218 
GUATEMALA. 
set up, by whom, and to what purpose ? Whose are the 
portraits, when did these persons live, and what did they 
do for their fellows. The mocking answer to all these 
questions is cut in the stone before us. The native name 
of iclolos is an idle one, unless used in the Greek sense; 
for these are no gods, but memorials of the dead as 
distinctly as the tombstones in our modern graveyards. 
While the hieroglyphs are similar to those at Copan 
and Palenque, they are not, I think, identical, and I fancy 
they are of the nature of the denominative cartouches 
of the Egyptian obelisks. I copy Mr. Maudslay’s plan 
of this group of monuments, from which it will at once 
be seen that their relative position to the other remains 
is puzzling in the extreme. We left our imaginings 
for the time, and proceeded to the practical work of 
photography. This was no light task; for the sun was 
behind trees which cast shadows on the monuments, 
while the shady side was almost invisible in the camera. 
Insects swarmed in front of the lens, and the heat was 
almost insupportable under the rubber focusing-cloth. 
However, I succeeded fairly in carrying away a dozen pic¬ 
tures. Whether I can with no greater difficulty explain to 
my readers what this cemetery looked like, even with the 
aid of Mr. Maudslay’s rough plan, is more questionable. 
We entered a clearing, some four hundred feet square, 
made only the year before, but already covered with 
undergrowth, so that our men had to use their machetes 
freely to expose the stones. The level was low and the 
soil full of water, which stood in pools here and there. 
On our left was a mound, more than two hundred feet 
long, which we did not inspect, and in front of this were 
placed three monoliths. The first (A) was the smallest; 
