ont presented in the engraving has fallen, and
now lies a mass of ruins at the foot of the mound. Along the base, or
rather about twenty feet up the mound, and probably once reached by a
staircase, now ruined, is a range of curious apartments, nearly choked
up with rubbish, and with the sapote beams still in their places over
the door.

At the height of sixty feet is a solid projecting platform, on which
stands a building loaded with ornaments more rich, elaborate, and
carefully executed, than those of any other edifice in Uxmal. A great
doorway opens upon the platform. The sapote beams are still in their
places, and the interior is divided into two apartments; the outer one
fifteen feet wide, seven feet deep, and nineteen feet high, and the
inner one twelve feet wide, four feet deep, and eleven feet high. Both
are entirely plain, without ornament of any kind, and have no
communication with any part of the mound.

The steps or other means of communication with this building are all
gone, and at the time of our visit we were at a loss to know how it had
been reached; but, from what we saw afterward, we are induced to
believe that a grand staircase upon a different plan from any yet met
with, and supported by a triangular arch, led from the ground to the
door of the building, which, if still in existence, would give
extraordinary grandeur to this great mound.

The crowning structure is a long and narrow building, measuring
seventy-two feet in front, and but twelve feet deep.

The front is much ruined, but even in its decay presents the most
elegant and tasteful arrangement of ornaments to be seen in Uxmal, of
which no idea could be given in any but a large engraving. The emblems
of life and death appear on the wall in close juxta-position,
confirming the belief in the existence of that worship practised by the
Egyptians and all other Eastern nations, and before referred to as
prevalent among the people of Uxmal.

The interior is divided into three apartments, that in the centre being
twenty-four feet by seven, and those on each side nineteen feet by
seven. They have no communication with each other; two have their doors
opening to the east and one to the west.

A narrow platform five feet wide projects from all the four sides of
the building. The northern end is decayed, and part of the eastern
front, and to this front ascends a grand staircase one hundred and two
feet high, seventy feet wide, and containing ninety