INDIAN SETTLEMENTS IN CENTRAL AMERICA. 553 



(b) In many buildiugs mortar is used in erecting stoue bouses. 



2. Mame style: The buildings of a settlement are generally made to 

 face intermediate directions. 



3. Quiche style: The buildings of a settlement face the cardinal 

 points. 



C. Architectural styles of the lowland tribes. — In many buildiugs stone 

 walls, cemented with mortar, are found. Stone houses with habitable 

 inner rooms. The buildings mostly face the cardinal points. 



1. Maya style: At times steep pyramids. The door beams made of 

 zapote wood. 



la. Peten type: The buildings of a settlement are closely crowded. 

 Formation of many courts (squares). Character of fortification. The 

 walls show a casing of mortar. Mostly unadorned houses. 



lb. Type of South Yucatan : Transition type. The arrangement of 

 buildings is less crowded. The walls of the stone houses are often 

 incased in stone, carefully cut, but simple. 



lc. Type of North Yucatan: The arrangement of the buildings is 

 rather a scattered one. The outer walls of the stone houses are often 

 richly adorned with sculptures. 



2. Choi style : The door openings are generally closed above with 

 level slabs of stone. The ornamentation of stone houses consists in 

 stucco ornaments or in tablets containing images or hieroglyphics. 



3. Chorti style: Very peculiar development of the pyramidical struc- 

 ture and of courts (squares). In Copan a steep pyramid. 



The stone houses of Tonina belong to the Choi style, while the other 

 edifices and the general arrangement follow the Tzenal style. The 

 ruins are now situated in the land of the Tzenal people, but not very 

 far from the line, since the nearest Lacandon and Choi settlements are 

 hardly 30 or 10 kilometers distant, and it can not be absolutely asserted 

 that Tonina may not originally have been a Tonina or a Choi settlement. 

 However this may be, Tonina has always shown a mixed style, at all 

 events borrowing from a neighboring style, so that I do not feel j usti 

 fled, by the occurrence of a single instance, to attribute the existence 

 of stone houses to the Tzenal style. 



The Indian edifices of northern Central America very frequently 

 show a striking want of symmetry. The very simplest buildings, to be 

 sure, are almost always symmetrical, because in their very great sim- 

 plicity there was no scope for unsymmetrical arrangement. But the 

 more varied single buildings and central structures, like great temples, 

 show almost always an unequal development on the two sides from a 

 middle line, and although the gradual development of architectural art 

 led step by step to a better observance of symmetry, it is nevertheless 

 curious to observe how, after all, only the very best edifices of Yucatan 

 and Palenque ever attained unto full symmetry. It is true that fre- 

 quently only mere trifles display a want of this kind, but on examining 

 a building of this kind, or even a ground plan, we always feel as if this 



