[1047] All other accounts are based on these. Bancroft, who gives the best summary (iv. 221), enumerates many of the second-hand writers, to whom Short (p. 396) must be added. Stephens gives a plan (ii. 290) which Bancroft (iv. 222) follows; and it apparently is worthy of reasonable confidence, which cannot be said of Norman’s. The ruins present some features not found in others, and the most interesting of such may be considered the wall paintings, one representing a boat with occupants, which Stephens found on the walls of the building called by him the Gymnasium, because of stone rings projecting from the walls (see annexed cut), which were supposed by him to have been used in ball games. Norman calls the same building the Temple; Charnay, the Cirque; but the native designation is Iglesia.
[1048] Yucatan, i. 94. Cf. Bancroft, Native Races, ii. 117; v. 164, 342.
[1049] Bancroft collates the views of different writers (iv. 285). He himself holds that these buildings are more ancient than those of Anáhuac; consequently he rejects the arguments of Stephens, that it was by the Toltecs, after they migrated south from Anáhuac, that these constructions were raised (Native Races, v. 165, and for references, p. 169). Charnay (Bull. de la Soc. de Géog., Nov., 1881) believes they were erected between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries.
It is well known now that the concentric rings are a useless guide in tropical regions to determine the age of trees, though in the past, the immense size of trees as well as the deposition of soil have been used to determine the supposed ages of ruins. Waldeck counted a ring a year in getting two thousand years for the time since the abandonment of Palenqué; but Charnay (Eng. tr. Ancient Cities, p. 260) says that these rings are often formed monthly. Cf. Nadaillac, p. 323.
[1050] So called because near a modern village of that name, founded by the Spaniards about 1564. Bancroft (iv. 296) says the ruins are ordinarily called by the natives Casas de Piedra. Ordoñez calls them Nachan, but without giving any authority, and some adopt the Aztec equivalent Calhuacan, city of the serpents. Because Xibalba is held by some to be the name of the great city of this region in the shadowy days of Votan, that name has also been applied to the ruins. Otolum, or the ruined place, is a common designation thereabouts, but Palenqué is the appellation in use by most travellers and writers.
[1051] The fact is, that widely distinct estimates have been held, some dating them back into the remotest antiquity, and others making them later than the Conquest. Bancroft (iv. 362) collates these statements. Cf. Dr. Earl Flint in Amer. Antiquarian, iv. 289. Morelet identifies them with the Toltec remains, supposing them to be the work of that people after their emigration, and to be of about the same age as Mitla. Charnay (Anc. Cities of the New World, p. 260) claims that Cortes knew the place as the religious metropolis of the Acaltecs. On the question of Cortes’ knowledge see Science, Feb. 27, 1885, p. 171; and Ibid. (by Brinton) March 27, 1885, p. 248.
[1052] The original is in the Roy. Acad. of Hist. at Madrid (Brasseur, Bib. Mex.-Guat., p. 125), and is called Descripcion del terreno publacion antigua.
[1053] Field, no. 231; Sabin, xvii. p. 292. The report of Rio was brief, and as we would judge now, superficial. Dupaix treats him disparagingly. The appended essay by Cabrera, an Italian, is said to have been largely filched from Ramon’s paper, which had been confidentially placed in his hands (Short, 207). A Spanish text of Cabrera is in the Museo Nacional. Cf. Brasseur (Bib. Mex.-Guat.), p. 30; Pinart, no. 186. It is a question if the plates, which constituted the most interesting part of the English book, be Rio’s after all; for though they profess to be engraved after his drawings, they are suspiciously like those made by Castañeda, twenty years after Rio’s visit (Bancroft, iv. 290). David B. Warden translated Rio’s report in the Recueil de voyages et de Mémoires, par la Soc. de in Géog. de Paris. (vol. ii.), and gave some of the plates. (Cf. Warden’s Recherches sur les antiquités de l’Amérique Septentrionale, Paris, 1827, in Mém. de la Soc. de Géog.) There is a German version, Beschreibung einer alten Stadt (Berlin, 1832), by J. H. von Minutoli, which is provided with an introductory essay.
[1054] Sabin, x. 209, 213. Cf. Annales de Philos. Chrétienne, xi.
[1055] Bull. de la Soc. de Géog. de Paris, ix. (1828) 198. Dupaix, i. 2d div. 76.