structed.

I was really at a loss to know what to do. I was almost tempted to
abandon everything else, send word to my companions and not leave the
spot till I had pulled down the whole mound, and discovered every
secret it contained; but it was not a work to be undertaken in a hurry,
and I determined to leave it for a future occasion. Unfortunately, in
the multiplicity of other occupations in distant regions of the
country, I never had an opportunity of returning to this mound. It
remains with all its mystery around it, worthy the enterprise of some
future explorer, and I cannot but indulge the hope that the time is not
far distant when its mystery will be removed and all that is hidden
brought to light.

In the account which I had received of this Labyrinth, no mention had
been made of any ruins, and probably, when on the ground, I should have
heard nothing of them, but from the top of this mound I saw two others,
both of which, with a good deal of labour, I reached under the guidance
of the Indians, crossing a patch of beans and milpa. I ascended them
both. On the top of one was a building eighty or a hundred feet long.
The front wall had fallen, and left exposed the inner part of the back
wall, with half the arch, as it were, supporting itself in the air. The
Indians then led me to a fourth mound, and told me that there were
others in the woods, but all in the same ruinous condition; and,
considering the excessive heat and the desperate toil of clambering, I
did not think it worth while to visit them. I saw no sculptured stones,
except those I have before mentioned, dug out like troughs, and called
pilas, though the Indians persisted in saying that there were such all
over, but they did not know exactly where to find them.

At three o'clock I resumed my journey toward Uxmal. For a short
distance the road lay along the ridge of the sierra, a mere bed of
rock, on which the horse's hoofs clattered and rang at every step.
Coming out upon the brow of the sierra, we had one of those grand views
which everywhere present themselves from this mountain range; an
immense wooded plain, in this place broken only by a small spot like a
square on a chess-board, the clearing of the hacienda of Santa Cruz. We
descended the sierra, and at the foot of it struck the camino real.

About an hour before dark, and a league before reaching the village of
Opocheque, I saw on the left, near the road, a high mound, with an
edifice on its t