yo JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



of Chichen Itza, in Yucatan : " For five days did I wander up and 

 down among those crumbling ruins of a city, which I hazard Httle in 

 saying must have been one of the largest the world has ever seen > 

 I beheld before me for a circuit of many miles in diameter the walls 

 of palaces, temples and pyramids, more or less dilapidated. The 

 earth was strewn as far as the eye could distinguish with columns, 

 some broken and some perfect, which seemed to have been planted 

 there by the genius of desolation which presided over this awful 

 solitude." 



The ruins of another city, in Peru, are said to cover an area of 

 nof less than twenty square miles, in which can be traced the foun- 

 dations and fragments of temples, palaces and tombs on every hand. 



Greater than either of these cities are the ruins of Otolum, in 

 Guatemala. They were first surveyed in 1787 by Capt. Del Rio, sent 

 out by the Society of Geography in Paris. To quote his own 

 words, as taken from a published report, the ruins are " of a stone 

 city of no less dimensions than seventy-five miles circuit — length 

 thirty-two, and breadth twelve miles — full of palaces, statues, monu- 

 ments and inscriptions." 



This city had for its centre a great temple, built on a natural 

 formation like the Acropolis at Athens, with majestic fragments 

 lining off on all sides. 



To give an idea of the size of the stones u^ed in erecting some 

 of these great cities of antiquity, we quote the words of Humboldt 

 regarding the ruins of Cuzco, in Peru : " Aersto," he says, 

 " measured some stones at Traquanaco which were twelve meters 

 (38 feet) long, five meters, eight-tenths (18 feet) broad, and one 

 meter, nine-tenths (6 feet) thick. 



The stones used in building the temple of Solomon were but a 

 trifle larger than these, some of which were twenty-five cubits 

 (43 feet, 9 inches) long, twelve cubits (29 feet) wide, and eight cubits 

 (14 feet) thick, reckoning twenty-one inches to the cubit." 



Says the historian Priest : " There is in Central America, on 

 the west decHvity of Anahuac, to the southeast of the city of 

 Cuernivaca, an isolated hill, which, together with the pyramid 

 raised on its top by the ancients of that country, amounts to thirty- 

 five rods, ten feet altitude. The ancient tower of Babel, around 

 which the city of Babylon was afterwards built, was a mere nothing 



