RUINS AT RABINAL. (BY A. P. M.)
[Illustration: A TEMPLE NEAR RABINAL.]
We had already changed our plans once, when the failure to find a
road from Belehú to Rabinal diverted our steps to the Alta Vera Paz
and Coban, and now news reached us that, through some blunder, the
cases of instruments and boxes of provisions which were to have been
forwarded to Salamá for our use at Rabinal had never left Guatemala,
so that again we had to alter our plans, and all thoughts of exploring
the ruins near Rabinal had finally to be abandoned. I regretted this
the more as I had already caught a glimpse of these ruins when on a
journey from Santa Cruz Quiché to Coban in 1887, and was much impressed
with what I then saw; but as I was then only able to spend five hours
examining one of the sites, my notes taken on that occasion are very
scanty: however, I will give them here in the hope of attracting the
attention of some other traveller, whom I have no doubt will be amply
repaid for the trouble of examining the ruins more thoroughly.
The two towns of Cubulco and Rabinal are situated about twelve miles
apart at either end of a plain surrounded by high ranges of hills.
Lower hills run out into the plain from north and south, and almost
divide it in two near the middle, and spurs of the high range and
partly detached hills jut out into the plain from all sides. Many of
these lower hill-tops are the sites of ancient Indian buildings, and
on one of them, to the north of the town of Rabinal, the ruins are
visible from the town itself; but as the foundations of the buildings
of this group are said to be much destroyed, I chose as the object of
my excursion another site further to the west and almost equidistant
from Rabinal and Cubulco.
A spur of the bare rocky foothills, rising to over one thousand feet
in height, here juts out into the plain from the main northern range,
and for about three quarters of a mile along its top ridge stands the
ruins of an Indian town. At the narrow neck where the spur leaves
the main range there are the remains of two curved walls about fifty
yards apart, which were no doubt used for defensive purposes. Outside
these walls towards the main range there is one group of buildings. On
leaving this group and crossing the walls to follow the ridge towards
the south, the top and slopes of the hill, for about one hundred feet
down on either side, are seen to be covered with the small terraced
foundations which may have supported very small houses built of some
perishable material, or may possibly be the sites of burial-places.
These terraces are sometimes oblong, measuring 20-30 feet in length by
6-7 feet in width; but more often they are of this shape:--
[Illustration]
and they stand out from the hill thus:--
[Illustration]
Along the ridge of the hill there are seven separate groups of what
must have been public buildings, each group arranged on nearly the same
plan so as to enclose a level plaza. It seems to me most probable that
here we have an example of the villages "of not more than six houses,
standing a gunshot apart," mentioned by Las Casas, and that it was
the inhabitants of the houses on these hill-tops whom he had so much
difficulty in persuading to leave their homes and form the settlement
at Rabinal. The relative position of the seven groups of buildings is
shown on the sketch plan.
[Illustration: RUINS NEAR RABINAL.]
[Illustration: RUINS NEAR RABINAL.]
The general arrangement of the buildings in each group is as
follows:--One large house extends right across the hill-top bounding
the northern side of the Plaza: this house faces the south, and as
there are no openings in the back wall, the access to the Plaza from
the north must have been just on the fall of the hill at each end
of the house. Numerous doorways opened on to a flight of stone steps on
the south side. A house similar in plan, but somewhat smaller, stood
on the southern side of the Plaza and faced north, and there were
usually the remains of some smaller houses facing inwards on the east
and west sides of the Plazas. Almost equidistant between the north and
south houses, in the centre of each Plaza, stood what I take to be
the remains of a temple, facing northwards, and between this and the
northern house stood an altar which was apparently a copy in miniature
of the foundation of the temple.
I took some measurements of the buildings in the Plaza on the top of
the western spur. The arrangement differed somewhat from that of the
other groups, the Plaza being, so to speak, double and having no houses
along the sides, or it may be that the houses were small and had left
no trace of their previous existence. The house No. 1 (see plan, Group
E) was by far the largest, measuring 156 feet 7 inches in length and
21 feet 6 inches in breadth. It was approached by a flight of steps
divided into six divisions by projecting buttresses. Eight masonry
piers supported the roof in front, the wall being continuous at the
sides and back of the house. The wall is still standing in some parts
to the height of 6 feet. A raised bench 6 feet 6 inches in width runs
along the back and sides of the house. Such a building must necessarily
have been roofed with wood; and I may add that nowhere did I find any
traces of stones which could have been used for purposes of roofing.
A ground-plan and elevation of the building, which I take to be a
temple, is also given in the Plate. Two stairways with very narrow
steps rise between buttresses on both north and south sides of the
building and a single stairway on the east and west; but the approach
is from the north side only, and the platform round the temple on the
other three sides is little more than a foot wide. The height of this
platform from the ground is 10 feet 10 inches. The temple has three
doorways on the north side, and the walls are still standing to the
height of 5 feet. The temple marked No. 2 in Group E faced towards the
south. All the other temples are built on the same plan, but differ in
size, some being considerably larger than that shown in the plan.
The altars were apparently miniature copies of the foundations of
the temples, with steps only 3 or 4 inches in height and width; but
no trace of a miniature house could be seen on the top of them. The
masonry is all of the same description: irregular flat stones 2 to 5
inches thick and straight at one edge, placed over one another and
faced with plaster. The stones may have been found already apart from
one another, or may have been flaked off from the rock with little
trouble, and have needed little dressing. The thick plaster coating is
in some places still perfectly preserved.
From the position chosen, and from the fact that the buildings face
inwards, it seems probable that each group may have formed a sort of
fortress.
In one of the plazas I found the remains of a building, of which a
rough ground-plan is here given:--
[Illustration]
It is an oblong enclosure with walls 10 feet thick, with recesses at
the four corners. The walls are in some parts perfect to the height of
7 feet. I could not find that there had been originally any doorway to
this enclosure, but two entrances have been forced in where the walls
are narrowest. It agrees in plan and dimensions with the building
figured in Bancroft's 'Native Races of the Pacific States,' as a type
of the Tlachtli courts of Mexico, where a game (which is described by
Herrera and others) was played with an india-rubber ball.
There were numbers of Chaya (obsidian) flakes lying about on the
surface of the ground, and I found one chipped arrow-head, one stone
axe, and several pieces of stone axes and of mealing-stones.
Nothing beyond these few dry statements can be squeezed out of my
note-book, and what little else is known can be gathered from the
photographs and plans. An examination of the ruins on the neighbouring
hill-tops would doubtless add much to our knowledge, and there still
remains as a field for enquiry the whole of the forest-covered range
of the Sierra de las Minas, which has not as yet been touched by the
archæologist, and must almost certainly contain interesting ruins. The
assertion is not mere guesswork, but is based on the fact that similar
ruins are known to exist on the hills above San Gerónimo, and that I
believe I gained touch of the same style of building at the ruins of
Chacujál on the south side of the valley of the Polochic, which was a
flourishing town when Cortés visited it in the year 1526; it is not
probable that the country between these sites was left uninhabited.