"It stands on an artificial elevation of an oblong form, forty feet high, three hundred and ten feet in front and rear, and two hundred and sixty feet on each side. This elevation was formerly faced with stone, which has been thrown down by the growth of trees, and its form is hardly distinguishable.

"The building stands with its face to the east, and measures two hundred and twenty-eight front by one hundred and eighty feet deep. Its height is not more than twenty-five feet, and all around it had a broad projecting cornice of stone. The front contained fourteen doorways, about nine feet wide each, and the intervening piers are between six and seven feet wide. On the left (in approaching the palace) eight of the piers have fallen down, as has also the corner on the right, and the terrace underneath is cumbered with the ruins. But six piers remain entire, and the rest of the front is open.

"The building was constructed of stone, with a mortar of lime and sand, and the whole front was covered with stucco and painted. The piers were ornamented with spirited figures in bas-relief. On the top are three hieroglyphics sunk in the stucco. It is enclosed by a richly ornamented border, about ten feet high and six wide, of which only a part now remains. The principal personage stands in an upright position and in profile, exhibiting an extraordinary facial angle of about forty-five degrees. The upper part of the head seems to have been compressed and lengthened, perhaps by the same process employed upon the heads of the Choctaw and Flathead Indians of our own country. The head represents a different species from any now existing in that region of country; and supposing the statues to be images of living personages, or the creations of artists according to their ideas of perfect figures, they indicate a race of people now lost and unknown. The head-dress is evidently a plume of feathers. Over the shoulders is a short covering decorated with studs, and a breastplate; part of the ornament of the girdle is broken; the tunic is probably a leopard's skin; and the whole dress no doubt exhibits the costume of this unknown people. He holds in his hand a staff or sceptre, and opposite his hands are the marks of three hieroglyphics, which have decayed or been broken off. At his feet are too naked figures seated cross-legged, and apparently suppliants. A fertile imagination might find many explanations for these strange figures, but no satisfactory interpretation presents itself to my mind. The hieroglyphics doubtless tell its history. The stucco is of admirable consistency, and hard as stone. It was painted, and in different places about it we discovered the remains of red, blue, yellow, black, and white." Vol. II. pp. 310, 311.

"The building has two parallel corridors running lengthwise on all four of its sides. In front these corridors are about nine feet wide, and extend the whole length of the building upward of two hundred feet. In the long wall that divides them there is but one door, which is opposite the principal door of entrance, and has a corresponding one on the other side, leading to a courtyard in the rear. The floors are of cement, as hard as the best seen in the remains of Roman baths and cisterns. The walls are about ten feet high, plastered, and on each side of the principal entrance ornamented with medallions, of which the borders only remain; these, perhaps, contained the busts of the royal family. The separating-wall had apertures of about a foot, probably intended for purposes of ventilation.” - Ibid. p. 113.

"From the centre door of this corridor a range of stone steps thirty feet long leads to a rectangular courtyard, eighty feet long by seventy broad. On each side of the steps are grim and gigantic figures, carved on stone in basso-relievo, nine or ten feet high, and in a position slightly inclined backward from the end of the steps to the floor of the corridor.

. . They are adorned with rich head-dresses and necklaces, but their attitude is that of pain and trouble. The design and anatomical proportions of the figures are faulty, but there is a force of expression about them which shows the skill and conceptive power of the artist."- Ibid. p. 314.

This description, which Mr. Stephens judiciously pursues with much detail, we leave altogether incomplete, both for want of room, and because, without the aid of drawings, nothing more than a general idea can be formed of the extent and arrangement of the edifice, and the character of its embellishments. The reader of the volume is assisted by a good exterior view of the structure, a minute ground-plan, and ten drawings, representing, on a large scale, sections of the building, and bas-reliefs of human figures and groups, in stone and stucco.

Mr. Stephens gives descriptions and sketches of four smaller buildings, with their decorations. They are of considerable size, that called Casa No. 1, being seventy-six feet in front with five doors and six piers, and twenty-five feet deep. "The whole front was richly ornamented in stucco, and the corner piers are covered with hieroglyphics, each of which contains ninety-six squares." "The height of the structure on which it stands, is one hundred and ten

feet on the slope." This is "a ruined pyramid, which appears once to have had steps on all its sides."

"The interior of the building is divided into two corridors, running lengthwise, with a ceiling rising nearly to a point, as in the palace, and paved with large square stones. The front corridor is seven feet wide. The separating wall is very massive, and has three doors, a large one in the centre, and a smaller one on each side. In this corridor, on each side of the principal door, is a large tablet of hieroglyphics, each thirteen feet long and eight feet high, and each divided into two hundred and forty squares of characters or symbols. Both are set in the wall so as to project three or four inches. In one place a hole had been made in the wall close to the side of one of them, apparently for the purpose of attempting its removal, by which we discovered that the stone is about a foot thick. The sculpture is in bas-relief.". Ibid. pp. 341, 342.

"The corridor in the rear is dark and gloomy, and divided into three apartments. Each of the side apartments has two narrow openings about three inches wide and a foot high. They have no remains of sculpture or painting, or stuccoed ornaments. In the centre apartment, set in the back wall, and fronting the principal door of entrance, is another tablet of hieroglyphics, four feet six inches wide and three feet six inches high. The roof above it is tight; consequently it has not suffered from exposure, and the hieroglyphics are perfect, though the stone is cracked lengthwise through the middle."-Ibid. pp. 342, 343.

"There is no staircase or other visible communication between the lower and upper parts of this building, and the only way of reaching the latter was by climbing a tree which grows close against the wall, and the branches of which spread over the roof. The roof is inclined, and the sides are covered with stucco ornaments, which, from exposure to the elements and the assaults of trees and bushes, are faded and ruined, so that it was impossible to draw them; but enough remained to give the impression that, when perfect and painted, they must have been rich and imposing. Along the top was a range of pillars eighteen inches high and twelve apart, made of small pieces of stone laid in mortar, and covered with stucco, crowning which is a layer of flat projecting stones, having somewhat the appearance of a low open balustrade." - Ibid. pp. 343,

344.

The other Casas, which are smaller, also stand upon pyra

mids, and have similar decorations, which with their elevations and outline, are illustrated by nineteen engravings. A remarkable apartment in Casa No. 3, is thus described;

.....

"The back corridor is divided into three apartments. In the centre, facing the principal door of entrance, is an enclosed chamber similar to that which in the last building we have called an oratory or altar. . . . . . The top of the doorway was gorgeous with stuccoed ornaments, and on the piers at each side were stone tablets in bas-relief. Within, the chamber was four feet seven inches deep and nine feet wide. There were no stuccoed ornaments or paintings, but set in the back wall was a stone tablet covering the whole width of the chamber, nine feet wide and eight feet high, . . . . . and I beg to call to it the particular attention of the reader, as the most perfect and most interesting monument in Palenque. Neither Del Rio nor Dupaix has given any drawing of it, and it is now for the first time presented to the public. It is composed of three separate stones. . . . . . The sculpture is perfect, and the characters and figures stand clear and distinct on the stone. On each side are rows of hieroglyphics. The principal personages .... both seem to be making offerings. Both personages stand on the backs of human beings, one of whom supports himself by his hands and knees, and the other seems crushed to the ground by the weight. Between them at the foot of the tablet, are two figures, sitting cross-legged, one bracing himself with his right hand on the ground, and with the left supporting a square table; the attitude and action of the other are the same, except that they are in reverse order. The table also rests upon their bended necks, and their distorted countenances may perhaps be considered expressions of pain and suffering. They are both clothed in leopard-skins. Upon this table rest two batons crossed, their upper extremities richly ornamented, and supporting what seems a hideous mask, the eyes widely expanded, and the tongue hanging out. This seems to be the object to which the principal personages are making offerings."- Ibid. pp. 351, 352.

In reviewing his investigations and those of his coadjutor at Palenque, Mr. Stephens says;

"Mr. Catherwood's drawings include all the objects represented in the work of Dupaix, and others besides which do not appear in that work at all, and have never before been presented to the public; among which are the frontispiece of this volume and the large tablets of hieroglyphics, the most curious and interesting pieces of sculpture at Palenque. I add, with the

full knowledge that I will be contradicted by future travellers if I am wrong, that the whole of Mr. C.'s are more correct in proportions, outline, and filling up than his, and furnish more true material for speculation and study."— Ibid. pp. 299, 300.

This assertion, substantially correct, is so important as to inspiring confidence in the reader, that it ought to be cleared from any liability to contradiction. There are several drawings of Castañeda, to which none of Mr. Catherwood's correspond, but they are mostly representations of details. treated in the work of Stephens in a more general way, as the sketches of Castañeda numbered from 13 to 18 inclusive, which represent isolated parts of the palace; and on the other hand, besides the important additions specified in the last extract, there is a plan of the site of the buildings, a drawing of the only statue there discovered, a representation of one more bas-relief (that opposite to p. 319), and views of Casa No. 4, and of the front corridors of Casa No. 3 and the palace.

There is satisfactory appearance, also, of that greater exactness of delineation, of which Mr. Stephens claims the credit for his friend. In their completeness and spirit, the draughts of Castañeda certainly suggest some suspicion of a pencil allowing itself to idealize at the expense of truth. But on the whole, a comparison of the two sets of sketches, the earlier of which had not been seen by the author of the later, is such as to prompt the reader, instead of praising the one at the other's cost, to congratulate himself that the two afford such emphatic mutual confirmation. The stucco figures which Castañeda represented as complete, while Catherwood depicts them in a decayed condition, may probably have suffered sufficient injury to account for the difference, in the interval between the visits of the two travellers. In the drawing of the elevation of the palace by Castañeda, when the eighty Indians had just been at work with their axes, there is none of the shrubbery upon the roof and substruction, which at the end of thirty-five years the sketch of Catherwood represents. The difference speaks for the fidelity of both.*

* Of the prints from Castañeda's drawings attached to the work of Dupaix, the following have no parallel in that of Stephens; viz., plates from 13 to 18 inclusive, representing elevations, sections, and details of the pile of buildings called the palace; plate 21, a stucco bas-relief, representing two figures, one piercing the other with a sword; 25, stucco ornaments over