85 



may have been a torture-chamber, sacrificial hall, or tomb. The excavation is but a little 

 below the surface of the court, now carried down so deeply that the light is wholly ex- 

 cluded. From the entrance there is enough to fill the interior with a sad, gray twilight. 

 The vault is in the form of a simple cross lying north and south ; its walls are massive 

 and heavily decorated with panels of carving let into their sides, while it is roofed by 

 enormous monolithic slabs that reach from wall to wall. In the centre of the cross, 

 just where by descending a few steps one enters the tomb, stands the pillar of death, 

 round which, the Indians say, should a man clasp his arms he must shortly afterwards 

 die. Does not this very tradition, handed down perhaps through the long file of count- 

 less years, seem to indicate that this pillar was some ancient stone of sacrifice to which 

 human victims were bound or chained, and from which death alone released them ? 

 As one gazes at the massive column, that one man's arms alone could not entirely en- 

 circle, the eye notices an indentation round the base where the column sinks into the 

 floor. The stone is corroded and worn away as by the long friction of ropes or chains. 



" Most of the panels do not consist of actual carving, though they produce that 

 effect at a few yards' distance ; they are formed in reality by small slabs of the freestone 

 cut perfectly square and inserted edgeways into the wall, the remaining edges standing 

 out at various distances from it and thus forming the different designs. This, although 

 a work of infinite patience, does not necessarily presuppose a high stage of civilization, 

 no instrument sharper than hard stone being required to cut the slabs of soft freestone ; 

 and that only a stone instrument was employed by the workers seems indicated by the 

 fact that, in the large panels where the stone is actually carved, the edges are not sharp, 

 but rounded, as if made with a blunt tool. The effect of the panels of inserted squares 

 of stone, however simply produced, is that of the most finished and clear-cut carving 

 and the designs themselves are rich and elaborate. There is no crudity, no harshness 

 in them, no suggestion of the primitive savage's scratching on his native rock ; but 

 rather that of Greek work on some Athenian temple. The patterns have a complicated 

 elegance and distinction of line that can only be produced by a people of cultivated 

 mind and eye. 



" Evidence, too, of what high grade of civilization in some ways at least they must 

 have arrived at, lies in the gigantic stones that they have placed as lintels over their 

 doorways and which in their immense weight and bulk have defied the greed or rage of 

 all the succeeding races to remove or destroy. The mystery here is the Egyptian 

 mystery of the Pyramids ; that these enormous blocks of stone are resting here in po- 

 sitions and elevations where it would require all the modern knowledge of mechanics, 

 engineering skill, and mechanical appliances to place them ; and, as in Egypt, so here 

 the mystery will never be solved, as the builders have passed hence and left no clue. 

 The solid stone rests there upon its supporting pillars before the eye as it has rested 

 for a thousand years, but how the perished hands lifted and placed it there remains its 

 own inviolable secret. 



' ' Leaving the palace court by the south side and following the road to the dry and 

 stony bed of a wide river, if one turns aside here a little to the eastward he finds him- 

 self facing a Zapotecan mound, a solid base composed of earth and stones, in which are 

 visible at intervals large slabs of cement, portions of terraces and tiers that originally 

 formed its sides. Ascending this, from the summit one can overlook the whole valley." 



LANGUAGES. 



About one hundred and fifty different Indian languages are known 

 to have been spoken by the Mexican Indians. The Spanish monks 

 accompanying the conquerors and who went to the country soon after- 



