The solitary arch shown in the cut stands on a mound by itself. Its span is fourteen feet, and its top fallen. "Darkness rests upon its history, but in that desolation and solitude, among the ruins around, it stood like the proud memorial of a Roman triumph."[V-60] Kabah is not without its pyramid, which is one hundred and eighty feet square at the base, and eighty feet high, with traces of ruined apartments at the foot. In one of the buildings the two principal doorways are under the stairway which leads up to the second story, and over one of them was a wooden lintel ten feet long, composed of two beams and covered with carving that seemed to represent a human figure standing on a serpent. Mr Stephens carried these carved beams, which were in almost a perfect state of preservation, to New York, where they were burned. He considered them the most important relics in the country, although his drawing does not indicate them to be anything very remarkable, except as bearing a clearly cut and complicated carving, executed on exceedingly hard wood without implements of iron or steel. The building with the sculptured lintel, and another, stand on an immense terrace, measuring one hundred by eight hundred feet. One of the apartments has the red hand in bright colors imprinted in many places on its walls. A stucco ornament, painted in bright colors, much dilapidated, but apparently having represented two large birds facing each other, was found in a room of another building. In still another edifice, a room is described as constructed on a new and curious plan, having "a raised platform about four feet high, and in each of the inner corners was a rounded vacant place, about large enough for a man to stand in." Another new feature was a doorway—the only one in the building to which it belonged—with sculptured stone jambs, each five feet eleven inches high, two feet three inches wide, and composed of two blocks one above the other. The sculptured designs are similar one to the other, each consisting of a standing and kneeling figure over a line of hieroglyphics. One of these decorated jambs is shown in the cut given on the following page. The weapon in the hands of the kneeling figure corresponds almost exactly with the flint-edged swords used by the natives of the country at the time of the conquest. This group of ruins, representing an aboriginal city probably larger and more magnificent even than Uxmal, was discovered by the workmen who made the road, or camino real, on which the ruins stand; but so little interest did the discovery excite in the minds of travelers over the road, that the knowledge of it did not reach Mérida.[V-61]
Sculptured Door-Jamb at Kabah.
In this immediate vicinity, located on the road to Equelchacan, a place not to be found on any map that I have seen, some artificial caverns are reported, probably without any sufficient authority.[V-62]
RUINS OF SANACTÉ.
Front of Building at Sanacté.
Southward and south-eastward of Kabah, all included within a radius of eight or ten miles, are ruins at Sanacté, Xampon, Chack, Sabacché, Zayi, and Labná, the last two being extensive and important. At Sanacté are two buildings, which stand in a milpa, or cornfield. One has a high ornamental wall on its top, and the front of another appears as represented in the cut. It will be noticed that in this, as in most of the structures in this region, the doorways have stone jambs, or posts, each of two pieces, instead of being formed simply by the blocks that compose the walls; the lintels are also generally of stone. At Xampon are the remains of a building that was built continuously round a rectangle eighty by one hundred and five feet; it is mostly fallen. In the immediate vicinity ruins of the ordinary type are mentioned under the names of Hiokowitz, Kuepak, and Zekilna. At Chack a two-storied building stands on a terrace, which is itself built on the summit of a natural stony hill. A very remarkable feature at Chack is the natural senote which supplies water to the modern as it did undoubtedly to the ancient inhabitants. It is a narrow passage, or succession of passages and small caverns, penetrating the earth for over fifteen hundred feet, much of the distance the descent being nearly vertical. At Sabacché is a building of a single apartment, whose front presents the peculiarity of four cornices, dividing the surface into four nearly equal portions, the lower cornice being as usual at the height of the top of the doorway. The first space above the doorway is plain, like that below; but the two upper spaces are divided by pilasters into panels, which are filled with diamond lattice-work. Three other buildings were visited, and one of them sketched by Catherwood, but they present no new features except that the red hand, common here as elsewhere, is larger than usual.[V-63]