INDIAN SETTLEMENTS IN CENTRAL AMERICA. 549 



find two or three rows of rooms, one behind the other, which are con- 

 nected with each other and have exits, on one or the other of their 

 longer sides (fig. 7). It is not my intention here to pursue the almost 

 boundless variety of plans of stone houses at the various places of 

 ruins; I only mention here that where architecture has progressed still 

 further, side wings are found — added to the main building (barely indi- 

 cated in fig. 7, Ticul, more clearly in the stone houses of Tzibinocac, 

 fig. 4, and Ixtinta, fig. 1), or the building incloses a court partly (Ticul, 

 fig. 6) or entirely (Palenque, Uxmal). In Palenque the front wall is 

 sometimes reduced to a number of pillars by the frequency, the height 

 and width of the door openings, so as to change the wide, outer room 

 in its great length into a kind of well-lighted portico. 



The stone houses of Tonina, 1 the only ones known to exist in the 

 territory of the Highland tribes, are, as far as the ground plan is con- 

 cerned, most nearly related to the structures at Palenque. 



The outer walls of the stone houses rise either perpendicularly or 

 they are steeply inclined, parts occasionally extend even beyond the 

 foot of the walls. On the whole, however, the horizontal section through 

 the building diminishes in proportion as it is made at a greater height — 

 that is, the building grows smaller from below upward. The outer 

 walls are partly shaped by a smooth layer of mortar (so usual at Peten), 

 partly adorned with stucco (Menche" Tenamit, a few houses in Ticul), 

 partly ornamented with separate tablets, showing images or hiero- 

 glyphics (Palenque), or cased with a smooth covering of stone (South 

 Yucatan), which in North Yucatan is adorned with sculptures. The 

 substance of these buildings inside the casing consists, where no well- 

 stratified calcareous schists are found, of bowlders and an abundance of 

 mortar. 



All around the edifice continuous cornices are seen, which produce 

 the appearance of a building of several stories, as they occur at almost 

 equal distances, one above the other. This impression is aided by 

 the fact that the external divisions of the outside occur exactly at the 

 place where the cornices appear. Thus one meets with buildings of one 

 or four stories, though ordinarily they are only of two or three stories. 

 Sometimes, again, certain parts of a stone house are higher than others, 

 and when in this way (as in the stone houses of Ixtinta and Tzibanocac) 

 the main body and the wings seem to be of different height, such 

 structures gain a certain variety of forms which is pleasantly felt in 

 contrast with the general uniformity of all Maya buildings. 



The inner rooms of stone houses are small and rather badly lighted, 

 since no daylight enters except through the door openings. Only 

 rarely little low windows are found, which are pierced through the 



'In Kalamte" I saw the scanty remains of a small stone house, the thin walls of 

 which, however, caused the presumption that these could not have supported a 

 massive upper story, such as is characteristic of Maya huildings. It seems, therefore, 

 to have been a different kind of construction. 



