ntervening piers, covered with human figures, hieroglyphics, and
carved ornaments. The walls are of stone, laid with mortar and sand;
and the whole is covered by stucco, nearly as hard as stone, and richly
painted. On each side of the steps are gigantic human statues carved in
stone, with rich head-dresses and necklaces.

In one of the buildings is a stone tower of three stories, thirty feet
square at the base, and rising far above the surrounding walls. The
walls are very massive, and the floors are paved with large square
stones. In one of the corridors are two large tablets of hieroglyphics.

There are numerous other buildings, all standing on the summits of
similar pyramids. In several of the buildings the roofs still remain,
and preserve the stuccoed ornamentation with which the walls are
adorned. The colours, in many of them, are still bright; and could the
hieroglyphics with which they are surrounded be read, they would
probably give as clear a history of the departed inhabitants as do those
found in the tombs on the banks of the Nile. The most remarkable
figures are the bas-reliefs, in stucco, representing a woman with a
child in her arms--which forcibly remind us of the statues in ancient
Babylon representing the goddess mother and son (the same worshipped in
Egypt under the names of Isis and Osiris; in India, even to this day, as
Isi and Iswara; and also in China, where Shingmoo, the holy mother, is
represented with a child in her arms, and a glory round her head). It
is impossible, looking at these figures, to suppose otherwise than that
they were derived from the same source whence the idols of Egypt,
Greece, and pagan Rome had their origin.

RUINS OF QUICHE.

In the north-east of Guatemala are the ruins of another city, the
capital of the province of Quiche. It is surrounded by a deep ravine,
which forms a natural foss, leaving only two very narrow roads as
entrances, guarded by the castle of Resguado. The palace of the kings,
which stood in the centre of the city, surpasses every other edifice,
competing in magnificence with that of Montezuma in Mexico. It was
constructed of hewn stones, of various colours. So large was the city,
that it could send no less than seventy-two thousand fighting men to
oppose the Spaniards. The whole palace is now, however, completely
destroyed, and the materials have been carried away to build a village
in the neighbourhood. The most conspicuous portion of the