Still more curious and interesting than the last described city, are the
ruins of Palenque, in the province of Chiapas, bordering upon Yucatan.
One of the chief structures of this ancient city stands on an artificial
elevation 40 feet high, 310 feet in length, and 260 feet in width. The
sides were originally covered with stones, which have been thrown down
by the growth of trees. On the summit are the ruins of a building,
known as the Palace, about 25 feet in height, with a front measuring 228
feet by 180 feet deep. In front were, originally, fourteen doorways,
with intervening piers, covered with human figures, hieroglyphics, and
carved ornaments. The walls are of stone, laid with mortar and sand;
and the whole is covered by stucco, nearly as hard as stone, and richly
painted. On each side of the steps are gigantic human statues carved in
stone, with rich head-dresses and necklaces.
In one of the buildings is a stone tower of three stories, thirty feet
square at the base, and rising far above the surrounding walls. The
walls are very massive, and the floors are paved with large square
stones. In one of the corridors are two large tablets of hieroglyphics.
There are numerous other buildings, all standing on the summits of
similar pyramids. In several of the buildings the roofs still remain,
and preserve the stuccoed ornamentation with which the walls are
adorned. The colours, in many of them, are still bright; and could the
hieroglyphics with which they are surrounded be read, they would
probably give as clear a history of the departed inhabitants as do those
found in the tombs on the banks of the Nile. The most remarkable
figures are the bas-reliefs, in stucco, representing a woman with a
child in her arms--which forcibly remind us of the statues in ancient
Babylon representing the goddess mother and son (the same worshipped in
Egypt under the names of Isis and Osiris; in India, even to this day, as
Isi and Iswara; and also in China, where Shingmoo, the holy mother, is
represented with a child in her arms, and a glory round her head). It
is impossible, looking at these figures, to suppose otherwise than that
they were derived from the same source whence the idols of Egypt,
Greece, and pagan Rome had their origin.