THE PALACE, UXMAL.
Around Uxmal no excavations of any moment have been made. The owner of the land, Señor Don Augusto Peon, very courteously told us that if we were able to delay our departure he would grant us all facilities for spade-work among the ruins. Unfortunately we could not alter our arrangements; but undoubtedly there is a large field for work here, which will amply reward archæologists in those days when the "dog in the manger" policy of the Mexican "Jacks in office" is a thing of the past, and intelligent landowners such as Señor Peon can assist students in every way instead of having their hands fettered by absurd Federal rules. But though no excavation work has been done, many pieces of sculpture have been unearthed from a surface layer of débris. Such was a column 5 feet high tapering toward the base, where it had a diameter of 20 inches while at the top it measured 28, and ornamented with two rows of hieroglyphics. Another sculpture, found by Stephens, is a seat or couch carved out of a single block of stone and measuring 3 feet 2 inches in length and 2 feet in height. Its design is a double-headed animal of the jaguar type, but which Stephens thought to represent lynxes. Its interest lies in the fact that the representation of some such ceremonial seat was found at Palenque, as we shall presently show.
[CHAPTER XII]
COPAN AND QUIRIGUA
Time did not allow of, nor indeed had we ever contemplated, a visit to Guatemala and the ruins of Copan and Quirigua, or to those scarcely less important ones in the State of Chiapas and around the Usumacinta River. But these are so intricately connected with the problems of the origin of Mayan civilisation and with those views which we venture to advance in a later chapter, that we have thought it best to give here some account of the results of the exploration and excavation work among these groups.
The ruins of Copan are situated in the frontier country of Guatemala and the Republic of Honduras on the east bank of the Copan River, which flows into the Motagua, finally emptying into the Bay of Honduras near Omoa. The name Copan seems to be strictly that of a district or province; but it is now used as the title of a village which has sprung up among the ruins. Of the history of Copan in the century immediately succeeding the Spanish Conquest, somewhat confusing accounts are given. The truth is that north-westward of the ruins, right in the heart of Guatemala proper, stands a town "Coban," and the past of these two places would appear to have become a good deal mixed. The Spanish historian Francisco Antonio Fuentes y Guzman relates that a town of the name, which he places in the old province of Chiquimula de Sierras, was besieged by Hernandes de Chaves in 1530.[6] A desperate resistance was made by the Indians in defence of an entrenchment formed of strong beams of timber, the interstices filled with earth, with loopholes for the discharge of arrows. Finally a Spanish horseman blundered through at one weak spot and the Indians were routed. The account of this battle cannot very easily be reconciled with the description of ruined Copan given by J. L. Stephens and Mr. A. P. Maudslay. Stephens describes it as surrounded by a wall of cut stone well laid, and of what seems the incredible height of a hundred feet. But allowing for any exaggeration of enthusiasm (he was there in 1839, and it was the first Mayan ruin he had ever set eyes upon), it seems certain that the old Copan was a powerful and well-fortified city, and Mr. Maudslay is probably right in his suggestion that it had been abandoned before the Spanish Conquest.
This is certainly suggested, if not actually corroborated, by the only Spanish account of the ruins extant. Writing at the time of the Conquest, Licienciado Diego Palacio, an officer of the Audiencia de Guatemala, reports to King Philip II. of Spain on the 8th March, 1576, as follows: "I endeavoured with all possible care to ascertain from the Indians through the traditions derived from the ancients, what people lived here or what they knew or had heard from their ancestors concerning them. But they had no books relating to their antiquities nor do I believe that in all this district there is more than one, which I possess. They say that in the ancient times there came from Yucatan a great lord who built these edifices, but that at the end of some years he returned to his native country, leaving them entirely deserted. And this is what appeared to be most likely, for tradition says that the people of Yucatan in time past conquered the provinces of Uyajal, Lacandon, Vera Paz, Chiquimula, and Copan, and it is certain that the Apay language which is spoken here is current and understood in Yucatan and the aforesaid provinces. It also appears that the designs of these edifices are like those which the Spaniards first discovered in Yucatan and Tabasco." It is quite certain that Copan was in ruins in 1576, because Palacio's letter continues, "On the road to the city of San Pedro, in the first town within the province of Honduras called Copan, are certain ruins and vestiges of a great population and of superb edifices and splendour as it would appear they could never have been built by the natives of that province."