8 3 



and Professor F. W. Putnam has spoken of them as the " riddle of the 

 many heads." Desire Charnay saw in some of them Chinese and 

 Japanese masks, and even types of the white race, proving in his opin- 

 ion how many races must have been mingled or succeeded each other 

 on this old continent. 



Mitla. About twenty miles east of the city of Oaxaca is an Indian 

 town called Mitla, near which still remain the ruins of great edifices 

 and palaces. The temples were built, it is supposed, by the ancient 

 Zapotecas, and are the most interesting relics of the earlier civilizations 

 of Mexico. The first description of these ruins was given by the 

 Spanish priest, Burgoa, who accompanied the conquerors of Monte- 

 zuma. The interior of the principal hall or room of the main palace 

 is supposed to be the teocali of the high priest. The peculiar archi- 

 tecture and elaborate and grotesque decoration can easily be observed. 

 It is astonishing to see the enormous size of the stones used in the 

 walls of these temples. Professor Bickmore said that he had seen 

 nothing to equal them except at Baalbec, in Syria. At Mitla are found 

 some clay images, mostly miniature, doubtless of gods, but some of 

 them no doubt portraits, and some of these bore a striking resemblance 

 to the little heads found at the pyramids of the Sun and Moon in 

 the Valley of Mexico ; that is, some of them had the slant Oriental 

 eyes, and others Ethiopian features, very different from any races we 

 now know in these regions. The ruined temples of Mitla are covered 

 with stucco, which was painted Pompeiian red. There is a pyramid 

 also at Mitla, and there are some elaborately wrought sepulchral 

 chambers. 



I borrow from Mr. Vivien Cory the following extracts of his de- 

 scription of the ruins of Mitla. 



" There are four of these places ; the first is almost entirely destroyed, only some 

 huge monolithic slabs supported horizontally upon tottering piles of broken stones re- 

 maining ; while everywhere amongst the ruins have sprung up the grass huts of the 

 Mexican Indians, and of the fourth or one farthest from the hamlet nothing but indi- 

 cation of the site is left, upon which the Spaniards have reared a modern church. It 

 is in the two palaces that lie between, each slightly raised above the surrounding country 

 on a separate eminence, that the interest centres. 



" One of these is in the form of a double Greek cross, its stem running north and 

 south, and its arms extended east and west. In the centre is the large court, surrounded 

 on all sides by rising ground and ruined mounds of stones : there are traces still remain- 

 ing of the foundations, that speak of four apartments built upon these mounds to face 

 the court, but of these those on the west and south sides have disappeared ; on the east 

 side, only two colossal pillars and a portion of the walls remain, while to the north side 

 the whole apartment forming the head of the cross has been spared and stands almost 

 unharmed in its original beauty and richness. The faade of this apartment extends 

 the whole length of the court, one hundred and forty-one feet, and its height is a little 

 over fifteen feet : the material is freestone, the color a faint, dull, amber tint, soft as the 

 light seen in the sky at evening. In the centre are three square portals and above these 



