IDENTITY OP THE RUINED CITIES. 375 



performance of idolatrous rites ; perhaps it is the 

 same temple from wliich Bernal Dias and his com- 

 panions rolled the idols down the steps. And more 

 than this, establishing the great result for which we 

 had visited this island, these buildings were identi- 

 cally the same with those on the mainland ; if we 

 had seen hundreds, we could not have been more 

 firmly convinced that they were all erected and oc- 

 cupied by the same people ; and if not a single cor- 

 roborating circumstance existed besides, they afford 

 in themselves abundant and conclusive proof that 

 the ruined cities on the continent, the building of 

 which has been ascribed to races lost, perished, and 

 unknow^n, were inhabited by the very same Indians 

 who occupied the country at the time of the conquest. 



At the rear of the last building, buried in the 

 woods, so that we should never have found it but 

 for our patron, is another memorial, perhaps equal in 

 interest to any now existing on the island of Cozu- 

 mel. It is the ruins of a Spanish church, sixty or 

 seventy feet front and two hundred deep. The 

 front wall has almost wholly fallen, but the side 

 walls are standing to the height of about twenty 

 feet. The plastering remains, and along the base 

 is a line of painted ornaments. The interior is en- 

 cumbered with the ruins of the fallen roof, over- 

 grown with bushes ; a tree is growing out of the 

 great altar, and the whole is a scene of irrecovera- 

 ble destruction. The history of this church is as 

 obscure as that of the ruined temples whose worship 



