HIEROGLYPHICS.

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The interior of the building is divided into two corridors, running lengthwise, with a ceiling rising nearly to a point, as in the palace, and paved with large square stones. The front corridor is seven feet wide. The separating wall is very massive, and has three doors, a large one in the centre, and a smaller one on each side. In this corridor, on each side of the principal door, is a large tablet of hieroglyphics, each thirteen feet long and eight feet high, and each divided into two nundred and forty squares of characters or symbols. Both are set in the wall so as to project three or four inches. In one place a hole had been made in the wall close to the side of one of them, apparently for the purpose of attempting its removal, by which we discovered that the stone is about a foot thick. The

sculpture is in bas-relief. The tablets are represented in the engravings opposite.

The construction of the tablets was a large stone on each side, and smaller ones in the centre, as indicated by the dark lines in the engravings.

In the right-hand tablet one line is obliterated by water that has trickled down for an unknown length of time, and formed a sort of stalactite or hard substance, which has incorporated itself with the stone, and which we could not remove, though perhaps it might be detached by some chemical process. In the other tablet, nearly one half of the hieroglyphics are obliterated by the action of water and decomposition of the stone. When we first saw them both tablets were covered with a thick coat of green moss, and it was necessary to wash and scrape them, clear the lines with a stick, and scrub them thoroughly, for which last operation a pair of blacking-brushes that Juan had picked up in my house at Guatimala, and disobeyed my order to throw away upon the road, proved exactly what we wanted and could not have procured. account of the darkness of the corridor, from the thick shade of the trees growing before it, it was necessary to burn candles or torches, and to throw a strong light upon the stones while Mr. Catherwood was drawing.

Besides this process, on

The corridor in the rear is dark and gloomy, and divided into three apartments. Each of the side apartments has two narrow openings about three inches wide and a foot high. They have no remains of sculpture, or painting, or stuccoed ornaments. In the centre apartment, set in the back wall, and fronting the principal door of entrance, is another tablet of hieroglyphics, four feet six inches wide and three feet six inches high. The roof above it is tight; consequently it has not suf