QUIRIGUA. 



Principal Notices and Descriptions of the Ruins. 



I can find no notice of the ruins of Quirigua earlier than that in Stephens's Travels *. 

 Stephens did not visit the ruins himself, and merely relates the account given to him 

 by his companion, Frederick Catherwood, who, in the year 1840, was able to make an 

 excursion to Quirigua whilst Stephens was absent in Salvador. Catherwood spent 

 only one day at the ruins and made rough sketches of two of the monoliths ; but 

 beyond the fact that it is the earliest account of the monuments which we possess, 

 his description of them has no longer any particular value. 



In the year 1854 Dr. Karl Scherzerf made a short visit to the ruins and wrote a 

 description of them. He was told by the villagers that the flood in the Rio 

 Motagua rose to a great height in 1852, and that some of the monuments were then 

 overthrown. 



Personal Narrative. 



Early in January 1881 I arrived at Livingston, the Atlantic port of Guatemala, and 

 thence travelled in a very rickety steam-launch up the Rio Dulce and across the Golfo 

 Dulce to the village of Yzabal. Here I hired mules and rode a distance of about 

 eighteen miles over the Sierra de las Minas to the cattle rancho of El Mico, which is 

 within a mile of the village of Quirigua. After a day's rest I set out accompanied by 

 some of the villagers to visit the ruins which lay buried in the forest near the left 



* Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan. By John S. Stephens. John Murray : 

 London, 1841. 



t " Ein Besuch bei der Buinen von Quirigua." Karl Scherzer. Sitzungsberichte der k. Akademie der 

 "Wissenschaften, vol. xvi. Vienna, 1855. 



biol. centr.-amer., Arcbseol., Vol. II., September 1899. b 



