158 



IISUIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



The next three engravings are the front, back, and 

 side Yiew of the monument marked L, distant seventy- 

 two feet north from the last, w^ith its front toward the 

 west, twelve feet high, three feet in front, two feet eight 

 inches on the side, and the pedestal is six feet square. 

 Before it, at a distance of eleven feet, is an altar very 

 much defaced, and buried in the earth. 



The front view is a portrait. The back is entirely 

 made up of hieroglyphics, and each tablet has two 

 hieroglyphics joined together, an arrangement which 

 afterward we observed occasionally at Palenque. The 

 side presents a single row of hieroglyphics, joined in 

 the same manner. The tablets probably contain the 

 history of the king or hero delineated, and the particu- 

 lar circumstances or actions which constituted his great- 

 ness. 



I have now given engravings of all the most interest- 

 ing monuments of Copan, and I repeat, they are accu- 

 rate and faithful representations. I have purposely ab- 

 stained from all comment. If the reader can derive 

 from them but a small portion of the interest that we 

 did, he will be repaid for whatever he may find unprof- 

 itable in these pages. 



Of the moral effect of the monuments themselves, 

 standing as they do in the depths of a tropical forest, si- 

 lent and solemn, strange in design, excellent in sculp- 

 ture, rich in ornament, different from the works of any 

 other people, their uses and purposes, their whole histo- 

 ry so entirely unknown, with hieroglyphics explaining 

 all, but perfectly unintelligible, I shall not pretend to 

 convey any idea. Often the imagination was pained in 

 gazing at them. The tone which pervades the ruins is 

 that of deep solemnity. An imaginative mind might 



