CLOSE OF DESCRIPTION. 



321 



ground is strewed with ruins ; but with this brief 

 description I close. I might extend it indefinitely, 

 but I have compressed it within the smallest possi- 

 ble limits. We made plans of every building and 

 drawings of every sculptured stone, and this place 

 alone might furnish materials for larger volumes 

 than these ; but I have so many and such vast re- 

 mains to present that I am obliged to avoid details 

 as much as possible. These it is my hope at some 

 future day to present with a minuteness that shall 

 satisfy the most craving antiquary, but I trust that 

 what I have done will give the reader some definite 

 idea of the ruins of Uxmal. Perhaps, as we did, he 

 will imagine the scene that must have been pre- 

 sented when all these buildings were entire, occu- 

 pied by people in costumes strange and fanciful as 

 the ornaments on their buildings, and possessing all 

 those minor arts which must have been coexistent 

 with architecture and sculpture, and which the im- 

 perishable stone has survived. 



The historic light which beamed upon us at Mer- 

 ida and Mayapan does not reach this place ; it is 

 not mentioned in any record of the conquest. The 

 cloud again gathers, but even through it a star ap- 

 pears. 



The padre Cogolludo says, that on the memora- 

 ble occasion when his sight failed as he was going 

 down the steps of the great Teocalis, he found in 

 one of the apartments, or, as he calls it, one of the 

 chapels, offerings of cacao and marks of copal, used 



Vol. L— S s 



