A LOST CITY. 



123 



standing in a row at the foot of a mountain ; but after 

 dragging him three hours through the mud, Mr. C. 

 found by the compass that he was constantly changing 

 his direction ; and as the man was armed with pistols, 

 notoriously a bad fellow, and indignant at the owners 

 of the land for coming down to look after their squat- 

 ters, Mr. C. became suspicious of him, and insisted upon 

 returning. The Payes were engaged with their own af- 

 fairs, and having no one to assist him, Mr. Catherwood 

 was unable to make any thorough exploration or any 

 complete drawings. 



The general character of these ruins is the same as at 

 Copan. The monuments are much larger, but they are 

 sculptured in lower relief, less rich in design, and more 

 faded and worn, probably being of a much older date. 



Of one thing there is no doubt : a large city once 

 stood there ; its name is lost, its history unknown ; and, 

 except for a notice taken from Mr. C.'s notes, and in- 

 serted by the Seiiores Payes in a Guatimala paper after 

 the visit, which found its way to this country and Eu- 

 rope, no account of its existence has ever before been 

 published. For centuries it has lain as completely bu- 

 ried as if covered with the lava of Vesuvius. Every 

 traveller from Yzabal to Guatimala has passed within 

 three hours of it ; we ourselves had done the same ; and 

 yet there it lay, like the rock-built city of Edom, unvis- 

 ited, unsought, and utterly unknown. 



The morning after Mr. C. returned I called upon 

 Senor Payes, the only one of the brothers then in 

 Guatimala, and opened a negotiation for the purchase 

 of these ruins. Besides their entire newness and im- 

 mense interest as an unexplored field of antiquarian re- 

 search, the monuments were but about a mile from the 

 river, the ground was level to the bank, and the river 



