DESCRIPTION OF COPAN BY FUENTES Y GUZMAN. 547 
care to the record files; but all this is to-day, as it were, with the Ministers of Hell, 
while if we were to give attention to these instruments, information both excellent 
and minute would come forth. (Fuentes, vol. 11, p. 136.) 
_ Be that as it may, Copan remained yet for a considerable time after its reduc- 
tion to obedience to Spain, a place of size and population. The Copanecos sub- 
mitted apparently; but in secret they continued to render worship to their idols, 
even allowing them to be seen in the buildings wherein they offered to them a 
service that was almost public, with offerings of perfumes and sacrifices of birds 
and other creatures. They even dared to place them behind the pictures in the 
temples, whence the Christian priests took them and gave them to the fire. (Fuentes, 
vol. 11, p. 136.) But all they could do made no headway against these practices, 
nor could continued preaching draw the Indians away from all kinds of their obsti- 
nate idolatry, until God punished them by sending a pestilence, which destroyed 
them all, save only 7 persons who had not been guilty of idolatry. (Fuentes, vol. 
11, id.) Since that time the succession failed among those who remained, so that 
with these dead and the rest wiped away the site remained desolate. (Fuentes, 
id., id.) 
At one side of these famous and gigantic ruins, in a very beautiful plain, is to 
be seen the Circus Maximus of Copan, intact and without injury of time. This 
without doubt was a most costly undertaking, of elegance and dexterity of work- 
manship, in the older times. Its construction seizes the attention, while many 
doubts are suggested by the apparel which adorns the figures of the men and 
women; for the first are dressed in military garments wholly in Spanish style, 
although the Demon could have shown the Spaniards thus arrayed to the Indians, 
even before the coming of the former to these shores. (Fuentes, vol. 11, p. 136.) 
We find at this place a spacious plaza, its fine form being that of a perfect circle 
surrounded by a large number of simple pyramids of hewn stone, 6 or 7 yards 
(varas) in height and of corresponding bulk. These figures on the outside of the 
great plaza follow the order of rustic architecture, but with all the symmetry of 
art; on the inside, however, they are raised with great dignity and beauty upon 
tables that serve them as bases, and which afforded ample seating space for the 
great crowds which gathered there to attend upon public celebrities. But what is 
most remarkable of all that is there to be seen is that at the foot of these tables, 
and against the columns, are standing certain very perfect statues of natural size, 
inset in order, now a man, now a woman, and both clothed in ancient Castillian 
style. These are executed with such beauty and skill that even the clasps can be 
seen on the girdles and sword-belts of the cavaliers. Their military apparel con- 
sists of short breeches, frilled collar, breastplate, shoulder-pieces, bracelets, helmets 
adorned with plumes, and short swords in the belt. The strangest of all is that these 
figures thus standing in the inclemency of the weather have lost none of the colors, 
green, red, and blue, with which they were painted, which are as if but newly laid 
on. The same is observed in the colors of the eyes, which still keep all their bright- 
ness, as do those of the hair and beard, and the chapes, scabbards, and pommels of 
the swords. 
Within the great circus is, as has been said, the place of sacrifice, which is of 
considerable height, and surrounded by many steps. Upon it is a small font resting 
upon a little column of very finely and perfectly cut stone, and still stained with 
the blood of the victims. 
Not far from this, but still within the precincts of the circus, now covered with 
brambles, is a portico of exquisite architecture, like the entrance to some palace; 
1The author does not tell what kind of pestilence this was, nor of what they died, nor the symptoms they 
showed; so we can not fill this gap.—M. P. 
