Two-headed Idol at Uxmal.
UXMAL—CISTERNS AND PYRAMID.
At the south-west corner of the Casa del Gobernador, and even intrenching on the terraces that support it, is the pyramid E, to which strangely enough no name has been given. It has in fact received but very slight attention; one short visit by Mr Stephens, during which he mounted to the summit with a force of Indians, being the only one recorded, although it is barely mentioned by others. This pyramid measures two hundred by three hundred feet at the base, and its height is sixty-five feet. At the top is a square platform, whose sides are each seventy-five feet. The area of this platform is flat, composed of rough stones, and has no traces whatever of ever having supported any building. Its sides, however, three feet high perpendicularly, are of hewn blocks of stone, and smooth with ornamented corners. Below this summit platform, for a distance of ten or twelve feet, the sides of the pyramid are faced with sculptured stone, the ornaments being chiefly grecques, like those on the Governor's House, having one of the immense faces with projecting teeth at the centre of the western side. At this point Mr Stephens attempted an excavation in the hope of discovering interior apartments, but the only result was to prostrate himself with an attack of fever, which obliged him to quit Uxmal. Just below this sculptured upper border, some fifteen feet below the top, a narrow terrace extends round the four sides of the pyramid. Concerning the surface below this terrace, we only know that it is encased in stone, and would very probably reveal additional ornamentation if subjected to a more minute examination.[V-28] The pyramid F, still farther south-west, is two hundred feet long and one hundred and twenty feet wide at the base, being about fifty feet high. These particulars, together with the fact that a stairway leads up the northern slope, to one of the typical Yucatan buildings, twenty by one hundred feet and divided into three apartments, are absolutely all that has been recorded of this structure, which, like its more imposing companion pyramid, has not been thought worthy of a name. The reader will be able to form a more consistent conjecture respecting its original appearance after reading a description in the following pages of the structure at D, which presents some points of apparent similarity to its more modest southern neighbor.[V-29]
UXMAL—CASA DE PALOMAS.
Northward from the last pyramid, and connected with it by a courtyard one hundred feet long and eighty-five feet wide, with ranges of undescribed ruins on the east and west, are the buildings at G, built round and enclosing a courtyard one hundred and eighty feet long and one hundred and fifty feet wide, entered through an archway in the centre of the northern and southern buildings. This courtyard has a picote in the centre, like that before the Governor's House, but fallen. These buildings are in an advanced state of ruin and no details are given respecting any of them except the northern one, which presents one remarkable feature. Along the centre of the roof from east to west throughout the whole length of two hundred and forty feet, is a peculiar wall rising in peaks like saw-teeth. These are nine in number, each about twenty-seven feet long at the base, between fifteen and twenty feet high, and three feet thick. Each is pierced with many oblong openings arranged in five or six horizontal rows, one above another like the windows in the successive stories of a modern building, or like those of a pigeon house, or Casa de Palomas, by which name it is known. Traces yet remain which show that originally these strange elevations were covered with stucco ornaments, the only instance of stucco decorations in Uxmal. Of this group of structures, including the two courtyards and the pyramid beyond, notwithstanding their ruined condition, Mr Stephens remarks that "they give a stronger impression of departed greatness than anything else in this desolate city."[V-30]
Respecting the remains marked 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15, on the plan, north of the Pyramid and Casa de Palomas, and west of the Casa del Gobernador, all that can be said is embodied in the following quotation: "A vast range of high, ruined terraces, facing east and west, nearly eight hundred feet long at the base, and called the Campo Santo. On one of these is a building of two stories, with some remains of sculpture, and in a deep and overgrown valley at the foot, the Indians say, was the burial-place of this ancient city; but, though searching for it ourselves, and offering a reward to them for the discovery, we never found in it a sepulchre."[V-31]
Crossing over now to the eastward of the Governor's House, we find a small group of ruins in the south-eastern corner of the rectangle. The one marked 6 on the plan is known as the Casa de la Vieja, or Old Woman's House, so named from a statue that was found lying near its front. The building stands on the summit of a small pyramid and its walls were just ready to fall at the time of the survey. Of the other structures of the group, 5 and 7, no further information is given than that which may be gathered from the plan. Along the line marked 4, 4, 4, are slight traces of a continuous wall, indicating that Uxmal may have been a walled city, since no careful search has ever been made for such traces in other portions of the city's circumference.[V-32]
UXMAL GYMNASIUM.
To go from the Casa del Gobernador northward to the buildings at C and D, yet to be described, we pass between two parallel walls at H. These two parallel structures are solid masses of rough stones faced on all four sides with smoothly cut blocks, and were, so far as can be determined in their present condition, exactly alike. Each measures thirty by one hundred and twenty-eight feet on the ground, and they are seventy feet apart, their height not being given. The fronts which face each other were covered with sculptured decorations, now mostly fallen, including two entwined serpents; while from the centre of each of these façades projected originally a stone ring about four feet in diameter, fixed in the wall by means of a tenon. Both are broken, and the fragments for the most part lost. A similar building in a better state of preservation will be noticed among the ruins of Chichen Itza, in describing which a cut of one of the stone rings will be given. It is easy to imagine that the grand promenade between the northern and southern palaces, or temples, was along a line that passed between these walls, and that these sculptured fronts and rings were important in connection with religious rites and processions of priests. The chief entrance to the northern buildings is in a line with this passage, and it seems strange that we find no corresponding stairway leading up the southern terrace to the front of the Casa de Tortugas.[V-33]