PALENQTJE. 13 



description it is thought to be best to describe each building as a structural unit, 

 although one may thereby fail in giving the general impression which is most strongly 

 retained by the memory. 



On our arrival at the ruins we found both the East and West Courts filled up almost 

 to the level of the floors of the houses with broken masonry which had fallen from the 

 surrounding buildings, and covered over by decaying trunks of trees and a luxuriant 

 vegetation. We succeeded before leaving in digging out nearly the whole of this mass 

 of debris and throwing it down the outside slope of the foundation mound. 



House A. (Plates V. to XIV.) 



This house stands on the northern half of the east side of the Palace Mound. It 

 consists of two parallel corridors divided by a main wall which is pierced near the 

 middle of its length by a large doorway. The upper part of this doorway is shaped 

 somewhat like a Moorish arch (see sketch on Plate VI.), although of course it differs 

 from it in structure. 



Both of the outer walls of the building are pierced by large square-headed doorways, 

 which at one time were furnished with wooden lintels ; the wooden beams, however, 

 have long since disappeared, and much of the stonework which they supported has 

 fallen. 



The original building ended at the third pier to the south of the middle doorway, 

 but there is a prolongation beyond this of the main and western wall, and doubtless 

 the remains of another house of later date with a somewhat lower roof (the end of 

 which rested against the slope of the roof of House A) lie buried under the great heap 

 of debris in that direction. It is also probable that the building originally ended to the 

 northward at the third pier from the middle doorway, and that the extension to the 

 north-east corner of the mound was a later addition. The same may be said of 

 House D, and these two northerly prolongations of Houses A and D formed the east 

 and west ends of a long building with a double corridor, now almost entirely destroyed, 

 which probably extended right across the northern end of the mound. 



The foundation of this northern side of the mound has apparently given way, causing 

 the destruction of the northern building (see Plate XVII., a), and making a break 

 (about 9 inches across at the base of the walls) right through the main walls of 

 Houses A and D. In each case the outer roof of the building to the north of the 

 break has fallen away, and the centre wall itself would probably have fallen but for 

 the support of the heap of debris against which it rests. 



