10 PALENQTJE. 



south-west, terraces and mounds are found in considerable numbers for the distance of 

 at least half a mile. 



To the west of Section D there are numerous remains of mounds with burial 

 chambers, and others which may have supported buildings of perishable material, 

 probably used as dwelling-houses of the ancient population. 



To the north of Sections D and A there are a very few traces of stone-faced mounds 

 on the narrow terraces between the cliffs and broken slopes which descend to the plain. 



The structures within the area comprised in the plan appear to have been of two 

 classes only, namely, Temples and Tombs. The so-called Palace and almost all the 

 buildings above ground still standing were almost certainly temples, and the mounds 

 on the hillsides above them are almost all tombs, and similar tombs also cover a large 

 space of ground in all directions. 



It is most probable that each one of the mounds on which the buildings stand had 

 a stairway ascending one or more of its sides, but owing to the amount of debris, and 

 the tangle of roots with which it is bound together, these stairways are almost all lost 

 to view. 



The temples did not differ in structure from the buildings which have already been 

 described in other parts of this work ; nearly all are built of a hard limestone in small 

 roughly-squared blocks embedded in hard plaster, and the surfaces were coated with a 

 fine stucco having a smooth polished surface. There are also a few ruined structures 

 which were built of worked blocks of a soft sandstone. Wood has been frequently 

 used for lintels, every particle of which has now disappeared, but the impress of 

 the grain of the wood can in many places be traced on the surface of the plaster 

 coating on which it rested. In some instances slabs of a sort of brick or artificial 

 stone have been used for the cap-stones of the vaulted roofs. 



Openings can be seen in the sides of some of the mounds which lead to sepulchral 

 chambers, and many of the smaller mounds may be said to be honeycombed with well- 

 built chambers in which usually nothing can be seen but bare walls, and in some cases 

 a slab of stone raised on four short legs, or a small platform of rubble coated over 

 with stucco. It does not seem probable that these chambers could at any time have 

 been used as dwellings, owing to the absence of light and ventilation except from a 

 single entrance, and in many cases even this has been sealed up by building a secondary 

 wall across the entrance itself or the passage leading into the chamber. Excavation 

 beneath the floors of these chambers almost invariably brings to light human remains 

 and fragments of personal ornaments and of pottery. In a kw instances only were the 

 stone receptacles for the dead found above the floor of the chamber. 



The stream which flows through the ruins, after issuing from a deep ravine, passes 

 for some distance through an enclosed aqueduct beneath the level floor of the plaza. 

 This aqueduct or tunnel is strongly built of large roughly-squared stones and has a 

 vaulted stone roof. 



