ee 
1898-99.] | DECIPHERING HIEROGLYPHIC INSCRIPTIONS OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 105 
gates opening upon the courts, appear to prove that the owners 
of the palace, while seeking to preserve the outside portico, built 
perhaps by the sons of Votan, found themselves nevertheless compelled 
to embellish their habitation, and to introduce into it changes exacted 
by the development of civilization. For the same reason, they adorned 
with stucco reliefs the columns of the periphery, which had remained 
apparently under the early reigns without any other ornament than that 
of their severe and majestic nakedness. In fact, when the kings of 
Palenque had begun to be accustomed to luxury’ and magnificence, 
after they had adorned the new edifices built in the middle of the palace 
with sculptures in relief, they experienced the necessity of putting the 
old residence of their predecessors in harmony with their own. It was 
then without doubt that the external columns were stuccoed with models 
patterned otherwise exactly after the granite sculptures of the great 
court of honour. Hence the astonishment of travellers who attributed to 
a caprice of the architect what was only the natural consequence of the 
advance of art. 
The other buildings discovered at Palenque are analogous in point of 
construction to the palace. They are majestically situated on pyramidal 
masses of great height, with a peristyle at the entrance. At the bottom 
is what may be called the chapel, having on each side one or two other 
pieces of architecture opening upon the corridor, and which seem to have 
served as dwellings for the guardians of the divinity who was there 
worshipped. Although its dimensions are much smaller, the system of 
the chapel is the same as that of the palace, and the reliefs, either in 
plaster or engraved on stone, have the same character. The only difter- 
ence to remark is that two of these monuments are surmounted by a 
second story, the form of which and its multiplied adornments in stucco 
recall the strange and fantastic models of Indian pagodas. What 
becomes certain after examination is that they belong to a different 
epoch, and to an order of civilization other than that above which they 
are raised. 
If a tradition preserved among the inhabitants of the modern little 
town of Palenque is to be believed, the artificial mound upon which the 
great palace is raised is divided up within into halls and galleries, the 
sepulchral abode of the kings and princes of the ancient city; but, up to 
this day, the Indians have religiously preserved the secret of these tombs 
and no traveller has been able to penetrate the catacombs of the 
Votanites. Those who have visited Yucatan have thoroughly satisfied 
themselves of the concavity of the pyramids which are so frequently met 
with in that peninsula. In spite of the comparatively modern period of 
