The other traveller is Alfred Maudslay, who made Guatemala the main field of his interesting and successful labours. We borrow from his photographs and notes to complete our description. “The buildings at Tikal are of stone laid in mortar smoothed over with plaster (the cement epoch at Palenque, Lorillard, and Aké). The walls are generally 3 feet thick; the inner walls rise perpendicularly to a height of 7 feet, then approach each other to form the well-known American vault or pointed arch. No trace of true vaults are found, for the acute angle of the arch, and the enormous weight pressing on it, would not allow the walls to be more than 5 or 6 feet distant from each other; so that the interior of the palaces presents the appearance of long passages rather than apartments.” (Exactly what we pointed out at Lorillard.) “The doors are square at the top and the lintels consist of three or four pieces of wood. Within the apartments are also pieces of the same wood, but smaller, and placed across the ceiling 5 feet distant from each other.”
Some of these small palaces are in a perfect state of preservation, but by far the greater proportion, the lintels of which have disappeared, are a ruinous heap. As usual, the edifices are reared on natural or artificial plateaux, the sides faced with cut stones. The most important buildings are the temples, which rise on high pyramids, the sides divided in receding ranges or stones, shown in our plate.
The façade is occupied by a flight of steps leading to the entrance of the temple, which is narrower than the terrace on which it stands, whilst the side of the pyramid corresponding to it is on a steeper slope than the façade and remaining sides. (This we pointed out also at Palenque and Lorillard.) The pyramid is 184 ft. at the base by 168 ft.; the staircase is 112 ft. high by 38 ft. wide, giving the pyramid a mean altitude of 90 ft.; the façade is 41 ft. by 28 ft. long and about 40 ft. high, counting the decorative wall hidden by vegetation.
All these temples are alike; the characteristic feature about them is the great thickness of the walls, the niches on the sides of the main apartment, and the gradual narrowing of the edifice from front to rear. The interior of each consists of two or three narrow passages running on a parallel line on the sides and abutting on the front corridor, with large openings and wooden lintels beautifully sculptured. The inner walls of the temples are higher than those of the palaces, whilst the vault, also higher, forms a more acute angle. This is owing to the great decorative wall crowning the edifice, the weight of which would have been excessive, had not the builder provided for it by thickening the walls, lengthening the vault, and narrowing the apartment.
“I met no idol, or any object of veneration in these temples,” says Maudslay: a pardonable error, since he had not yet visited Palenque or Lorillard, which would have enabled him to see in all those pieces of sculptured wood representations of religious ceremonies, which replaced the idols seemingly wanting.
ALTAR PANEL IN THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN OF TIKAL.
“In the open space or court which stands between the temples, are several stones of the nature of stelæ or small menhirs; some have their front occupied by a human profile and hieroglyphics on the sides. On others, both profiles and hieroglyphics were of very hard cement; the stone had also been smoothed over with it. In this court are likewise several circular altars, facsimiles of those at Copan. Some are scattered among the ruins, but they are generally plain, owing probably to the plaster that composed the figures having fallen, and left the stone surface bare. Circular openings of about 1 foot 9 inches in diameter occupy the centre of the square or court, giving access to circular subterraneous chambers from 6 feet to 10 feet in diameter. They were cisterns.”[178] Our plate shows one of the temples having these stones in its court.