These structures, as reproduced in engravings by Stephens and Catherwood, may well excite surprise and admiration for the taste, skill, and industry they display, and the degree of progress they reveal. When rightly understood, they will enable us to estimate the extent of the progress actually made, which was truly remarkable for a people still in barbarism, and no further advanced than the Middle Status.
[Illustration: Side elevation of pyramidal platform of Governor's
House]
We have seen that the style of architecture in New Mexico brought the Indians to the house tops as the common place of living. At first suggested for security, it became in time a settled habit of life. The same want was met in Yucatan and Chiapas by a new expedient namely a pyramidal platform or elevation of earth twenty, thirty and forty feet high upon the level summits of which their great houses were erected. These platforms were made still higher for small buildings. A natural elevation being when practicable selected the top was leveled or raised by artificial means, the sides made rectangular and sloping and faced on the four sides with a dry stone wall, the ascent being made by a flight of stone steps. It was not uncommon to find two such platforms and sometimes three, one above the other, as shown in the figure. These platforms, called terraces, were the gathering and the lounging places, of the inhabitants.
The edifices in the regions named are almost invariably but one story high, and but two rooms deep, the walls being carried up vertically to an equal height on the sides and ends, and terminating in a flat roof. The doorways opened upon the platform area or terrace when the building was single, and where it was carried around the four aides of an inclosed court they opened usually upon the court. As their elevation above the level of the surrounding area invested them with the character of fortresses, they were defended on the line or edge of the terrace-walls, or, rather, at the head of the flight of steps by means of which the summit-level was reached. Neither adobe brick, nor rubble masonry, nor timber roofs could withstand the tropical climate, with its pouring rains during a portion of the year. Stone walls and a vaulted ceiling were indispensable to a permanent structure. There were, doubtless, pueblos of timber-framed houses with thatched roofs here and there in Yucatan, Chiapas, and Honduras, as there were further south toward the Isthmus; but the prevailing material used was stone, as the number of small pueblos in ruins still attest. Upon these elevated platforms they enjoyed the same security as the Village Indians of New Mexico upon their roof-tops and within the walls of their houses. They were also raised above the flight of the mosquitoes and flies, the scourge of this hot region. Considering the surrounding conditions, single-storied houses upon raised platforms was a natural suggestion, harmonizing with a style of architecture, the communal character of which was predetermined by their social condition. For the details of this architecture reference must be made to published works, which are easily accessible, its general features and the principles from which they sprang being the only subjects within the scope of this inquiry.
The front elevation of the Governor's House at Uxmal, shown in the engraving, and which was taken from Stephens' work, will answer as a sample of the whole. It stands upon the upper of three platforms, of which the lowest is five hundred and seventy-five feet long, fifteen feet broad to the base of the middle platform, and three feet high. The second is five hundred and forty-five feet long, two hundred and fifty feet broad to the base of the upper platform, and twenty feet high. The third is three hundred and sixty feet long, thirty feet broad in front of the edifice, and nineteen feet high. The upper one is formed upon the back half of the middle platform, of which last Mr. Stephens observes that "this great terrace was not entirely artificial. The substratum was a natural rock, and showed that advantage had been taken of a natural elevation as far as it went, and by this means some portion of the immense labor of constructing the terrace had been saved." [Footnote: Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, i, 128.]
The three terraces with their sloping walls are shown in the engraving, the house standing upon an elevation forty-two feet above the surrounding area. The ascent from terrace to terrace was made by flights of stone steps, which are not distinctly shown. When newly constructed and inhabited, this structure, from its commanding situation, its great size, and conspicuous terraces, must have presented a striking appearance. It is doubtful whether any of the Aryan tribes, when in the Middle Status of barbarism, have produced houses superior to those in Yucatan.
The house is symmetrical in structure, three hundred and twenty-two feet long, thirty-nine feet deep, and about twenty-five feet high. It has eleven doorways, besides two small openings in front, and contains twenty-two apartments, two of which are each sixty feet long. The rear wall is solid, and in the central part is nine feet thick. A parallel wall through the center divides the interior into two rows of apartments, of which those in front are eleven feet six inches deep and twenty-three feet high to the top of the arch, and those back of them are thirteen feet deep and twenty-two feet high. Both inside and out the walls are of dressed stone laid in courses. No drawings of the rooms in the Governor's House are furnished in Mr. Stephens' work. The back rooms are dark, excepting the light received through the front doorway.
"The House of the Nuns," says Mr. Stephens, "is quadrangular, with a court yard in the center. 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 [building] is two hundred and seventy-nine feet long, and above the cornice, from one end to the other, 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, seventeen feet high to the top of the arch, but having no connection with each other. The building that forms the right or eastern side of the quadrangle measures 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 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 sculptures." [Footnote: Incidents of travel in Yucatan, i, 299.]
[Illustration: Fig. 53.—Ground plan of the House of the Nuns.]
Altogether, these four structures contain seventy-six apartments, which vary in size from twenty to thirty feet long, and from ten to twelve feet wide. There are twenty single apartments, and twenty five pairs of apartments, half of which, as in the Governor's House, are dark, except as they are lighted from the doorways connecting with the rooms in front. In the fifth structure, not described, there are six pairs of similar apartments. In the building on the right there are six rooms connecting with each other, one of which, the frost room, is shown in Fig. 54. This number of connecting rooms is so unusual in Yucatan architecture as to attract attention. Each of the four edifices would accommodate from six hundred to one thousand persons, after the fashion of Village Indians.