The principal ruins of Yucatan are those of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza, and references to the literature of each will suffice. Those at Uxmal are in some respects distinct in character from the remains of Honduras and of Chiapas. There are no idols as at Copan. There are no extensive stucco-work and no tablets as at Palenqué. The general type is Cyclopean masonry, faced with dressed stones. The Casa de Monjas, or nunnery (so called), is often considered the most remarkable ruin in Central America; and no architectural feature of any of them has been the subject of more inquiry than the protuberant ornaments in the cornices, which are usually called elephants’ trunks.[1043] It has been contended that the place was inhabited in the days of Cortes.[1044]
FROM CHARNAY.
Also in the Bull. Soc. de Géog. de Paris, 1882 (p. 542). The best large (36 × 28 in.) topographical and historical map of Yucatan, showing the site of ruins, is that of Huebbe and Azuar, 1878. The Plano de Yucatan, of Santiago Nigra de San Martin, also showing the ruins, 1848, is reduced in Stephen Salisbury’s Mayas (Worcester, 1877), or in the Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., April, 1876, and April, 1877. V. A. Malte-Brun’s map, likewise marking the ruins, is in Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Palenqué (1866). There are maps in C. G. Fancourt’s Hist. Yucatan (London, 1854); Dupaix’s Antiquités Méxicaines; Waldeck’s Voyage dans la Yucatan (his MS. map was used by Malte-Brun). Cf. the map of Yucatan and Chiapas, in Brasseur and Waldeck’s Monuments Anciens du Méxique (1866). Perhaps the most convenient map to use in the study of Maya antiquities is that in Bancroft’s Nat. Races, iv. Cf. Crescentio Carrillo’s “Geografía Maya” in the Anales del Museo nacional de México, ii. 435.
The map in Stephens’s Yucatan, vol. i., shows his route among the ruins, but does not pretend to be accurate for regions off his course.
The Journal of the Royal Geog. Soc., vol. xi., has a map showing the ruins in Central America.
The best map to show at a glance the location of the ruins in the larger field of Spanish America is in Bancroft’s Nat. Races, iv.
The earliest printed account of Uxmal is in Cogolludo’s Yucathan (Madrid, 1688), pp. 176, 193, 197; but it was well into this century before others were written. Lorenzo de Zavala gave but an outline account in his Notice, printed in Dupaix in 1834. Waldeck (Voyage Pitt. 67, 93) spent eight days there in May, 1835, and Stephens gives him the credit of being the earliest describer to attract attention. Stephens’s first visit in 1840 was hasty (Cent. Amer., ii. 413), but on his second visit (1842) he took with him Waldeck’s Voyage, and his description and the drawings of Catherwood were made with the advantage of having these earlier drawings to compare. Stephens (Yucatan, i. 297) says that their plans and drawings differ materially from Waldeck’s; but Bancroft, who compares the two, says that Stephens exaggerated the differences, which are not material, except in a few plates (Stephens’s Yucatan, i. 163; ii. 264—ch. 24, 25). About the same time Norman and Friederichsthal made their visits. Bancroft (iv. 150) refers to the lesser narratives of Carillo (1845), and another, recorded in the Registro Yucateco (i. 273, 361), with Carl Bartholomæus Heller (April, 1847) in his Reisen in Mexico (Leipzig, 1853). Charnay’s Ruines (p. 362), and his Anciens Villes (ch. 19, 20), record visits in 1858 and later. Brasseur reported upon Uxmal in 1865 in the Archives de la Com. Scientifique du Méxique (ii. 234, 254), and he had already made mention of them in his Hist. Nations Civ., ii. ch. 1.[1045]
