252 MEXICO. 
in perfect seclusion, and offer expiatory sacrifices for the royal dead who 
reposed in the vaults beneath. 
The village of Mitla was formerly called Miguitlan, signifying, in the 
Mexican tongue, "a place of sadness;" and, by the Zapotecs, L^oba, or 
"The tomb." 
These palace-tombs formed three edifices, symmetrically placed on a 
romantic site. The principal building (which is still in the best pres- 
ervation,) has a length of near one hundred and fifty feet. A stairway 
leads to a subterranean apartment of about one hundred feet by thirty in 
width, the walls of which are covered with ornaments, a la grique, simi- 
lar to those that adorn the exterior walls represented in the drawing. 
These ornaments are inlaid in a mosaic of porphyritic stones, and resem- 
ble the figures found on Etruscan vases, and on the frieze of the temple 
of the god Redicolus, near the Egerian grotto at Rome. 
The engraved fragment represents a comer of one of the edifices, and 
you cannot fail to remark a similarity to some of the designs presented to 
the public by Mr. Catherwood, in his researches farther south. 
The ruins of Mitla are distinguished, I believe, from all the remains of 
ancient architecture in Mexico, by six columns of porphyry, placed in the 
midst of a large saloon, and supporting the ceiling. They have neither 
bases nor capitals, and are cut, in a gradually tapering shape, from a solid 
stone rather more than fifteen feet in length. The dimensions of the 
stones that cover the entrances of the principal halls, are stated by Mr. 
Glennie to be as follows : 
1 
Length. 
19 feet 6 inches. 
Breadth. 
4 feet 10 inches. 
Thickness. 
3 feet 4 inches. 
2 
18 " 8 " 
4 " 10 " 
3 " 6 " 
3 
19 " 4 " 
4 " 10^ " 
3 " 9 '•' 
Mr. De Laguna has discovered, among the ruins, some curious paint- 
ings of war trophies and sacrifices; and Humboldt remarks, that the 
distribution of the apartments in the interior of this building presents 
some striking similarities to the monuments of Upper Egypt, as de- 
scribed by Mr. Denon, and the savans of the Institute of Cairo. " In 
comparing the grandeur of these tombs with the meanness of the habita- 
tions of the former race," says the Baron, " we may exclaim, with Dio- 
dorus Siculus, that there are people who erect their most sumptuous 
monuments for their dead alone, regarding existence as too short and 
transitory to be worth the trouble of erections for the living !"f 
It was the same in Egypt. The hereafter, and not the present, en- 
gaged the hearts of its ancient race. In Mexico, the temple to worship 
in, and the tomb for final repose, seem to have been the chief care of the 
*The reader will find a ground plan of these remains in Delafield's " Antiquities of America"— page 55, taken 
from Baron Humboldt's Atlas. 
t Vide Humboldt, vol. ii, page 322. et seq. Paris edition, 1811. 
