June, begins to cover the low 
ground where the Michol flows, then swollen by the superabundant 
waters of the Cordilleras, had doubtless compelled the Votanites to the 
necessity of heaping up by great labour the low-lying land on which the 
founder of the monarchy had desired to erect his royal abode. After- 
wards, this plan having become sacred in the eyes of his people, the wish 
to protect his palace against the waters must have inspired the design 
of this gigantic edifice. Other monuments destined for different uses 
were afterwards built on the same plan, and that which could at first 
have been only a necessity of circumstances, became a consecrated 
custom for all the great buildings of American civilization. 
The city proper was arranged in the form of an amphitheatre on the 
slope of the mountain all around the plain, the palaces of which must 
have presented a singular appearance at the time of inundation. Built © 
upon so many artificial mounds, they resemble the rocks of lake 
Maggiore, transformed by the Borromeos into as many enchanted 
castles. The streets followed irregularly the course of the streams, which 
in their descent furnished abundance of water to every dwelling. On 
one of the summits, constituting the rear terrace of the amphitheatre, 
there rose, directly in front of the palace of the kings, another monument 
which would seem to have served as temple and citadel, and whose lofty 
walls commanded a view of the country as far as the shores of the 
Atlantic. 
The numerous monuments of Palenque which time has respected give 
a sufficiently complete idea of its architecture; its general characteristics 
are simplicity, soberness and solidity. This last quality pertains not 
only to the nature and use of the materials; but also to the slope that 
has been observed in the bases of most of the palaces and temples. In 
