HEAD OF WAR-GOD, FROM COPAN.
"But it was no easy matter to get away, as the Indians would be sure to fall upon the Spaniards in their flight, and probably destroy the entire force. So they waited until a moonless and stormy night, and under cover of the darkness managed to get away and be several hours on the road before their absence was discovered.
"In order to deceive the Indians, Montejo caused the feet of the horses to be muffled with cloths, and lest they might find by the silence that the place was evacuated, he left a dog tied to a pole on which were a bell and a piece of meat. Every time the dog tried to reach the meat he rang the bell, and thus the Indians supposed all the while that the Spaniards were still behind the walls of Chichen. It was not until daylight that they discovered their mistake, and then there was not time to overtake the fugitives before they reached the territory of a friendly chief.
"Let us return to the Castle of Chichen. The pyramid on which it stands is 175 feet square at the base, and 68 feet high; the staircase is thirty-nine feet wide, and contains ninety steps. The building is about forty feet square and twenty-one feet high, and its internal arrangements show that it was probably a temple, like most of the edifices of similar character throughout Mexico.
"The walls of the Castle are covered with inscriptions and sculptures, and the greater part of them forcibly remind the visitor of the work of the ancient Egyptians. The columns which support the sanctuary present bass-reliefs of men supposed to be priests; and these figures are repeated on the walls along with other sculptures. And to make a long story short, and avoid the risk of being tedious, we will say that all the buildings of Chichen are elaborately ornamented. Tradition is that when the Spaniards came here there were many mural paintings in beautiful colors, but the pious invaders thought it their duty to destroy these pagan symbols, and so covered them with stucco and whitewash! Had they left them alone we might have learned much more than we now know about the ancient inhabitants of Yucatan.
IDOL OF COPAN (FROM STEPHENS).
"We haven't space to describe all the sculptures, or even a quarter of them, but must refer anybody who is interested in the subject to the books of the explorers. And we must do the same for the other ruined cities of Yucatan and the countries near it; Palenque with its palace, Copan with its great wall and its wonderful idols and other sculptures, Tikal with its temples constructed of large blocks of stone laid in cement, each merits a separate chapter, but we have no room for it.
"The same may be said of other places, and it is quite possible that there are dozens of cities buried in the tropical forests of which absolutely nothing is now known. We may hope for a revelation of the mysteries of the ancient cities of the New World whenever the work of discovery is undertaken on an extensive scale.