PALENQUE. 7 



Principal Notices and Descriptions op the Ruins. 



It appears that the ruins of Palenque became known to the Spaniards in the middle 

 of the eighteenth century, and that they were first examined and reported on in the 

 year 1773 at the instance of Don Ramon de Ordonez y Aguiar, who forwarded a 

 " Memoria relativa a las ruinas de la Ciudad descubierta en las in mediaciones del 

 Pueblo de Palenque " (a MS. formerly in the collection of the Abbe Brasseur de Bour- 

 bourg) to Don Jose Estacheria, President of the Audiencia of Guatemala. 



At the order of the President the ruins were again examined and reported on in 

 1784 by Jose Antonio Calderon. A French translation of Calderon's report is given 

 in Brasseur's Introduction to Waldeck's work. During the next year the survey was 

 continued by the architect Antonio Bernasconi. Upon Calderon's and Bernasconi's 

 reports Don Juan Bautista Munoz, the Royal Historiographer, drew up a memorandum 

 addressed to Don Jose de Galvez, Marquis de laSonora, dated 1786, and now preserved 

 together with Bernasconi's pencil-drawings in the British Museum. (Spanish MSS. 

 Add. 17571. Desgubrimientos en el Pueblo de Palenque, etc.) 



In 1786 the work was carried on by Antonio del Rio, and a report signed by him, 

 and dated Palenque 1786, but partly in the handwriting of Don Juan Bautista Munoz, 

 is included in the volume of British Museum, MSS. quoted above. Bound up with 

 this Report are four coloured maps of the ruins of Palenque, and some drawings which 

 are evidently fair copies of the pencil-drawings already mentioned, attributed in the 

 catalogue (drawn up by Don Pascual de Gayangos) to Bernasconi. 



An English translation of the Report, under the title of ' Description of the Ruins 

 of an Ancient City, discovered near Palenque,' was published in London in 1822 by 

 Henry Berthoud, and illustrated by seventeen lithographic plates signed by Fred. 

 Waldeck. It is doubtful whether these plates are taken from del Rio's drawings, and 

 it is more probable that they were adapted from the drawings made by Castaneda in 

 1807. 



The following quotation from del Rio's Report accounts for some of the yawning 

 holes to be found in the pavements and walls of the temples : — " I was convinced 

 that in order to form some idea of the first inhabitants and of the antiquities con- 

 nected with their establishments it would be indispensably necessary to make several 



excavations By dint of perseverance I effected all that was necessary to be 



done, so that ultimately there remained neither a window nor a doorway blocked up, 

 a partition that was not thrown down, nor a room, corridor, court, tower, nor subter- 

 ranean passage in which excavations were not effected from two to three yards in 

 depth." 



In 1807 Captain Guillermo Dupaix, accompanied by a draughtsman Luciano 

 Castaneda, in the course of a three years' survey of the ruins of Southern Mexico, 



