side and the two great monoliths fronting the second corridor. The whole of the north side is buried in debris, and irreparably ruined. The bass-reliefs at the entrance of the court-yard on both sides of the stair-way measure 10.66 feet in height and 15.74 feet in width; there are four figures on the right and five on the left.

In the afternoon I directed my steps toward the Temple of the Cross No. 1,-for there are two,-but my guide lost his way, and we came upon the Temple of War. This Temple of War lies south of the palace, but the only means of reaching it is first by a steep ascent leading to a plateau, on which are the ruins of two temples; then after another very steep ascent you are at the Temple of War. Here we found three fine sculptured tablets of stone, of which we will make casts; they at one time formed the base of an altar.

January 6th. We have cleared the palace in part, and have now to attend to details, preparatory to taking photographs. Of the bass-reliefs of the court-yard we will make casts as soon as the weather will permit. A party of Indian laborers are opening roads to all the four cardinal points. We visited the Temple of the Cross No. 2, where we found a cross, accompanied by human figures and hieroglyphics, as in the better-known Temple of the Cross No. 1. Our cast of the oblong stone in the palace, known as Proserpine, is a very good one, but it took two whole days to dry before a hot fire. When it comes to drying casts measuring about ten square yards, in the Temple of Inscriptions, we shall have serious difficulty.

The more I see of this palace, the more forcibly do its corridors remind me of the walks of a cloister. Its little apartments are like monks' cells, and the grand stair-ways leading down into the court-yard, with their steps each 16.92 inches high, could not have been intended for women's use. The place must have been the home of priests, and not of kings, and I still persist in the belief that this "palace" was inhabited by the priests who served the different temples round about; and that Palenque was a great religious center, like Lourdes, Rome, Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostella, Cholula, Izamal, and Cozumel.

Nevertheless, Palenque may have been a city, and a large one, too. To-day, as our men were opening the road to the south of the palace, at a point some 500 feet distant from that edifice they came upon three buildings, two of which are of the same style

as the temples, but without altars inside or sculptured tablets. Between these two stands a building some thirteen feet square, with a roof of the same construction as the tower of Comalcalco. The two larger buildings consist each of a large front chamber or hall, with two dark chambers in the rear, and, like all the temples, their columns were richly ornamented with bass-reliefs, of which only shapeless ruins now remain. Our laborers intend to leave us the day after to-morrow, and the other Indians that were to take their place should have arrived to-day; but they have not come, and we are in great straits.

January 7th.-Though our men are indifferent workers, we nevertheless have made some progress. The outlines of the palace are becoming visible, and its cornices and friezes, with their ornamentation, can be studied. To-day we found another pyramid, with the remains of a building upon it. Our men leave to-morrow, but we still await the coming of the others. Though I offered double pay to the men we have, not one of them would stay. I can hardly blame them, for just at present life here is an intolerable burden. It rains constantly, and the walls are dripping with moisture. Two of the Indians are down with fever. I made a cast of one of the three large stone tablets in the Temple of Inscriptions, and got together enough wood to dry it. This tablet is 9.18 feet wide and 6.50 feet in height, and contains one hundred and forty cartouches. I am very desirous of taking photographs of the front of this temple, but, despite the excellence of my instruments, nothing can be done. The humidity of the atmosphere has caused the wood to swell, and I shall have to dry the apparatus at the fire before I attempt to use it.

January 8th.-Neither sun nor moon to be seen; everlasting rain and mist! Our Indians are gone, and we are left to our own resources in the palace. I have requested a reënforcement of men from Palenque. Still, the day has not been without results. We have made a cast of another of the large tablets in the Temple of Inscriptions, and have discovered another group of buildings in ruins. One of these buildings had neither door nor window. What surprises us most is the utterly ruinous state of some of these monuments, while others of them are in a fair state of preservation.

January 10th.-Yesterday (Sunday) we devoted to caring for our casts in the Temple of Inscriptions. To-day fifteen laborers

came to our assistance from Palenque. They look like good workmen. I at once set them to work, and in two hours they accomplished more than their predecessors would have done in a whole day. The palace will soon be free of rubbish.

January 11th. The wind is in the north, the rain is pouring down, and my men can do nothing. I seize this opportunity to set forth my views concerning these American ruins.

It is a familiar axiom in science that nature does nothing per saltum, but advances by slow transformations; and we can follow her in her work, from the atom to the highest of created beings. The moral world presents the same phenomena as the physical, and the history of ideas pursues a course parallel to that of the history of individuals. How far back we must go in the past to trace the development of an invention or of an idea from its original germ to its perfect unfolding!

It is the same with civilizations, which never spring into being all complete, but which always have a lowly beginning; in our museums, we see the different stages through which they pass from the neolithic age to the age of bronze, thence to the age of iron.

It is undoubted that our own civilization is descended from the civilization of the Greeks; still, more than twenty centuries separate us from the Greeks, and though our civil architecture differs totally from theirs, certain of our public edifices, the ornaments that adorn them and those which adorn our dwellings, are sufficient evidence that our arts in general are Grecian in origin.

Now, that which took place in the Old World has taken place also in the New: here, too, there was one sole impulsion toward civilization, and all the civilizations here are Toltec, as all the civilizations of Europe are Grecian. But, though on this continent the impulsion was a single one, as in Europe, it was much more direct here, and the march of civilization more rapid. In the course of eleven hundred years it spread from north to south among divers peoples, and everywhere on the high plateaus, as well as in Central America, Tabasco, Guatemala, and Yucatan, it was the Toltec himself who planted this civilization. But when he came among populations of greater density, or of greater power of resistance, he seems to have expended all his vigor, exhausted all his genius, in the erection of monuments, each richer, more striking, or more extravagant than the others.