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We must also name Don Juan Galindo, a Spanish colonel, who explored Palenque, Utatlan, Copan, and other cities buried in the heart of tropical forests. After the long stay made by Humboldt in equinoctial America, the impulse his explorations would doubtless otherwise have given to geographical science was strangely checked by the struggle of the Spanish colonies with the mother country.
Some of the principal seats of the Colhuan civilization were in the region now covered by the great forest. Some investigators have sought to identify the city of Xibalba with the ruined city known to us as Palenque. Brasseur de Bourbourg says: “Palenque appears to have been the same city to which the books give the name of Xibalba;” but this is nothing but conjecture.
These are three in number, and they head processions at fiestas; the drum, like that we saw at Tuxtla, is cylindrical, with two heads; the pito is the usual reed whistle; the tortuga, a large turtle-shell, was brought from Palenque; it is hung by a belt to the player, and is beaten on the lower side with two leg-bones of a deer. The Cancuc dress is simple.
It represents that the advanced human development whose crumbling monuments are studied at Copan, Mitla, and Palenque antedates every thing else in the human period of our globe, excepting, perhaps, an earlier time of barbarism and pastoral simplicity; that its history goes back through all the misty ages of pre-historic time to an unknown date previous to the beginning of such civilization in any part of the Old World.
The lofty mountains which in Santo Domingo City can be discerned on the distant horizon have at Palenque become more distinct and approached nearer to the shore. On the green plain which slopes from their base to the sea, white specks, glittering in the sun, betray the presence of the town of Bani.
As already stated, they were first discovered by Europeans about forty years after the war of the conquest swept through that part of the country, and were at that time wholly mysterious to the natives. The monuments seem older than those at Palenque, but we have only scant descriptions of them.
What can we suppose the nation which built Palenque and Copan to have been but only a Mandan tribe, which chanced to have made its way farther along the path of civilization and the arts, before the barbarians broke in upon it?
A brief reference to Palenque will conclude this notice, but without dealing with the facts as fully as they deserve. There are four or five pyramidal elevations at this pueblo quite similar in plan and general situation with those at Uxmal. One is much the largest, and the structures upon it are called the "Palace." It has generally been regarded as the paragon of American Indian architecture.
The ruins of Palenque are deemed important by archæologists partly on account of the great abundance of inscriptions found there, which, it is believed, will at length be deciphered, the written characters being similar to those of the Mayas, which are now understood. The ruins known as Copan are situated in the extreme western part of Honduras, where they are densely covered by the forest.
Stephens, describing corridors of the “Palace” at Palenque, says “the floors are of cement, as hard as the best seen in the remains of Roman baths and cisterns.” We give two illustrations of their method of constructing the arch. The ornamentation is no less remarkable than the masonry and architectural finish.
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