EXTRAORDINARY STRUCTURE. 51 



forty-five feet high. The steps had fallen ; trees 

 were growing out of the place where they stood, 

 and we reached the top by clinging to the branch- 

 es ; when these were cleared away, it w as extreme- 

 ly difficult to ascend and descend. The maguey 

 plants cut down in making the clearing appear fall- 

 en on the steps. 



A narrow platform forms the top of the mound. 

 The building faces the south, and when entire meas- 

 ured forty-three feet in front and twenty feet in 

 depth. It had three doorways, of which one, with 

 eight feet of the whole structure, has fallen, and is 

 now in ruins. The centre doorway opens into two 

 chambers, each twenty feet long and six feet wide. 



Above the cornice of the building rises a gigantic 

 perpendicular wall to the height of thirty feet, once 

 ornamented from top to bottom, and from one side 

 to the other, with colossal figures and other designs 

 in stucco, now broken and in fragments, but still pre- 

 senting a curious and extraordinary appearance, such 

 as the art of no other people ever produced. Along 

 the top, standing out on the wall, was a row of 

 death's heads ; underneath were two lines of human 

 figures in alto relievo (of which scattered arms and 

 legs alone remain), the grouping of which, so far as 

 it could be made out, showed considerable proficien- 

 cy in that most difficult department of the art of de- 

 sign. Over the centre doorway, constituting the 

 principal ornament of the wall, was a colossal figure 

 seated, of which only a large tippet and girdle, and 



