MORGAN.] SO-CALLED PALACE AT PALENQUE. 269 
particular, namely, in being constructed with three parallel walls with par- 
tition walls at intervals, giving two rows of apartments under one roof, 
usually, if not invariably, flat. Where several are grouped together on the 
same platform, as at Palenque, they are severally under independent roofs, 
and the spaces between, called courts, are simply open lanes or passage- 
ways between the structures. An inspection of the ground plan of the 
Palenque ruins in the folio volume of Dupaix, or in the work of Mr. Ste- 
phens, will be apt to mislead unless this feature of the architecture is kept 
in mind ‘There are in reality seven or eight distinct edifices, crowded 
together upon the summit level of the platform. Mr. Stephens speaks of it 
as one structure. ‘‘ The building,” he remarks, ‘‘was constructed of stone, 
and the whole front was covered with stucco and painted. * * * The 
doorways have no doors, nor are there the remains of any. * * * The 
tops of the doorways were all broken. They had evidently been square, 
and over every one were large niches in the wall on each side, in which the 
lintels had been laid. These lintels had all fallen, and the stones above 
formed broken natural arches.”' The interior walls in two rooms shown by 
engravings were plastered over. Architecturally, Palenque is inferior to the 
House of the Nuns; but it is more ornamental. It also has one peculiar fea- 
ture not generally found in the Yucatan structures, namely, a corridor about 
nine feet wide, supposed to have run around the greater part of the exterior 
on the four sides. The exterior walls of these corridors rest on a series of 
piers, and the central or next parallel wall is unbroken, except by one door- 
way on each of three sides and two in the fourth, thus forming a narrow 
promenade. One of the interior buildings consists of two such corridors, 
but wider, on opposite sides of a central longitudinal wall. All the rooms 
in the several edifices are large. In one of the open spaces is a tower 
about thirty feet square, rising three stories. The Palenque structures are 
quite remarkable, standing upon an artificial eminence about forty feet high, 
and large enough to accommodate three thousand people living in the fash- 
ion of Village Indians. 
The plan of these houses, as well as of those in Yucatan, seems to show 
that they were designed to be occupied by groups of persons composed of 
1Central America, &c., ii, 310-312. 
