The whole country to the south of Uxmal is covered with ruins. At a
place called Labra, there is a tower richly ornamented, forty feet in
height, which stands on the summit of an artificial elevation. In
another place there is one forty-five feet high; along the top of which,
standing out from the wall, is a row of deaths' heads--or perhaps
monkeys' heads--and underneath are two lines of human figures, greatly
mutilated.
At Kewick, a short distance from Labra, are numerous other ruins, mostly
remarkable for the simplicity of their architecture and the grandeur of
their proportions. It is still uncertain whether these cities were
inhabited by the unhappy people conquered by the Spaniards, or whether
they were built by a race which, from some unknown cause, had already
passed away. We see how completely the Mexicans and Peruvians, after
the conquest, sunk from their comparatively high state of civilisation
into barbarism; and such might have been the case with the inhabitants
of these cities. Their origin will probably for ever afford matter for
speculation.
The different cities vary in their style of architecture almost as much
as as they do from those of Assyria or Egypt; but when we come to
examine the sculptures, we may be able to trace a much stronger
resemblance. The statues of the woman and child, the cruciform
ornaments, the serpents and gigantic heads of apes, as well as those of
the typical heads of savage animals surmounting the heads of the
statues, are all to be found on the banks of the Nile, and were probably
derived from the same central source. While the tribes who proceeded
westward peopled Egypt, others, among whom a similar system of idolatry
prevailed, may have migrated towards the east, and finally made their
way across the Pacific to the shores of America.