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Where the city of Mexico now stands was a famous capital, from whose ruins were taken the great Calendar stone and the double statue of the god of war and the god of death. In Palenque and Uxmal, capitals of Yucatan, were immense palaces and temples, with the weird ornamentation of Mayan imagination; and equal wonders exist in the high uplands where the Incas ruled Peru.
Sixth: That all there ever was of Uxmal, Palenque, Copan, and other pueblos in these areas, building for building, and stone for stone, are there now in ruins. Seventh: That nothing herein stated is inconsistent with the supposition that some of these structures were devoted to religious uses.
The use made of these foundations at Palenque, Uxmal, and Chichen-Itza, shows the purpose for which they were constructed in the Mississippi Valley. The resemblance is not due to chance. The explanation appears to me very manifest.
Now the writing of the inscriptions at Palenque, Copan, and elsewhere in the ruins has no more relatedness to the Phœnician than to the Chinese writing.
Other villages of the province are: San Lorenzo de los Minas, 3 miles northeast of Santo Domingo, first settled in 1719 by negroes of the Minas tribe, refugees from French Santo Domingo; San Antonio de Guerra, situated in the plains 19 miles northeast of the capital; Boya, 32 miles northeast of the capital, founded in 1533 by Enriquillo, the last Indian chief and by the last survivors of the Indians of the island: it contains an old church of composite aboriginal Gothic architecture, in which the remains of Enriquillo and of his wife Dona Mencia are believed to rest; Mella, 7 miles, and La Victoria, 12 miles north of the capital; Yamasa, 30 miles northwest of Santo Domingo; and Sabana Grande, or Palenque, 22 miles west of the city.
The peaceful conditions to which the country returned were only troubled by British vessels which occasionally attempted to establish blockades. On February 6, 1806, a British squadron of eight vessels under Sir John Duckworth badly defeated a French squadron, also of eight vessels, in a hotly contested fight off Point Palenque to the southwest of Santo Domingo City.
These were all buried around the body of the king, whose tomb was of rock, and a huge mound of earth erected over them by the labor of thousands of slaves taken in battle. Yet their chief king, in the day of their great power, she called Palenque, placing his capital to north and east of this place, a land journey of thirty days.
Where several are grouped together on the same platform, as at Palenque, they are severally under independent roofs, and the spaces between, called courts, are simply open lanes or passageways between the structures. An inspection of the ground plan of the Palenque ruins in the folio volume of Dupaix, or in the work of Mr.
Accepting the reports of explorers as correct, there is evidence in the ruins that Quirigua is older than Copan, and that Copan is older than Palenque. The old monuments in Yucatan represent several distinct epochs in the ancient history of that peninsula. Some of them are kindred to those hidden in the great forest, and remind us more of Palenque than of Uxmal.
Other explorers have since visited Palenque, and reported on the ruins by pen and pencil; but it is not certain that all the ruined edifices belonging to them have been seen, nor that the explorations have made it possible to determine the ancient extent of the city with any approach to accuracy.
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