26 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



archway running through the building. The front 

 is fallen, and the whole so rained that nothing 

 but the archway appears in the engraving. Along 

 the middle of the roof, unsupported, and entirely 

 independent of everything else, rises a perpendic- 

 ular wall to the height of perhaps thirty feet. It 

 is of stone, about two feet thick, and has oblong 

 openings through it about four feet long and six 

 inches wide, like small windows. It had been cov- 

 ered with stucco, which had fallen off, and left the 

 face of rough stone and mortar ; and on the other 

 side were fragments of stuccoed figures and orna- 

 ments. An Indian appears before it in the act of 

 killing a snake, with which all the woods of Yuca- 

 tan abound. Since we began our exploration of 

 American ruins we had not met with anything more 

 inexplicable than this great perpendicular wall. It 

 seemed built merely to puzzle posterity. 



These were the only buildings in this immediate 

 neighbourhood which had survived the wasting of 

 the elements ; but, inquiring among the Indians, one 

 of them undertook to guide me to another, which he 

 said was still in good preservation. Our direction 

 was south-southw^est from the Casa Grande ; and at 

 the distance of about a mile, the whole intermediate 

 region being desolate and overgrown, we reached a 

 terrace, the area of which far exceeded anything we 

 had seen in the country. We crossed it from north 

 to south, and in this direction it must have been fif- 

 teen hundred feet in length, and probably was quite 



