146 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



The day after our survey was finished, as a relief we 

 set out for a walk to the old stone quarries of Copan. 

 Very soon we abandoned the path along the river, and 

 turned off to the left. The ground was broken, the 

 forest thick, and all the way we had an Indian before 

 us with his machete, cutting down branches and sap- 

 lings. The range lies about two miles north from the 

 river, and runs east and west. At the foot of it we 

 crossed a wild stream. The side of the mount- 

 ain was overgrown with bushes and trees. The top 

 was bare, and commanded a magnificent view of a 

 dense forest, broken only by the winding of the Copan 

 River, and the clearings for the haciendas of Don Gre- 

 gorio and Don Miguel. The city was buried in forest 

 and entirely hidden from sight. Imagination peopled 

 the quarry with workmen, and laid bare the city to their 

 view. Here, as the sculptor worked, he turned to the 

 theatre of his glory, as the Greek did to the Acropolis 

 of Athens, and dreamed of immortal fame. Little did 

 he imagine that the time would come when his works 

 would perish, his race be extinct, his city a desolation 

 and abode for reptiles, for strangers to gaze at and won- 

 der by what race it had once been inhabited. 



The stone is of a soft grit. The range extended a 

 long distance, seemingly unconscious that stone enough 

 had been taken from its sides to build a city. How the 

 huge masses were transported over the irregular and 

 broken surface we had crossed, and particularly how 

 one of them was set up on the top of a mountain two 

 thousand feet high, it was impossible to conjecture. In 

 many places were blocks which had been quarried out 

 and rejected for some defect ; and at one spot, midway 

 in a ravine leading toward the river, was a gigantic 

 block, much larger than any we saw in the city, which 



