the Pigeons," the meaning of which is explained below. The Governor's House (Casa del Gobernador) is thirty feet in height, has a frontage of three hundred and twenty-two feet, with a depth of thirty-nine feet, and stands upon three great terraces. It is built entirely of stone. Below the cornice, which extends around the entire building, the front, rear, and lateral elevations are plain; but all above "is one solid mass of rich, complicated, and elaborately sculptured ornaments forming a sort of arabesque." In the front are eleven doorways reaching nearly to the cornice, each surmounted with imposing decorations, but the central doorway is distinguished from all the others by the elaborateness of its ornamentation, as also by the fact that above it are sculptured characters evidently hieroglyphic.

The rear elevation has no doorways, windows, or openings of any kind. The ornamentation above the cornice is less elaborate than on the front. The two ends also are less ornate, but each has one doorway. The roof is flat, and was originally covered with cement; it is now overgrown with a luxuriant vegetation.

The internal plan of all the buildings is essentially the same; that of the Casa del Gobernador is as follows: First, a wall extending from end to end divides the interior into two narrow halls, which are again subdivided by walls, running from front to rear, into a number of separate chambers. Each front chamber communicates with the one back of it, by a doorway through the central wall. The three terraces on which this great building rests are of artificial construction, and were supported by substantial walls of stone. The lowest terrace is three feet high, fifteen feet broad, and five hundred and seventy-five feet long; the second twenty feet high, two hundred and fifty feet wide, and five hundred and forty feet in length; the third, nineteen feet high, thirty feet broad, and three hundred and sixty feet in length.

On the platform of the second terrace is another remarkable building, the Casa de las Tortugas, or House of the Turtles, so called on account of the row of tortoises sculptured on the cornice. It is ninety-four feet in front and thirty-four feet deep. Like the principal building of its group, its exterior decoration is restricted to the portion above the cornice, but it differs from the Casa del Gobernador in that its ornamentation is extremely chaste and simple. This striking monument of the architectural genius of a vanished people is unfortunately little better now than a mass of ruins.

At no great distance from the House of the Turtles stand two

buildings, each one hundred and twenty-eight feet long and thirty feet deep, each apparently the counterpart of the other, and facing one another, with an interval between them of seventy feet. The sides by which they confront each other are ornamented with sculpture, and each appears to have been surrounded by a colossal serpent in stone. In the center of both is seen, set in the façade, a fragment of a great stone ring, four feet in diameter. There are no openings whatever in the walls, whether doorways or windows. Stephens had a breach made in the wall of one of these structures, to the depth of over eight feet, and found only rough stones loosely thrown together, but no chamber. What possible use could these curious buildings have served?

Like the Casa del Gobernador, the Casa de las Monjas, the Nuns' House, stands on three terraces. It is quadrangular, with a courtyard in the center. The front, which is two hundred and seventynine feet long, is ornamented above the cornice with sculptures no less elaborate than those of the Governor's House. In the middle is a wide doorway and passage leading to the courtyard, and on each side are four doorways affording entrance to as many separate apartments. There are no exterior doorways in the other three buildings of the Casa de las Monjas. The four façades overlooking the courtyard present the most elaborate specimens of the sculptor's art anywhere to be seen in Uxmal. The four buildings constituting this quadrangle are divided into chambers by longitudinal and transverse walls, as in the Casa del Gobernador, except that in the front building there is no communication between the front and the rear row of chambers. One of these buildings incloses a smaller and older one, the latter being, presumably, like the "Holy House of Loretto," a house made venerable in the eyes of the devout by some miraculous event.

The House of the Dwarf stands on the summit of an artificial elevation eighty-eight feet in height, and incased in stone. Some sixty feet up the face of this mound, on a projecting platform, stands a building divided into two chambers. Its front is the most elaborately ornamented of any building in Uxmal, and is made to represent some dread semi-human monster. The wide doorway is the mouth; the lintel is carved to represent teeth; above are the eyes still perfectly distinct, though the nose has disappeared by the ravages of time. The crowning structure, the House of the Dwarf, is seventy-two feet in front and only twelve feet deep. The ornamentation is extremely chaste. The three chambers into which the

interior is divided have no communication with each other. Stephens holds it to be "beyond doubt" that the House of the Dwarf was a great temple of idols, in which human sacrifices were once offered.

The building known as Casa de Palomas, or House of the Pigeons, is two hundred and forty feet long. It is in a very dilapidated condition. How it got its name is best explained in the words of Stephens: "Along the center of the roof," says he, "running longitudinally, is a range of structures built in a pyramidal form, like the fronts of some of the old Dutch houses that still remain among us, but grander and more massive. These are nine in number, built of stone, about three feet thick, and have small oblong openings through them. These openings give them somewhat the appearance of pigeon-houses, and from this the name of the building is derived." Through a wide doorway in the middle of this building there is a passage into a courtyard, bounded on the right and left by ruined buildings. At the lower end of the court is a range of buildings in ruins which have also a passage through the middle, opening into a second courtyard, with a teocalli or House of God, about fifty feet high, at the opposite end. Like the House of the Dwarf, the building on this teocalli is divided into three apartments.

Such are the principal edifices still to be seen in ruins at Uxmal. But Uxmal is only one among many places-primus inter paresin Yucatan, where these interesting monuments of antiquity are to be found. The remains of Palenque are still more imposing than those of Uxmal, while for the artist and the antiquarian they possess an interest that can hardly be exaggerated. To say nothing of the six noble buildings themselves which remain, known as the palace and casas No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, and No. 5, and which exhibit a bolder architectural genius than we see at Uxmal, though no new architectural principle is introduced, the specimens of plastic art, the spirited bas-reliefs, and the numerous hieroglyphic tablets with which these buildings are decorated within and without, suffice to insure for Palenque preëminent rank among these ancient American cities.

Palenque is situated in the Mexican State of Chiapas, latitude 17° 30′ north, longitude 92° 25' west. If a circle were described so as to inclose all the ruins, its area, according to Stephens, would not exceed that of the Battery Park in New York-a very inconsiderable area for a "city." But it might have once occupied a far greater area. Being solidly constructed of stone laid in mor

tar, these buildings which remain could for generations withstand the elements, while the frail tenements of the lower classes, and even the houses of the upper class, would disappear and leave no sign. The tropical forest in its irresistible advance has, as it were, trampled into the earth the hovels of the poor and the mansions of the rich; it is only a question of time when the palaces of the kings and the shrines of the gods will succumb to the same fate.

Of the six Palenque buildings we can notice only one, the Palace. Even of that, room is wanting here for a detailed description; and of its numerous courts, chambers, and corridors we can particularize only one or two. This "palace," as it has been justly called, for it was in every respect a fit abode for the ruler of the state, is a onestoried structure twenty-five feet high, two hundred and eightyfour feet front, and one hundred and eighty feet deep. It stands upon a pyramidal elevation forty feet high, three hundred and ten feet front and rear, and two hundred and sixty feet on each side. This mound was originally faced with stone on all sides, and doubtless had stone steps, but the stones have long since fallen away, and now are heaped at the base of the pyramid. A pyramidal tower rises from near the middle of the palace projecting two stories above the roof, which is flat, and coated with cement. The entire building, or group of buildings, was constructed of dressed stone laid in a mortar of sand and lime, and the front was coated with stucco and painted in various bright colors. The cornice, which extends all round the building, is supported on stone piers about seven feet wide, between each pair of which is a doorway nine feet wide. Of these doorways there are fourteen in front, and there the piers were ornamented with bas-reliefs, some of which still remain as irrefragable proof of a very high artistic development. These bas-reliefs would of themselves appear to be enough to confute the theory according to which Palenque, Uxmal, and the other sites of ruins in this portion of the American Continent are only "pueblos," groups of "communal houses" such as still exist and are still inhabited in New Mexico. All of the edifices which remain of Palenque, Uxmal, etc., are richly, even profusely decorated, while the "communal houses" of the pueblos are void of all attempt at ornamentation. Indeed, to suppose that a community of barbarians would erect for themselves such palaces as these, is to attribute to them a degree of refinement never yet attained even by what is known in England as "the upper middle class."

An idea of the high artistic merit of these bas-reliefs can only

be obtained by an inspection either of the originals or of their reproductions in drawings or photographs, such as illustrate Stephens's or Charnay's volumes. In future numbers of the Review, many of these interesting monuments of indigenous American art will be illustrated with engravings after photographs to be taken by the Lorillard expedition. Suffice it, therefore, for the present, to describe roughly one of this series of bas-reliefs as a specimen of the whole. Here are seen three human figures, one of which, the principal personage, stands erect, while the other two are sitting cross-legged on the ground, the one before, the other behind him. They are all in profile, and they all exhibit a very remarkable facial angle of about forty-five degrees, as if the head above the ears had been compressed in infancy so as to assume a peaked shape. The attire of the principal figure consists of a bonnet of plumes ornamented with sundry devices, a short vest or cape, probably of feather-work (though it might be of mail), decorated with studs, and faced with a sort of breastplate, a belt around the waist supporting a close-fitting tunic made of the skin of some animal; finally, moccasins ornamented with feather-work at the top. In his hands he holds a curiously branched staff or scepter. The other two figures are naked, save that both wear wide belts. The border of this basrelief is richly ornamented; the work measures, within the border, ten feet in height and six feet in width.

Entering at one of the doorways, we find ourselves in a grand corridor which extends the whole length of the front of the palace, and back of that is another corridor of nearly the same lengthabout two hundred feet. From this inner corridor doorways give access to the principal court, which occupies nearly one fourth of the whole interior. It were vain, without diagrams and figures, to attempt to convey an idea of the ground-plan of this edifice, or of its ornamentation, and we content ourselves with simply enumerating a few of the objects of interest which meet the eye. The principal court adjoins the inner corridor, as we have said, and occupies the northeast corner of the building, which itself faces eastward. Crossing the inner corridor, we descend a grand stone stairway, each of whose steps is thirty feet in length, to the floor of the court; there is a similar stairway at the opposite or western end, and the distance between the two is about seventy feet, while in the other direction the court measures eighty feet. These stairways are situated in the middle of their respective sides of the court, and the piers to the right and left of them are adorned with VOL. CXXXI.-NO. 285.

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