elp
that the Indians afforded me, under all annoyances, and with the sweat
dropping on my memorandum book, I measured back to the door.

I remained outside a few moments for fresh air, and entered again to
explore the passage which branched off to the left of the door. I had
just gone far enough to have my hopes revived by the prospect of some
satisfactory result, when again I found the passage choked up by the
falling in and burial of the arch.

I measured and took the bearings of this too. From the excessive heat
and annoyance, this plan may not be very correct, and therefore I do
not present it. The description will enable the reader to form some
general idea of the character of the structure.

In exploring that part to the left of the door, I made an important
discovery. In the walls of one of the passages was a hole eight inches
square, which admitted light, and looking through it, I saw some plump
and dusky legs, which clearly did not belong to the antiguos, and which
I easily recognised as those of my worthy attendants.

Having heard the place spoken of as a subterraneous construction, and
seeing, when I reached the ground, a half-buried door with a mass of
overgrown earth above it, it had not occurred to me to think otherwise;
but on examining outside, I found that what I had taken for an
irregular natural formation, like a hill-side, was a pyramidal mound of
the same general character with all the rest we had seen in the
country. Making the Indians clear away some thorn-bushes, with the help
of the branches of a tree growing near I climbed up it. On the top were
the ruins of a building the same as all the others. The door of El
Laberinto, instead of opening into a hill-side, opened into this mound,
and, as near as I could judge from the ruins along the base, was ten
feet high, and the Laberinto, instead of being subterraneous, or,
rather, under the surface of the earth was in the body of this mound.
Heretofore it had been our impression that these mounds were solid and
compact masses of stone and earth, without any chambers or structures
of any kind, and the discovery of this gave rise to the exciting idea
that all the great mounds scattered over the country contained secret,
unknown, and hidden chambers, presenting an immense field for
exploration and discovery, and, ruined as the buildings on their
summits were, perhaps the only source left for acquiring knowledge of
the people by whom the cities were con