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BONES OF A MASTODON. 229 



before, swelled by the immense floods of the rainy sea- 

 son, it had burst its bounds, carried away its left bank, 

 and laid bare one side of the skeleton. The bank was 

 perpendicular, about thirty feet high, and the animal had 

 been buried in an upright position. Besides the bones 

 in the to wn; some had been carried away by the flood, 

 others remained imbedded in the earth ; but the impres- 

 sion of the whole animal, from twenty-five to thirty feet 

 long, was distinctly visible. We were told that about 

 eight leagues above, on the bank of the same river, the 

 skeleton of a much larger animal had been discovered. 



In the afternoon we rode to the ruins, which in the 

 town were called las cuevas, the caves. They lie about 

 half a league distant, on a magnificent plain, bounded 

 in the distance by lofty mountains, among which is the 

 great Sierra Madre. 



The site of the ancient city, as at Patinamit and 

 Santa Cruz del Quiche, was chosen for its security 

 against enemies. It was surrounded by a ravine, and 

 the general character of the ruins is the same as at Qui- 

 che, but the hand of destruction has fallen upon it more 

 heavily. The whole is a confused heap of grass-grown 

 fragments. The principal remains are two pyramidal 

 structures of this form : 



One of them measures at the base one hundred and two 

 feet ; the steps are four feet high and seven feet deep, 

 making the whole height twenty-eight feet. They are 

 not of cut stone as at Copan, but of rough pieces ce- 

 mented with lime, and the whole exterior was formerly 

 coated with stucco and painted. On the top is a small 

 square platform, and at the base lies a long slab of rough 



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