CHECHEN ITZA. 



HfS ' r^j— --i iFiliillii 



Pomsr.te 



" These Lords, they say, came over without any women, and they lived chastely, 

 and all the time that they thus lived they were held in high esteem and obeyed by all. 

 Then, as time went on, one of them disappeared, and doubtless he must have died, 

 although the Indians assert that he left the country in the direction of Bacalar. 



" The absence of this Lord, however it may have come to pass, caused such a change 

 in those who ruled the State that soon they split into factions, so wanton and licentious in 

 their ways, that the people came so greatly to loathe them that they killed them, laid 

 the Town waste and themselves dispersed, abandoning the buildings and this beautiful 

 site which is only ten leagues from the sea, and has much fertile land around it. The 

 plan of the principal building is the following : — 



" This building has four stairways which look to the four quarters of the world, 

 each is 33 feet in breadth and has ninety-one steps, and it is killing work to ascend 

 them ; the steps have the same height and breadth which we give to ours. Each 

 stairway has on a level with the steps two low balustrades, two feet in width, of good 

 masonry, as indeed is the whole edifice. The building is not square cornered, for from 

 the edge of the ground and from the balustrades in the opposite direction they have 

 begun to work some rounded blocks which rise at intervals and confine the building in 

 a very pleasing regularity. There was, when I saw it, at the foot of each balustrade 

 the savage mouth of a serpent curiously worked out of a single block of stone. The 

 stairways being finished in this manner there remains on the summit a small level 

 plain, on which stands a building arranged in four chambers. Three of them run 

 round the outside without division, each one with a door in the middle and covered 

 with a gable roof. The fourth, that to the north, stands by itself with a corridor of 

 thick pillars. The chamber in the middle, which must have been the little enclosure 

 formed by the arrangement of the walls of the building, has a door which opens into 

 the northern corridor ; it is roofed above with wood, and it was used as a place for 

 burning incense. 



" And at the entrance of this door or of the corridor a sort of arms was sculptured 

 on a stone which one could not well understand. This building must have had many 

 others (sculptures) and still has them to-day round about large and well done, and all 



