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Therefore it is not unreasonable to assume that Copan and Palenque are specimens of great ruins that lie buried in it. The ruins of which something is known have merely been visited and described in part by explorers, some of whom brought away drawings of the principal objects. In giving a brief account of the more important ruins, I will begin with the old city of which most has been heard.
They find in them a significance which is stated as follows by Brasseur de Bourbourg: “Among the edifices forgotten by time in the forests of Mexico and Central America, we find architectural characteristics so different from each other, that it is as impossible to attribute them all to the same people as to believe they were all built at the same epoch.” In his view, “the substructions at Mayapan, some of those at Tulha, and a great part of those at Palenque,” are among the older remains.
This edifice, sometimes called “La Cruz,” has, above the height required for the rooms, what is described as “two stories of interlaced stucco-work, resembling a high, fanciful lattice.” Here, too, inscribed tablets appear on the walls; but the inscriptions, which are abundant at Palenque, are by no means confined to tablets.
The teocalli, or temples, are farther south, down in the State of Chiapas, and in Yucatan." "But we might find some underground temple up here," insisted Jimmie. "The natives worshiped in this region, didn't they?" "They built their temples on top of pyramids," continued Fenton, "and not underground. There is one at Palenque said to be built on the lines of Solomon's temple.
Between 1805 and 1807, three journeys were successively taken in the province of Chiapa and to Palenque by Captain William Dupaix and the draughtsman Castañeda, and the result of their researches appeared in 1830 in the form of a magnificent work, with illustrations by Augustine Aglio, executed at the expense of Lord Kingsborough.
This inhospitable shore has been the witness of stirring episodes, for it was near Fort San Geronimo where the American troops came ashore in 1916; at the mouth of the Jaina that Drake disembarked in 1586 to accomplish his bold reduction of Santo Domingo City; at the cove of Najayo where Penn and Venables landed in 1655 in their unsuccessful descent upon the colony; and near Port Palenque where a British force under Carmichael landed in 1809 to assist the Dominicans in retaking Santo Domingo City from the French.
Squier, Frederick Waldeck’s work, and a recent French volume by Desiré Charnay, which is accompanied by a folio volume of photographs. Palacios, who described Copan in 1576, may properly be called the first explorer. A brief account of Palenque was prepared by Captain Del Rio in 1787, and published in 1822.
But he had furnished a general ground plan of all the ruins found of the Palenque pueblo, which made it plain that four or five structures upon pyramidal platforms at some distance from each other, with the whole space over which they were scattered about equal to the Battery, made a poor show for a city.
If we suppose Palenque to have been deserted some six hundred years previous to the Spanish Conquest, this date will carry us back only to the last days of its history as an inhabited city.
Mayapan may have stood upon the foundations of a very ancient city which was several times rebuilt, but the city destroyed in 1420 could not have been as old as either Palenque or Copan. The ruins of Uxmal have been regarded as the most important in Yucatan, partly on account of the edifices that remain standing, but chiefly because they have been more visited and explored than the others.
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