354 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



ing portion of the ruins of Palenque ; and in order that 

 the reader may understand it in all its details, the plate 

 opposite is presented, which shows distinctly all the com- 

 binations of the doorway, with its broken ornaments, the 

 tablets on each side ; and within the doorway is seen 

 the large tablet on the back of the inner wall. The 

 reader will form from it some idea of the whole, and of 

 its effect upon the stranger, when, as he climbs up the 

 ruined pyramidal structure, on the threshold of the door 

 this scene presents itself. We could not but regard it 

 as a holy place, dedicated to the gods, and consecrated 

 by the religious observances of a lost and unknown 

 people. Comparatively, the hand of ruin has spared it, 

 and the great tablet, surviving the wreck of elements, 

 stands perfect and entire. Lonely, deserted, and with- 

 out any worshippers at its shrine, the figures and char- 

 acters are distinct as when the people who reared it 

 went up to pay their adorations before it. To us it was 

 all a mystery ; silent, defying the most, scrutinizing gaze 

 and reach of intellect. Even our friends the padres 

 could make nothing of it. 



Near this, on the top of another pyramidal structure, 

 was another building entirely in ruins, which apparently 

 had been shattered and hurled down by an earthquake. 

 The stones were strewed on the side of the pyramid, 

 and it was impossible even to make out the ground- 

 plan. 



Returning to No. 1 and proceeding south, at a dis- 

 tance of fifteen hundred feet, and on a pyramidal struc- 

 ture one hundred feet high from the bank of the river, 

 is another building, marked on the plan No. 4, twenty 

 feet front and eighteen feet deep, but in an unfortunate- 

 ly ruined condition. The whole of the front wall has 

 fallen, leaving the outer corridor entirely exposed. 



