RUINS OF M I S A N T L A AND M I T L A . 251 
sites of the ancient habitations, fronting upon four parallel highways. 
In some of the houses the walls are still three or four feet high, but of 
most of them there is nothing but an outline tracery of the mere founda- 
tions. On the south, there are tlie remains of a long and narro^v wall, 
which defended the city in that quarter. 
North of the town there is a tongue of land, occupied in the centre by 
a mound, or cemetery. On the left slope of the hill by which the ruins 
are reached, there are, also, twelve circular sepulchres, two yards and a 
half in diameter, and as many high ; the walls are all of neatly cut 
stone, but the cement with which they were once joined has almost en- 
tirely disappeared. In these sepulchres several bodies were found, parts 
of which were in tolerable preservation. 
Two stones — a foot and a half long, by half a foot wide — were discov- 
ered, bearing hieroglyphics, which are described, in general terms, as 
" resembling the usual hieroglyphics of the Indians." Another figure 
was found representing a man standing ; and another, cut out of a firm 
but porous stone, which was intended to portray a person sitting cross- 
legged, with the arms also crossed, resting on his knees. This, however, 
was executed in a very inferior style. Near it, were discovered many 
domestic utensils, which were carried to Vera Cruz, whence they have 
•been dispersed, perhaps, to the four quarters of the globe. 
It is thus, in the neglect of all antiquities in Mexico, in the midst of 
her political distractions and bloody revolutions, that every vestige of her 
former hist-ory will gradually pass to foreign countries, instead of enrich- 
ing the Cabinets of her University, and stimulating the inquisitiveness of 
her scientific students. 
MITLA. 
I will close this notice of Mexican Architectural Remains, with an 
account of the ruins of Mitla, as described by Mr. Glennie, and Baron 
Humboldt, from whose great work the sketch of one of the mural frag- 
ments opposite the next page, has been taken. 
In the Department of Oaxaca, ten leagues distant from the city of that 
name, on the road to Tehuantepec, in the midst of a granitic country, 
surrounded by sombre and gloomy scenery, lie the remains of what have 
been called, by the general consent of antiquarians, the Sepulchral 
Palaces of Mitla. According to tradition, they were built by the Zapo- 
tecs, and intended as the places of sepulture for their Princes. At the 
death of members of the royal family, their bodies were entombed in the 
vaults, beneath ; and the sovereign and his relatives retired to mourn over 
the loss of the departed scion, in the chambers above these solemn abodes, 
screened by dark and silent groves from the public eye. Another tra- 
dition devotes the edifices to a sect of priests, whose duty it was to live 
