Passing between these buildings, and continuing in the same direction, we reach the front of the Casa de las Monjas, or House of the Nuns.
This building is quadrangular, with a courtyard in the centre. It stands on the highest of three terraces. The lowest is three feet high and twenty feet wide; the second, twelve feet high and forty-five feet wide; and the third, four feet high and five feet wide, extending the whole length of the front of the building.
The front is two hundred and seventy-nine feet long, and above the cornice, from one end to the other, it is ornamented with sculpture. In the centre is a gateway ten feet eight inches wide, spanned by the triangular arch, and leading to the courtyard. On each side of this gateway are four doorways with wooden lintels, opening to apartments averaging twenty-four feet long, ten feet wide, and seventeen feet high to the top of the arch, but having no communication with each other.
The building that forms the right or eastern side of the quadrangle is one hundred and fifty-eight feet long; that on the left is one hundred and seventy-three feet long, and the range opposite or at the end of the quadrangle measures two hundred and sixty-four feet.
These three ranges of buildings have no doorways outside, but the exterior of each is a dead wall, and above the cornice all are ornamented with the same rich and elaborate sculpture. On the exterior of the range last mentioned, the designs are simple, and among them are two rude, naked figures, which have been considered as indicating the existence of that same Eastern worship before referred to among the people of Uxmal.
Such is the exterior of this building. Passing trough the arched gateway, we enter a noble courtyard, with four great façades looking down upon it, each ornamented from one end to the other with the richest and most intricate carving known in the art of the builders of Uxmal; presenting a scene of strange magnificence, surpassing any that is now to be seen among its rains. This courtyard is two hundred and fourteen feet wide, and two hundred and fifty-eight feet deep. At the time of our first entrance it was overgrown with bushes and grass, quails started up from under our feet, and, with a whirring flight, passed over the tops of the buildings. Whenever we went to it, we started flocks of these birds, and throughout the whole of our residence at Uxmal they were the only disturbers of its silence and desolation.
Among my many causes of regret for the small scale on which I am obliged to present these drawings, none is stronger than the consequent inability to present, with all their detail of ornament, the four great façades fronting this courtyard. There is but one alleviating circumstance; which is, that the side most richly ornamented is so ruined that, under any circumstances, it could not be presented entire.
This façade is on the left of the visiter entering the courtyard. It is one hundred and seventy-three feet long, and is distinguished by two colossal serpents entwined, running through and encompassing nearly all the ornaments throughout its whole length. The two plates which follow represent the only parts remaining.
