Mayapan—Sculptured Fragments.
RELICS OF TIHOO AT MÉRIDA.
Mérida, the capital of Yucatan, was built by the Spanish conquerors on the ruins of the aboriginal city of Tihoo, the ancient mounds furnishing material to the builders of the modern town. Only very slight vestiges of Tihoo remain; yet in the lower cloisters of the Franciscan convent, which is known to have been erected over an ancient mound and building, the Spanish architects left one of the peculiar aboriginal arches intact, unless we suppose that they imitated such an arch in their own work, which is most unlikely. Bishop Landa describes and illustrates with a ground plan one of the largest and finest of the Tihoo structures, as it was in the sixteenth century. In most respects his description agrees exactly with the ruins of the grander class already mentioned. The supporting mound has two retreating terraces on all sides except the western, which side seems to have been perpendicular to its full height. Stairways running the whole length of the mound lead up to the eastern slopes, and on the summit platform is a courtyard surrounded by four buildings, like the Casa de Monjas at Uxmal. A gateway leads through the centre of both eastern and western buildings, and one of these gateways is represented by Landa as having a round arch, the other being of the ordinary form. The buildings are divided into a single range of small apartments opening on the court, except the southern, which has two large rooms, and in front of which was a gallery supported by a row of square pillars. A round building or room is also mentioned in connection with the western range. Landa also mentions several other structures, including the one over whose ruins the Franciscan convent was built. M. Waldeck mentions an excavation in a garden of the city, which is twenty-three by thirty feet, and fifteen feet deep, with double walls three and six feet thick, where the bones of a tapir and other bones were dug up. He also saw here several idols collected from different parts.[V-86]
PYRAMID AND COLUMNS OF AKÉ.
Some twenty-five miles east of Mérida, at a place called Aké, barely mentioned in the annals of the conquest as the locality where a battle was fought between the Spaniards and Mayas, are the ruins of an aboriginal city; ruins which, according to Mr Stephens, their only visitor, have a ruder, older, and more cyclopean air than any others seen. Some of the stones here employed are seven feet long. One remarkable feature is a pyramid, whose summit platform is fifty by two hundred and twenty-five feet, and supports thirty-six columns, each four feet square, and from fourteen to sixteen feet high. These columns are arranged in three parallel rows, ten feet apart from north to south, and fifteen feet from east to west. Each column is composed of several square stones. A stairway one hundred and thirty-seven feet wide, with steps seventeen inches high, and four feet five inches deep, leads up the southern slope. Of this mound Mr Stephens says: "It was a new and extraordinary feature, entirely different from any we had seen, and at the very end of our journey, when we supposed ourselves familiar with the character of American ruins, threw over them a new air of mystery." Between Mérida and Mayapan is mentioned a stone wall, which crosses the road and extends far on either side into the forest. Near by is also an aguada, said by the inhabitants to be of artificial formation.[V-87]
Cara Gigantesca at Izamal.