composed."[1] He also speaks of "large blocks of hewn stone used in the doorways."[2] A soft coralline limestone could be easily worked with flint implements when first taken from the quarry, and would harden after exposure to the air. The size and nature of the stones used is some evidence of limited advancement in solid stone architecture.
These structures, as reproduced in engravings by Stephens and Catherwood, may well excite surprise and admiration for the taste, skill, and industry they display, and the degree of progress they reveal. When rightly understood, they will enable us to estimate the extent of the progress actually made, which was truly remarkable for a people still in barbarism, and no further advanced than the Middle Status.
We have seen that the style of architecture in New Mexico brought the Indians to the house-tops as the common place of living. At first suggested for security, it became in time a settled habit of life. The same want was met in Yucatan and Chiapas by a new expedient, namely, a pyramidal platform or elevation of earth, twenty, thirty, and forty feet high, upon the level summits of which their great houses were erected. These platforms were made still higher for small buildings. A natural elevation being, when practicable, selected, the top was leveled or raised by artificial means, the sides made rectangular and sloping, and faced on the four sides with a dry stone wall, the ascent being made by a flight of stone steps. It was not uncommon to find two such platforms, and sometimes three, one above the other, as shown in the figure. These platforms, called terraces, were the gathering and the lounging places of the inhabitants. The edifices in the regions named are almost invariably but one story high, and but two rooms deep, the walls being carried up vertically to an
