w, and plumes of feathers, are
surmounted by immense thorn bushes and overrun by poisonous vines. The
city no longer keeps watch; the fiat of destruction has gone out
against it, and in solitude it rests, the abode of silence and
desolation.

[Engraving 63: A Watch-tower]

The west line, parallel with the sea, has a single gateway; at the
angle is another watch-tower, like that before presented, and the wall
then runs straight to the sea. The whole circuit is twenty-eight
hundred feet, and the reader may form some idea of its state of
preservation from the fact that, except toward the abutments on the
sea, we measured the whole length along the top of the wall. The plan
is symmetrical, encloses a rectangular area, and, as appears in the
engraving, the Castillo occupies the principal and central position.
This, however, on account of the overgrown state of the area, we were
not aware of until the plan was drawn out.

On the north side of the wall, near the east gateway, is a building
thirty-six feet in front and thirty-four deep, divided into two
principal and two smaller rooms, the ceilings of which had entirely
fallen. At one corner is a senote, with the remains of steps leading
down to it, and containing brackish water. Near this was a hollow rock
which furnished as with our supply.

Toward the southeast corner of the wall, on the brow of the cliff,
stands a building fifteen feet front and ten deep. The interior is
about seven feet high, and the ceiling is flat, and discloses an
entirely new principle of construction. It has four principal beams of
wood, about six inches in diameter, laid on the top of the wall from
end to end of the chamber, with smaller beams, about three inches in
diameter, laid across the larger so closely as to touch; and on these
crossbeams is a thick mass of mortar and large pebbles, which was laid
on moist, and now forms a solid crust, being the same materials which
we had seen in ruins on the floors of other rooms. Against the back
wall was an altar, with a rude triangular stone upon it, which seemed
to bear marks of not very distant use. On each side of the doorway were
large sea-shells fixed in the wall for the support of the doors.

These were all the buildings to which young Molas conducted us, and he
said there were no others within the area of the walls, but there were
many vestiges without; and it was our belief that the walls enclosed
only the principal, perhaps the sacred build