A Glimpse at Guatemala / And Some Notes on the Ancient Monuments of Central America

by Anne Cary Maudslay; Alfred Percival Maudslay

The earliest description of the ruins is found in a letter addressed by Diego Garcia de Palacio, an officer of the Audiencia of Guatemala, to King Philip II. of Spain, dated 8th of March, 1576. Palacio was an acute observer, and his description of the ruins shows that they were in much the same condition when he visited them in 1576 as they were when I began to work at them in 1885. It is, however, not to Palacio’s letter, which has only comparatively recently been unearthed from the Spanish archives, but to the charming pages of Stephens and the beautiful drawings of Catherwood that the world in general is indebted for a knowledge of the wonders of Copan. But delightful as their great book is in every other respect, it does not suffice for a detailed study of Maya art and inscriptions, and my object in returning to the ruins in 1885 was to gather together and publish such a collection of accurate copies of the monuments and inscriptions as would enable scholars to carry on their work of examination and comparison, and to solve some of the many problems of Maya civilization, whilst comfortably seated in their studies at home.

I had already gained some experience during an expedition to the ruins of Quirigua for the same purpose in the spring of 1884, and the reader of the foregoing pages will have learnt enough about the state of the roads and the means of locomotion to appreciate the difficulties met with in transporting from the Port of Yzabal to Copan the articles which I knew to be necessary to the carrying out of my plans, of which the following is a rough list: axes, machetes, pickaxes, spades, crow-bars, wheelbarrows, surveying and photographic apparatus, dry plates and chemicals, a barrel of lime, four tons of plaster of Paris and some four or five hundredweight of moulding-paper, in addition to food, personal baggage, and camp kit. The plaster of Paris was shipped from England to Livingston in tin-lined barrels; at that port it was landed and re-shipped in a small steamer which carried it up the river and across the Golfo Dulce to Yzabal; there the barrels were opened and the plaster put into waterproof sacks, which we had brought with us from England for the purpose, and it was thence carried on mule-back over the mountains to Copan. I remember making a calculation at the time which showed me that the plaster for which I had originally paid fifty shillings a ton in Carlisle had cost £50 a ton by the time it had reached Copan.

We built a rancho among the ruins to accommodate Gorgonio Lopez and his brothers, and Mr. Giuntini, a skilled plaster-moulder, whom I had brought out from England to make plaster moulds of the monuments, whilst I took up my quarters in the village, in a small mud-walled hut which served as the cabildo. The particular attraction of this place of residence was the prison cell attached to it, measuring about 7 feet by 4 feet, which was speedily turned into a dark room for developing photographs.

Through the courtesy of the Foreign Office I had been recommended to the care of the English Minister to the Central-American States, and it happened, luckily for me, that a few weeks before my arrival in the country there had been held in the city of Guatemala a conference of the Presidents of the five Republics, and during its session the English Minister had been thrown into frequent communication with General Bogran, the President of the Republic of Honduras. It was a time of political ferment, and I strongly suspect that during the official visits and social courtesies which the conference entailed, a subject free from all the political dangers of the moment, such as my expedition to Copan, was eagerly seized upon for friendly discussion. The result was not a little to my advantage, but as at the time I knew nothing of the cause, my astonishment may be imagined when, on arrival at Copan, I entered the village under triumphal arches, and was received by a guard of honour of barefooted soldiers, and by an ex-Minister of State and a professor from the Government College, who presented me with an official-looking document addressed to “El Sabio,” which informed me that they had been appointed by the President of the Republic of Honduras as his commissioners to assist me in my labours. These gentlemen had already been awaiting my arrival for more than a week, and it was an evident relief to the villagers when, at the end of another week, I was able to impress upon them the value of the work they had accomplished, and recommend them to rest from their labours and return to their homes. Of General Bogran’s good intentions and really sympathetic interest in my work I had afterwards ample proof, but pleasant and genial as were his commissioners, they were not persons altogether suited to carry out the task entrusted to them. After the departure of the commissioners it needed some tact to get on good terms with the villagers, who had learnt to look on me with suspicion; but at the end of a few weeks we became the best of friends and remained so ever afterwards.

The sketch map at the beginning of this chapter will give a fairly accurate idea of the site of the ruins. The surrounding hills are somewhat sparsely clothed with pine-trees, but the level land of the river valley has long been used as planting ground by the villagers, and, where it is not actually under cultivation, is covered with an almost impenetrable growth of scrub. Our first task was to clear away this scrub, which completely hid from view the monuments in the Great Plaza, and the next task was to mark out and carefully measure a base-line for the proposed survey. The beautiful grove of trees which covered the principal group of mounds and terraces had been left untouched by the natives, as the ground on which it stood was totally unfit for cultivation, and we did not find it necessary to do more than remove the undergrowth and clear the surface of the ground, leaving the great trees undisturbed to afford us their grateful shade.

It must be remembered that up to the time of this expedition in 1885 no trace of any house or temple had been discovered amongst the ruins at Copan; but I found it difficult to believe that the great masses of masonry could have been built up unless they were intended to serve as foundations for temples such as I had already seen crowning the great pyramids at Tikál. As the work of clearing proceeded and we gained a better view of the great stairways and the outlines of the mounds my hope of finding some trace of temple buildings was strengthened by seeing that each of the higher mounds had usually a marked depression running across its summit, which might be accounted for by the falling in of a central doorway. Judge, then, of my delight when, on digging into the top of the mound on the north side of the eastern court, I came on unmistakable signs of the sides of a doorway and the remains of an elaborate cornice running along the top of the interior wall of a chamber. Digging on with the greatest care we finally unearthed the fine ornamental doorway between the two chambers of the temple, of which a drawing (with the fallen stones restored to their places) is here given.

After this successful beginning we set to work on other mounds, where we unearthed more interesting sculpture, and succeeded in proving, as I had hoped to do, that almost all the pyramidal mounds at Copan had been raised to support temples, probably built at different epochs, and possibly set at different angles on account of astronomical considerations.

The accompanying plan shows the remains of the principal structures as they would look denuded of their covering of vegetation and cleared of some of the debris. Those mounds on which we found the remains of temples are marked with a red cross, and the shape of the chambers is roughly shown. The river has eaten into the east side of the largest group, leaving exposed a cliff-like face of masonry and rubble, which in one place is over one hundred feet in height.