particular, namely, in being constructed with three parallel walls with partition Avails at intervals, giving two rows of apartments under one roof, usually, if not invariably, flat. Where several are grouped together on the same platform, as at Palenque, they are severally under independent roofs, and the spaces between, called courts, are simply open lanes or passageways between the structures. An inspection of the ground plan of the Palenque ruins in the folio volume of Dupaix, or in the work of Mr. Stephens, will be apt to mislead unless this feature of the architecture is kept in mind There are in reality seven or eight distinct edifices crowded together upon the summit level of the platform. Mr. Stephens speaks of it as one structure. "The building," he remarks, "was constructed of stone, and the whole front was covered with stucco and painted. * * * The doorways have no doors, nor are there the remains of any. * * * The tops of the doorways were all broken. They had evidently been square, and over every one were large niches in the wall on each side, in which the lintels had been laid. These lintels had all fallen, and the stones above formed broken natural arches."[1] The interior walls in two rooms shown by engravings were plastered over. Architecturally, Palenque is inferior to the House of the Nuns; but it is more ornamental. It also has one ]3eculiar feature not generally found in the Yucatan structures, namely, a corridor about nine feet wide, supposed to have run around the greater part of the exterior on the four sides. The exterior walls of these corridors rest on a series of piers, and the central or next parallel wall is unbroken, except by one doorway on each of three sides and two in the fourth, thus forming a narrow promenade. One of the interior buildings consists of two such corridors, but wider, on opposite sides of a central longitudinal wall. All the rooms in the several edifices are large. In one of the open spaces is a tower about thirty feet square, rising three stories. The Palenque structures are quite remarkable, standing upon an artificial eminence about forty feet high, and large enough to accommodate three thousand people living in the fashion of Village Indians.
The plan of these houses, as well as of those in Yucatan, seems to show that they were designed to be occupied by groups of persons composed of
- ↑ Central America, &c., ii, 310-312.
