On reaching the pyramid, we leave our horses and ascend with some difficulty the terrace surmounting it; we wander about in semi-darkness because of the rank vegetation which mantles over it. Our men clear it of the most obstructive trees, to facilitate its measurement: the shape of this pyramid is irregular, being 975 feet at the base, by some ninety-nine feet in height. Our plan gives the various monuments standing on its vast summit, measuring no less than 292 feet.
PLAN OF GREAT PYRAMID AT COMALCALCO.
No. 1, Tower partly standing. No. 2, Ruined Tower. No. 3, Palace. No. 4, Portion still standing. Nos. 5 and 6, Pyramids indicative of Ruins.
BAYS OF RUINED PALACE, COMALCALCO.
The principal monument (No. 3) was a great palace, the façade of which looked east and covered 231 feet, now reduced to a ruinous mass; fortunately a fragment of some twenty-two feet (No. 4) enables us to reconstruct the edifice. Our first drawing is a view of the outside, showing the dilapidated condition of the wall and its brick and mortar composition; the next a view of the interior, with fragments of thinner walls which divided the various apartments of the palace, probably seven or eight in number, of different dimensions, and having the same characteristics as the monuments at Uxmal and Palenque. It is the governor’s palace with its double bay of rooms, the slightly concave vault of Palenque; and if in our section of the palace a greater obliquity is observable, in the frieze supporting the roof, than in edifices of the same kind already known, or to be studied subsequently, this sloping finds here its proper place, and proves the intelligence of the builder without destroying the similarity of the different monuments. In fact, we shall see the roof assuming a steeper or less steep incline, according to the climate; slightly oblique at Palenque where rain is frequent, it rises in the Yucatan peninsula, where a dry climate prevails, until it forms a flat roof, resting on perpendicular walls; whereas at Comalcalco and on the borders of the Gulf, where rain is incessant, architects increase the slope of the roof to facilitate the out-flow of the water, the better to preserve their buildings.
SECTION OF RUINS AT COMALCALCO.
If baked bricks mixed with thick layers of lime and mortar were substituted for stones, it is because none are to be found in that alluvial plain. As to the blocks necessary for the construction of columns, statues, altars, etc., they were brought by river from the mountains. But these modifications never destroy the typical outline of the Toltec calli, to be found in the chapter on Tula, and all the monuments which we shall meet with in our explorations will have the same type and the same architecture.
But to return. The walls of the palace were without any ornamentation, save a layer of smooth painted cement; they rose perpendicularly nine feet to a very projecting cornice, then sloping in a line parallel to the corbel vault, they terminated in a second cornice less salient than the first, both serving as frame to a frieze richly decorated, so far at least as could be ascertained from the fragments strewing the ground. Above this, towards the centre of the roof, rose a decorated wall, a peculiarly Toltec device, which existed already in the temples of the high plateaux, and which we shall observe in most structures, whether temples or palaces, terra-cotta models of which are to be found in the Trocadéro.