RUINS OF UXMAL. 



421 



mounds of stones, and vast, magnificent edifices, which 

 at that distance seemed untouched by time and defying 

 ruin. I stood in the doorway when the sun went down, 

 throwing from the buildings a prodigious breadth of 

 shadow, darkening the terraces on which they stood, 

 and presenting a scene strange enough for a work of 

 enchantment. 



This building is sixty-eight feet long. The elevation 

 on which it stands is built up solid from the plain, en- 

 tirely artificial. Its form is not pyramidal, but oblong 

 and rounding, being two hundred and forty feet long at 

 the base, and one hundred and twenty broad, and it is 

 protected all around, to the very top, by a wall of square 

 stones. Perhaps the high ruined structures at Palenque, 

 which we have called pyramidal, and which were so 

 ruined that we could not make them out exactly, were 

 originally of the same shape. On the east side of the 

 structure is a broad range of stone steps between eight 

 and nine inches high, and so steep that great care is 

 necessary in ascending and descending ; of these we 

 counted a hundred and one in their places. Nine were 

 wanting at the top, and perhaps twenty were covered 

 with rubbish at the bottom. At the summit of the steps 

 is a stone platform four feet and a half wide, running 

 along the rear of the building. There is no door in the 

 centre, but at each end a door opens into an apartment 

 eighteen feet long and nine wide, and between the two 

 is a third apartment of the same width, and thirty-four 

 feet long. The Avhole building is of stone ; inside, the 

 walls are of polished smoothness ; outside, up to the 

 height of the door, the stones are plain and square ; 

 above this line there is a rich cornice or moulding, and 

 from this to the top of the building all the sides are 

 covered with rich and elaborate sculptured ornaments, 



