434 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



gayeties, festivities, and rejoicings. But amid this 

 gay scene the eye turned involuntarily to immense 

 mounds rising grandly above the tops of the houses, 

 from which the whole city had been built, without 

 seeming to diminish their colossal proportions, pro- 

 claiming the power of those who reared them, and 

 destined, apparently, to stand, when the feebler struc- 

 tures of their more civilized conquerors shall have 

 crumbled into dust. 



One of these great mounds, having at that time 

 benches upon it, commanding a view of the bull- 

 fight in the plaza, blocked up the yard of the house 

 we occupied, and extended into the adjoining yard 

 of the Sehora Mendez, who was the owner of 

 both. It is, perhaps, two hundred feet long and thir- 

 ty high. The part in our yard was entirely ruined, 

 but in that of the senora it appeared that its vast 

 sides had been covered from one end to the other 

 with colossal ornaments in stucco, most of which 

 had fallen, but among the fragments is the gigantic 

 head represented in the plate opposite. It is seven 

 feet eight inches in height and seven feet in width. 

 The ground- work is of projecting stones, which are 

 covered with stucco. A stone one foot six inches 

 long protrudes from the chin, intended, perhaps, for 

 burning copal on, as a sort of altar. It was the first, 

 time we had seen an ornament of this kind upon 

 the exterior of any of these structures. In sternness 

 and harshness of expression it reminded us of the 

 idols at Copan, and its colossal proportions, with the 



