THE RUINS OF UXMAL.
These monuments of antiquity are situated in Yucatan, the great Peninsula of Mexican America.
"Emerging suddenly from the woods, to my astonishment, we came at once upon a large open field strewed with mounds of ruins, and vast buildings on terraces, and pyramidal structures, grand, and in good preservation, richly ornamented, without a bush to obstruct the view; and in picturesque effect, almost equal to the Ruins of Thebes. [Egypt] Such was my report I made to Mr. Catherwood on my return, who, lying in his hammock unwell, and out of spirits, told me I was romancing; but early the next morning we were on the ground, and his comment was, that the reality exceeded the description!"
It should be remembered that the above distinguished artist (Catherwood) had visited and copied the Ruins of Thebes and Egypt generally, and consequently his testimony is of more than common authority.
"The place of which I am now speaking (Uxmal) was, beyond all doubt, once a large, populous, and highly civilized city, and the reader can nowhere find one word of it on any page of history. Who built it?—why it was located on that spot, away from water, or any of those natural advantages which have determined the sites of cities whose histories are known, what led to its abandonment, no man can tell. The only name by which it is known, is that of the Hacienda [i. e. farm-plantation] on which it stands. In the oldest deed, belonging to the Peon family [i. e. the owners], which goes back a hundred and forty years, the buildings are referred to in the boundaries of the estate as Las Casas de Piedra [i. e. the stone-houses]. This is the only ancient document or record in existence, in which the place is mentioned at all. The Ruins were all exhumed: within the last year the trees had been cut down and burned, and the whole field of Ruins was in view." * * * * "In attempting a description of the Ruins, so vast a work rises up before me, that I am at a loss where to begin." * * * * "Drawn off by mounds of ruins and piles of gigantic buildings, the eye returns, and again fastens upon a lofty structure. It was the first building I entered. From its front doorway I counted sixteen elevations [buildings], with broken walls and mounds of stones, and vast magnificent edifices, which at that distance seemed untouched by time and defying ruin. I stood in the doorway when the Sun went down, throwing from the buildings a prodigious breadth of shadow, darkening the terraces on which they stood, and presenting a scene strange enough for a work of enchantment. This building [i. e. in which he viewed the scene] is sixty-eight feet long. The elevation on which it stands, is built up solid from the plain, entirely artificial. Its form is not pyramidal, but oblong, and rounding, being two hundred and forty feet long at the base, and one hundred and twenty feet broad, and it is protected all around, to the very top, by a wall of square stones."
The terms of the last sentence are in direct opposition to the description,—for the elevation is distinctly pyramidal. It does not require a square base only rising from their corners to a central apex, to be essentially pyramidal,—for a cone is pyramidal, or an "oblong" rising and diminishing from a broad base; all walls on an inclined plane—no matter at what degree of elevation or declivity, possess the chief essential of a pyramid.
The cone, oblong, and square,—even a triple-sided or octagonal pyramid, would be, one and all, correct phrases in the language of Architecture, to express the character of the pyramid; and are so used in contradistinction to walls (one or more) of a perpendicular description,—and the instant such walls lose the facial of the plumb-line, they become pyramidal, from the principle of the wall rising from its base, and falling to a centre, which, we repeat, is the chief essential of the pyramid. The number of sides, or none at all (i. e. a cone), has no part in the pyramidal principle; as the key-stone is to the Arch, so the apex is to the Pyramid; but if the latter is only half reared, yet approaching by the inclined walls towards an apex, it is as much a pyramidal structure as if the sides had reached the apex itself. It is to be regretted that Mr. Stephens should have been ignorant of the Fine Arts and their rules—(we make this remark on his own honest confession[2])—because by the confusion of terms he not only often contradicts himself, but misleads the general reader in forming conclusions from his graphic descriptions.
It will, however, be our duty not to pass any such contradiction, but by the rules of art endeavour to translate the language of the Ruins. Mr. Stephens has, however, a motive in destroying all resemblance between these edifices and those of Egypt, or their neighbours. In the next chapter that motive will be unfolded in his own words.