160 AMOIENT REMAINS AT GUATEMALA. 



A short distance, north-north-east from this enclosure is a 

 large isolated hill (a on plan), perhaps three hundred feet high, 

 and so regular that only its size and an examination of its 

 surface prevented Mr. Williamson from believing it to be 

 artificial. About six hundred yards due west from this hill 

 (north-west from the enclosure) is an unusually large oblong 

 mound, with a small one at each end (b, on plan) and others 

 north and south from it. The height of this mound is not stated, 

 it was cut through from east to west, but nothing was found 

 except broken pieces of obsidian and pottery. Half way 

 between the hill (a) and the great mound (b) is a line of four 

 six-sided stones, each eigjit inches in diameter, and about forty 

 feet apart, running north and south, (d, on plan). Sixty feet 

 further west is a parallel line (e, on plan) of five stones averaging 

 five feet high, and worked very rudely, if at all ; these are about 

 one hundred feet apart. One hundred and twenty five yards 

 further west is another nearly parallel line — perhaps sixty feet 

 long — of four stones (f, on plan) ; the stone at the north end of 

 this line is a foot and a half high, the next two feet and a half 

 high, and the other two from five to six feet above ground ; the 

 most southerly of these is in line with the centres of the hiU (a) 

 and mound (b), and of it Mr. Williamson says : "it has a hole 

 cut about the centre of it, nearly three feet from the surface of 

 the earth, this hole is just large enough to admit the insertion of 

 a small man's shoulders and the passage of the head ; that part 

 of the hole toward the east is cut so that the face has to be 

 horizontal when the head is passed through, and there is a notch 

 or cut in it, so that, if the head were once passed through, the 

 insertion of a piece of wood or stone in the notch would render 

 it impossible to move or withdraw the head ; on the same side 

 (east side) there is a working which, if the stone were so used, 

 would make the blood flowing from the neck of the person whose 

 head was passed through the stone and was beheaded in that 

 attitude, distribute itself nearly all over the lower part of it. I 

 thought this place might have been used for the purpose of 

 human sacrifices (at one time common in Central America) and 

 for what were called religious services." 



