ing together, we reached the foot of a stony
hill covered with the gigantic maguey, or Agave Americana, its long
thorny points piercing and tearing all that touched them. Climbing up
this hill with great toil, we reached the wall of a terrace, and,
climbing this, found ourselves at the foot of the building.

It was in a ruinous condition, and did not repay us for the labour; but
over the door was a sculptured head with a face of good expression and
workmanship. In one of the apartments was a high projection running
along the wall; in another a raised platform about a foot high; and on
the walls of this apartment was the print of the red hand. The doorway
commanded an extensive view of rolling woodland, which, with its livery
of deep green, ought to have conveyed a sensation of gladness, but,
perhaps from its desolation and stillness, it induced rather a feeling
of melancholy. There was but one opening in the forest, being that made
by us, disclosing the Casa Grande, with the figures of a few Indians
still continuing their clearings on the top.

In front of the Casa Grande, at the distance of five hundred yards, and
also visible from the top, is another structure, strikingly different
from any we had seen, more strange and inexplicable, and having at a
distance the appearance of a New-England factory.

[Engraving 5: Terrace and Building]

The engraving which follows represents this building. It stands on a
terrace, and may be considered as consisting of two separate
structures, one above the other. The lower one, in its general
features, resembled all the rest. It was forty feet front, low, and
having a flat roof, and in the centre was an archway running through
the building. The front is fallen, and the whole so ruined that nothing
but the archway appears in the engraving. Along the middle of the roof,
unsupported, and entirely independent of everything else, rises a
perpendicular wall to the height of perhaps thirty feet. It is of
stone, about two feet thick, and has oblong openings through it about
four feet long and six inches wide, like small windows. It had been
covered with stucco, which had fallen off, and left the face of rough
stone and mortar; and on the other side were fragments of stuccoed
figures and ornaments. An Indian appears before it in the act of
killing a snake, with which all the woods of Yucatan abound. Since we
began our exploration of American ruins we had not met with anything
more inexplica