"From Kabah let us go to Chichen-Itza. We will go in imagination rather than in reality, as the ruins are in the region of the rebellious Indians, and it isn't safe at all times to venture there. Let us call the place Chichen 'for short.'
BASS-RELIEF, CHICHEN-ITZA.
"It lies about thirty miles west of Valladolid, which was once a prosperous city and contained the first cotton-mill ever erected in Yucatan. Valladolid was deserted at the time of the rebellion of the Indians in 1846, and has never regained its former population. The ruins of Chichen cover an area of about two square miles, and have been explored by Stephens, Norman, Charnay, Le Plongeon, and others; and the historians say that the Spanish army that conquered Yucatan occupied the ruins and found them useful as a fortification against the Indians.
"There is a building at Chichen which resembles the House of the Nuns at Uxmal, and has the same name. It seems to have been erected at different periods, and some of the explorers think a portion of it was altogether destroyed and afterwards rebuilt, as the style of architecture is different. The ornamentation is more elaborate than that of the House of the Nuns at Uxmal. Over the door is a medallion representing a priest with a head-dress of feathers; and there is a row of similar heads running around the whole length of the frieze of the northern façade. The upper story is ornamented with panels cut into the stone, and having a raised figure in the centre. You can best understand this design if you look at a picture which we have taken from 'The Ancient Cities of the New World.'
"Connected with this building is one which the Spaniards call the Church; it has only one room, and is twenty-six feet long by fourteen wide and thirty-one high, and the outside is covered with carved ornaments. Not a great way from it is a circular building twenty-two feet in diameter and sixty feet high, and having four doors that are placed exactly towards the cardinal points of the compass. The building is on a mound, and is approached by a grand staircase forty feet wide and having a balustrade formed of bodies of serpents twined together. Serpents have a prominent place in the ornamentation of Chichen, as they appear in one form or another on nearly all the buildings.
DOOR-POSTS IN TENNIS-COURT.