PALENQUE.
On the 20th February, Gorgonio, José Domingo, and Caralampio Lopez
arrived at Palenque, having ridden overland from Guatemala, and we at
once set to work making paper moulds of the inscriptions; by the end
of three weeks a large number of moulds had been dried and stored in
one of the temples, and others in process of making were still adhering
to the sculptured slabs, when, late one evening, a heavy rain-storm
unexpectedly burst upon us. It was impossible in the dark to reach the
temple where the moulds were stored, as the whole of the intervening
space was covered with felled trees, and even in the daytime it was a
severe gymnastic exercise to get from one building to another. When
daylight came and we were able to reach the temple, we found that the
waterproof sheets with which the moulds were covered had not sufficed
to keep out the driving rain, and that half of the moulds had been
reduced to a pulpy mass, and those in process of making had been almost
washed away. The rain continued to fall all day long, the rooms where
we were living were partly flooded, the walls were running with water,
and the drip came through the roof in all directions. It was not until
the next day that the remnant of the moulds could be carried out to dry
in the returning sunshine, and then we made certain that the greater
part of the work would have to be done over again.
I will not weary my readers with any further account of the troubles
in engaging labourers, it was the old story of effusive offers of help
and broken promises over and over again; at one time, for a few days,
we actually had as many as fifty men at work, and during the next week
we were left without a single one. For many days our only connection
with the village was kept up by the two small boys who brought over
the supply of tortillas for which a contract had been made. These
plucky little fellows walked the twelve miles through the forest alone,
although they were so small that on arriving at the ruins they had to
help one another up and down the rather steep steps which led in and
out of the Courts. Perhaps the chocolate and sweet biscuits with which
they were rewarded had something to do with the persistence with which
they stuck to their task.
[Illustration: GORGONIO LOPEZ, PALENQUE, 1891.]
The forest which surrounds the ruins is as heavy as any I have seen in
Central America, and we were not able to clear away the undergrowth
and fell the timber over more than three quarters of the area
included in the plan, but this was sufficient to bring to light all
the principal buildings. A fortnight of sunshine is needed to dry up
the leaves after the trees are felled, and it is of course of the
greatest importance to burn off the whole clearing at the same time,
as the dried leaves easily catch fire and the great heat ensures the
destruction of all the twigs and smaller branches; but unluckily we
were denied a continuous fortnight of dry weather, and each succeeding
rain-storm beat the dried leaves off of the branches and reduced the
amount of easily inflammable material. It was not until the 15th April
that we were able to run fire through the clearing, and as the result
was not very satisfactory, a good deal of our time was afterwards taken
up in heaping together the unburnt branches and starting secondary
fires. The trunks and larger limbs were of course left unconsumed,
although some of the drier logs would go on smouldering for many days.
In the following short account of the principal buildings I shall keep
to the old but somewhat misleading names by which they are known to the
villagers of Santo Domingo. There is no evidence that the so-called
Palace, of which a separate plan is given on the following page, was
used as the dwelling of a great chief, and I am inclined to look on it
as a collection of buildings raised at different periods of time and
devoted to religious purposes. All trace of a stairway has disappeared
from the outer slopes of the foundation mound, which are covered with
stones and rubble fallen from the buildings above. In structure the
separate houses which form the palace group do not differ materially
from those found at Chichén and Copan; they usually consist of two
narrow chambers side by side, roofed with high-pitched stone vaults.
The outer piers of house A are decorated with human figures moulded in
a hard stucco and surrounded with an ornamental border. The western
piers of houses C and D are decorated in the same manner, and there
are many other traces of similar ornament on other buildings, usually
too much destroyed for the design to be made out. In some instances
these decorations have been preserved in a very curious way: the water
continually dripping on them from above has passed through the dense
mass of decaying vegetation which covers the roofs of the buildings,
and become charged with carbonic acid in the process; it has then
filtered through the slabs of which the roof and cornice are built,
dissolving some of the limestone on its way, and re-depositing it in a
stalactitic formation on the face of the piers. Mr. Price and I worked
for some weeks at clearing the carvings of this incrustation, which
varied from a hardly perceptible film to five or even six inches in
thickness. The thinner parts were the more difficult to deal with, as
they were exceedingly hard; where the thickness exceeded two inches a
few taps with a hammer would sometimes bring away pieces two or three
inches square, and we were fortunate in some instances in finding the
colours on the surface of the stucco ornament underneath still fresh
and bright. An example of this colouring is given on the outside cover
of this volume.
The Eastern court, after being cleared of vegetation, was found to
be so choked up with debris from the half-ruined buildings which
surrounded it, that it was necessary to dig it out in some places to
the depth of four feet, a task which we found to be very laborious.
Some idea of the appearance of the court when the digging was finished
can be formed from the photograph on the following page, which was
taken from the front of House C looking south-east on the last day
of our stay in the ruins, and shows some of the men setting out with
their loads. The house on the north side of the court was completely
ruined and much of the masonry had fallen over the northern slope of
the foundation mound--a destruction which was very likely due to an
earthquake, as a distinct rift can be traced right across the northern
end of the mound. By standing on the broken masonry, a fine view is
gained over the forest-covered plain which stretches northward to the
Gulf of Mexico.
The house marked C is the best-preserved building in the Palace group,
and it was in its eastern corridor that Mr. Price and I took up our
abode, the western corridor serving as kitchen and store-room. The
terrace on the western side of the house marked D was our favourite
resort of an evening, as here we caught the breath of the night wind
and escaped to some extent from the attacks of the myriads of mosquitos
which rose to plague us as soon as the sun had set. On a moonlight
night the view from this terrace of the Temple of Inscriptions with
its background of giant forest was exquisite beyond description. The
Tower, which is shown in the view of the western court, is a most
curious and interesting building. It rises in three stories above
a solid foundation, around which are clustered a number of small
and now half-ruined chambers. The outer wall is pierced on all four
sides by large openings, and encloses a central rectangular shaft of
masonry which contains the stairway giving access to the different
floors. Between the first and second floors is an intermediate story
containing three minute chambers and a narrow passage connecting them
without any exterior openings. The top story is half destroyed, and
the whole structure was in great danger of being overthrown in a heavy
gale from the weight of the huge trees which were growing out of it.
At considerable risk of accident my men succeeded in felling all but
one of these trees, and I hope that the safety of the tower is now
secured for some years to come. It was perilous work, as the foothold
was uncertain, and there was great danger of the trees tearing away
the loose masonry in their fall. One tree alone was left standing, as
its fall must inevitably have damaged the roof of a neighbouring
building, so a ring of bark was stripped from its trunk, in the hope
that it will cause it to die slowly and fall piecemeal.
[Illustration: PALENQUE, THE EASTERN COURT.]
[Illustration: PALENQUE, THE WESTERN COURT & TOWER.]
The other buildings of the Palace group do not here need separate
notice; some of them contain fragments of stucco or painted decoration,
and one (E) has a finely-carved stone medallion let into the wall. The
most curious feature of the southern half of the group is the existence
of three subterranean passages leading to three long parallel chambers,
of which two are enclosed within the foundation mound, and the third
has doorways opening onto the southern slope. The entrances to two of
the passages had been purposely blocked up, and part of one of the
chambers had been walled up and filled in, probably with a view to
affording a secure foundation for a building to be erected above it.
Both passages and chambers are shown in the plan in dotted lines, but a
part of the walls of the latter (surrounded by a wavy line) are shown
in tint.
To the south-west of the Palace stands the Temple of Inscriptions,
built on a foundation mound which backs against a spur running out from
the hills. The building itself is a fine one, and has been elaborately
decorated on the outside, but it is especially interesting on account
of the three stone panels which it contains, two of them let into
the middle wall and one into the back wall of the building, on which
is carved an inscription numbering six hundred glyphs, the longest
continuous inscription of all those as yet discovered in Central
America.
To the east of the Temple of Inscriptions, on the other side of the
stream, three other temples will be found, marked on the plan as the
Temple of the Cross, the Foliated Cross, and the Sun. They are all
three built on much the same plan. The Temple of the Sun, which is the
best preserved of the three, is shown on the Plate facing page 228,
and a ground-plan and section is also given. The whole of the frieze
and the piers of the façade were elaborately decorated with figures
and inscriptions in stucco, of which little now remains. On the roof,
above the wall which divides the two corridors, stood an ornamental
superstructure (a feature common to all buildings of this class) formed
of a light framework of stone, which served to support a number of
figures and other ornaments moulded in stucco. The inner corridor of
each of the three temples is divided by transverse walls into three
small chambers; and in the middle chamber, built out from the back
wall, stands the Sanctuary. The exterior of the Sanctuary was richly
decorated with stone carving and stucco moulding, but the only ornament
in the interior now to be seen is the carved stone panel let into the
back wall.
On the next page is given a drawing of the carved panel from the
Temple of the Foliated Cross, in which the beautifully-cut glyphs of
the inscription are only lightly sketched, so as to give prominence to
the central design.
[Illustration]
The carved panels in the sanctuaries of the Temples of the Foliated
Cross and of the Sun are still intact in their original positions; but
the panel from the Temple of the Cross, which has perhaps received more
attention from archæologists than any other monument of Maya art, has
not been so fortunate. The slab to the left of the spectator only is in
its place; the centre slab, after being torn from its position, broken
in two, and exposed to the weather for many years, has at last found a
resting-place in the Museum of the City of Mexico, and the right-hand
slab, after being broken into fragments, has been carefully and
skilfully pieced together, and is now exhibited in the National Museum
at Washington.
The "aqueduct" marked in the plan is a stone-roofed tunnel intended to
receive the water of the small stream which runs through the ruins.
Unfortunately the upper end of the tunnel has become partly blocked up,
and some of the water finds its way over the surface and floods the
plaza after heavy rain.
As is the case with Copan and Quirigua, so with Palenque--we have
absolutely no knowledge of it as a living town. The existence of
the ruins first became known to the Spaniards in the middle of the
eighteenth century, and before the end of the century they had more
than once been examined and reported on at the instance of the Colonial
Government. That such examinations were somewhat ruthlessly conducted,
and may account for some of the damage from which the buildings have
suffered, is shown by the following quotation from the report
signed by Antonio del Rio:--"I was convinced that in order to form
some idea of the first inhabitants and of the antiquities connected
with their establishments it would be indispensably necessary to make
several excavations.... By dint of perseverance I effected all that
was necessary to be done, so that ultimately there remained neither a
window nor a doorway blocked up, a partition that was not thrown down,
nor a room, corridor, court, tower, nor subterranean passage in which
excavations were not effected from two to three yards in depth."
[Illustration: PALENQUE. PLAN OF THE PALACE.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: PALENQUE, THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN & THE PALACE.]
During the present century travellers have frequently visited the
ruins, and many descriptions of them have been published; amongst the
best known are those of Dupaix, Waldeck, Stephens and Catherwood,
Morelet and Charnay. There still remains, however, much work to be
done--none of the foundation mounds have yet been cleared of the debris
which covers their slopes, and very little attention has been paid
to the tombs and burial mounds, which I know to be very numerous and
believe will prove most interesting. Now that the heavier timber around
the principal buildings has been felled, the work of examination will
be somewhat easier, but the very rapid growth of vegetation will always
entail on the visitor a considerable amount of clearing before he can
obtain a satisfactory view of the buildings. Mr. W. H. Holmes, of the
Field Columbian Museum of Chicago, who visited the ruins in 1895, only
four years after I had cleared them, wrote to me to say that he had to
use a plan and compass and cut his way from building to building, as
a dense-growth of over twenty feet in height completely obscured them
from view.
[Illustration: THE SERPENT BIRD, TIKÁL.]