CHAPTER XLI.
RUINS OF UXMAL—A LOFTY BUILDING—MAGNIFICENT VIEW FROM ITS DOORWAY—PECULIAR SCULPTURED ORNAMENTS—ANOTHER BUILDING, CALLED BY THE INDIANS THE HOUSE OF THE DWARF—AN INDIAN LEGEND—THE HOUSE OF THE NUNS—THE HOUSE OF TURTLES—THE HOUSE OF PIGEONS—THE GUARD-HOUSE—ABSENCE OF WATER—THE HOUSE OF THE GOVERNOR—TERRACES—Wooden LINTELS—DETAILS OF THE HOUSE OF THE GOVERNOR—DOORWAYS—CORRIDORS—A BEAM OF WOOD, INSCRIBED WITH HIEROGLYPHICS—SCULPTURED STONES, & C.
In the meantime I returned for one more view of the ruins. Mr. Waldeck's work on these ruins had appeared before we left the United States. It was brought out in Paris in a large folio edition, with illustrations fancifully and beautifully coloured, and contains the result of a year's residence at Merida and eight days at Uxmal. At the time of his visit the ruins were overgrown with trees, which within the last year had been cleared away, and the whole was laid bare and exposed to view. In attempting a description of these ruins, so vast a work rises up before me that I am at a loss where to begin. Arrested on the very threshold of our labours, I am unable to give any general plan; but, fortunately, the whole field was level, clear of trees, and in full sight at once. The first view stamped it indelibly upon my mind, and Mr. Catherwood's single day was well employed.
The first object that arrests the eye on emerging from the forest is the building represented on the right hand of the engraving, No. 78, Drawn off by mounds of ruins and piles of gigantic buildings, the eye returns and again fastens upon this lofty structure. It was the first building I entered. From its front doorway I counted sixteen elevations, with broken walls and mounds of stones, and vast, magnificent edifices, which at that distance seemed untouched by time and defying ruin. I stood in the doorway when the sun went down, throwing from the buildings a prodigious breadth of shadow, darkening the terraces on which they stood, and presenting a scene strange enough for a work of enchantment.
This building is 68 feet long. The elevation on which it stands is built up solid from the plain, entirely artificial. Its form is not pyramidal, but oblong and rounding, being 240 feet long at the base, and 120 broad, and it is protected all around, to the very top, by a wall of square stones. Perhaps the high ruined structures at Palenque, which we have called pyramidal, and which were so ruined that we could not make them out exactly, were originally of the same shape. On the east side of the structure is a broad range of stone steps, between 8 and 9 inches high, and so steep that great care is necessary in ascending and descending; of these we counted 101 in their places. Nine were wanting at the top, and perhaps 20 were covered with
