We entered a clearing, some four hundred feet square, made only the year before, but already covered with undergrowth, so that our men had to use their machetes freely to expose the stones. The level was low and the soil full of water, which stood in pools here and there. On our left was a mound, more than two hundred feet long, which we did not inspect, and in front of this were placed three monoliths. The first (A) was the smallest; the second (B) was four feet wide, three feet deep, and perhaps sixteen feet high; the third (C) was four feet nine inches wide, two feet nine inches deep, and eighteen feet high. Both B and C stood on irregular ends, and the tops of all were left much as they came from the quarry. Two taller ones stood on the opposite side of the clearing. One (F) was inclined (as it was to a much less extent when Mr. Catherwood made his drawing, forty years ago), and the under side has been protected from the weather, so that the face is well preserved, the large nose being intact. This face, unlike the one on the opposite side, is below the general level of the sculptures, suggesting a substitution of the present portrait for the original one. The inclination is about thirty-six degrees from the vertical; and as the stone is about twenty-five feet above ground, it must be wedged with large foundation-stones, or be buried deep in the soft earth. [Illustration: MONOLITH AT QUIRIGUA, E.] [Illustration: Monolith at Quirigua, F.] Of all the portraits cut upon these stones, this leaning monolith has the most remarkable. The hands and feet are represented in the same conventional manner as on the stone marked E; but the immense size of the nose, as well as of the ears, distinguishes it from all others. The cast of countenance is very Egyptian. On many of these sculptures are seen indications of the worship of the cross (as in the figure on the reverse of E), although this symbol is usually of complicated form, as on the celebrated tablet at Palenque. The monolith B has on the breast, in place of the cross, the double triangle, sometimes called Solomon’s Seal, and, like the cross, a well-known symbol of primitive worship. The nose of the figure on what is now the upper side of F, is broken, but was of large size originally.