30 



MEXICAN HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY. 



apartment that Martin, in 1802, and Dupaix, four years after, found the six cylin- 

 drical stone columns, without bases or capitals and of a single shaft, the position 

 of which is shown in the ground-plan I have given, on another page, from Martin's 

 drawing. 1 But when Mr. Sawkins visited Mitla, in 1837, the columns had been 

 removed, probably by the present villagers, for their domestic purposes. These 

 columns had evidently been intended to support the roof which formerly covered 

 this portion of the edifice, and are represented by Dupaix to have been one vara in 

 diameter and five and a half varas high ; or near three feet in diameter by about 

 fifteen in altitude ! 



The large court, or saloon, just described, communicated at its rear, by a narrow 

 passage (as will be seen in Martin's plan), with another body of the edifice, which 

 that artist represents to have been a sort of interior court, surrounded by four rooms 

 without windows, each of which was entered by a single door. Don Luis Martin 

 represents it, evidently, as a structure resembling the modern edifices of the Mexi- 

 cans, which are similarly constructed around a patio, or court, without external 

 windows. It is probable that such may have been the state of the ruins in 1802, 

 but when they were seen by Mr. Sawkins, in 1837, he found the whole interior 

 quadrangle an unoccupied area, while three of its walls were covered with nine 

 long recesses on each side, in three tiers, each recess being large enough for the 

 reception of a human body. These vaults were plastered with the same kind of 

 cement that was found in the first apartment, but they were all empty. 



In the centre of the main court-yard of the whole group, there are said to be 

 subterranean apartments similar to those which have been found elsewhere in this 

 valley, and which have been represented as adorned in the following cuts. 



1 See cut on page 28. 



