A little brook with chalybeate waters cost us both a wetting; for Frank’s mare stuck in a mud-hole, and my mule slid down a steep bank backwards into the water, soaking my saddlebags. After travelling three hours on this muddy road, we came to a clearing, where were two large champas fast going to ruin. Mr. A. P. Maudslay, an Englishman who has spent much labor and money in exploring Guatemaltecan antiquities, had been here twice, and not only cleared a considerable space around the principal monuments, but had cleaned the stones, and even made moulds in plaster of some of them; he had also built the champas that sheltered us. We spread our wet things over a fire, and went to the first monument (A on the plan), which was close at hand. Mr. Catherwood’s sketches, published in Stephens’s most interesting Travels, led us to expect rough menhirs quite analogous to the Standing Stones of Stennis, or those better known of Stonehenge. Here, rising from a pool of water collected in the excavation Mr. Maudslay had made to examine the foundation, was a monolith of light-colored, coarse-grained sandstone, well carved over its entire surface except top and bottom. On the front and back were full-length human figures, not deities, but attempted likenesses, joined with the tigre’s head to indicate chieftainship, and a skull to represent death. Both sides were covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions quite distinct, but not intelligible to any living being. (See Frontispiece.) What would I have given to be permitted to read the stone-cut story! No locked chamber ever inspired half the curiosity. When was this stone set up, by whom, and to what purpose? Whose are the portraits, when did these persons live, and what did they do for their fellows. The mocking answer to all these questions is cut in the stone before us. The native name of _idolos_ is an idle one, unless used in the Greek sense; for these are no gods, but memorials of the dead as distinctly as the tombstones in our modern graveyards. While the hieroglyphs are similar to those at Copan and Palenque, they are not, I think, identical, and I fancy they are of the nature of the denominative cartouches of the Egyptian obelisks. I copy Mr. Maudslay’s plan of this group of monuments, from which it will at once be seen that their relative position to the other remains is puzzling in the extreme. We left our imaginings for the time, and proceeded to the practical work of photography. This was no light task; for the sun was behind trees which cast shadows on the monuments, while the shady side was almost invisible in the camera. Insects swarmed in front of the lens, and the heat was almost insupportable under the rubber focusing-cloth. However, I succeeded fairly in carrying away a dozen pictures. Whether I can with no greater difficulty explain to my readers what this cemetery looked like, even with the aid of Mr. Maudslay’s rough plan, is more questionable.