be fifteen hundred years older than the Christian era. The
cross was a common emblem in ancient Egypt, and the Latin form of it was
used in the religious mysteries of that country, in connection with a
monogram of the moon. It was to degrade this religious emblem of the
Phoenicians that Alexander ordered the execution of two thousand
principal citizens of Tyre by crucifixion.

The cross, as an emblem, is very common among the antiquities of Western
Europe, where archaeological investigation has sometimes been embarrassed
and confused by the assumption that any old monument bearing the figure
of a cross can not be as old as Christianity.

What more will be found at Palenque, when the whole field of its ruins
has been explored, can not now be reported. The chief difficulty by
which explorers are embarrassed is manifest in this statement of Mr.
Stephens: "Without a guide, we might have gone within a hundred feet of
the buildings without discovering one of them." More has been discovered
there than I have mentioned, my purpose being to give an accurate view
of the style, finish, decoration, and general character of the
architecture and artistic work found in the ruins rather than a
complete account of every thing connected with them. The ruins of
Palenque are deemed important by archaeologists partly on account of the
great abundance of inscriptions found there, which, it is believed, will
at length be deciphered, the written characters being similar to those
of the Mayas, which are now understood.

COPAN AND QUIRIGUA.

The ruins known as Copan are situated in the extreme western part of
Honduras, where they are densely covered by the forest. As already
stated, they were first discovered by Europeans about forty years after
the war of the conquest swept through that part of the country, and were
at that time wholly mysterious to the natives. The monuments seem older
than those at Palenque, but we have only scant descriptions of them.
They are situated in a wild and solitary part of the country, where the
natives "see as little of strangers as the Arabs about Mount Sinai, and
are more suspicious." For this reason they have not been very carefully
explored. It is known that these ruins extend two or three miles along
the left bank of the River Copan. Not much has been done to discover how
far they extend from the river into the forest.

[Illustration: Fig. 29.--Great Wall at Copan.]

Mr. Stephens describes as follows