ble than this great perpendicular wall. It seemed built
merely to puzzle posterity.

These were the only buildings in this immediate neighbourhood which had
survived the wasting of the elements; but, inquiring among the Indians,
one of them undertook to guide me to another, which he said was still
in good preservation. Our direction was south-southwest from the Casa
Grande; and at the distance of about a mile, the whole intermediate
region being desolate and overgrown, we reached a terrace, the area of
which far exceeded anything we had seen in the country. We crossed it
from north to south, and in this direction it must have been fifteen
hundred feet in length, and probably was quite as much in the other
direction; but it was so rough, broken, and overgrown, that we did not
attempt to measure it.

[Engraving 6: Terrace and Building]

On this great platform was the building of which the Indian had told
us; I had it cleared, and Mr. Catherwood drew it the next day, as it
appears in the engraving opposite. It measures one hundred and
seventeen feet in front, and eighty-four feet deep, and contains
sixteen apartments, of which those in front, five in number, are best
preserved. That in the centre has three doorways. It is twenty-seven
feet six inches long, by only seven feet six inches wide, and
communicates by a single doorway with a back room eighteen feet long
and five feet six inches wide. This room is raised two feet six inches
above the one in front, and has steps to ascend. Along the bottom of
the front room, as high as the sill of the door, is a row of small
columns, thirty-eight in number, attached to the wall.

In several places the great platform is strewed with ruins, and
probably other buildings lie buried in the woods, but without guides or
any clew whatever, we did not attempt to look for them.

Such, so far as we were able to discover them, are the ruins of Zayi,
the name of which, to the time of our visit, had never been uttered
among civilized men, and, but for the notoriety connected with our
movements, would probably be unknown at this day in the capital of
Yucatan. Our first accounts of them were from the cura Carillo, who, on
the occasion of his only visit to this part of his curacy, passed a
great portion of his time among them.

It was strange and almost incredible that, with these extraordinary
monuments before their eyes, the Indians never bestowed upon them one
passing thought. The questio