ly difficult to
ascend and descend. The maguey plants cut down in making the clearing
appear fallen on the steps.

A narrow platform forms the top of the mound. The building faces the
south, and when entire measured forty-three feet in front and twenty
feet in depth. It had three doorways, of which one, with eight feet of
the whole structure, has fallen, and is now in ruins. The centre
doorway opens into two chambers, each twenty feet long and six feet
wide.

Above the cornice of the building rises a gigantic perpendicular wall
to the height of thirty feet, once ornamented from top to bottom, and
from one side to the other, with colossal figures and other designs in
stucco, now broken and in fragments, but still presenting a curious and
extraordinary appearance, such as the art of no other people ever
produced. Along the top, standing out on the wall, was a row of death's
heads; underneath were two lines of human figures in alto relievo (of
which scattered arms and legs alone remain), the grouping of which, so
far as it could be made out, showed considerable proficiency in that
most difficult department of the art of design. Over the centre
doorway, constituting the principal ornament of the wall, was a
colossal figure seated, of which only a large tippet and girdle, and
some other detached portions, have been preserved. Conspicuous over the
head of this principal figure is a large ball, with a human figure
standing up beside it, touching it with his hands, and another below it
with one knee on the ground, and one hand thrown up as if in the effort
to support the ball, or in the apprehension of its falling upon him. In
all our labours in that country we never studied so diligently to make
out from the fragments the combinations and significance of these
figures and ornaments. Standing in the same position, and looking at
them all together, we could not agree.

Mr. Catherwood made two drawings at different hours and under a
different position of the sun, and Dr. Cabot and myself worked upon it
the whole day with the Daguerreotype. With the full blaze of a vertical
sun upon it, the white stone glared with an intensity dazzling and
painful to the eyes, and almost realizing the account by Bernal Dias in
the expedition to Mexico, of the arrival of the Spaniards at Cempoal.
"Our advanced guard having gone to the great square, the buildings of
which had been lately whitewashed and plastered, in which art these
people are v