In 1764, the Spanish government sent explorers to visit these ruins, and since then they have been carefully studied. The importance and extent of the buildings seem to show that the ancient city was once the capital and centre of the ancient state of Mayapan. Traces of streets extend for a length of six leagues or more, following the course of mountain streams, which doubtless furnished the inhabitants with water. The most important building at Palenque is the Palace. It rests on a truncated pyramid about fifty feet high, of which the base measures three hundred and ten feet by two hundred and sixty. Subterranean galleries penetrated the interior of the pyramid. It is made of earth, with external faces of large slabs; steps lead up to the top, on which is the chief building, a quadrilateral of two hundred and twenty-eight feet by one hundred and eighty; the walls are from two to three feet thick, ornamented with a frieze between two double cornices, covered with painted stucco, either red, blue, black, or white. There are fourteen entrances in the eastern front, which is the principal one, separated by pillars ornamented with figures more than six feet in height. Over their heads are hieroglyphics which contain the key to their meaning, still hidden to us. The inside of the palace corresponds with the outside, galleries run all round the court, and the lofty chambers are decorated with strange bas-reliefs in granite thirteen feet high or more, strange and grotesque to us, but full of meaning and expression to the race which understood them. [Illustration: STATUE FROM PALENQUE.] Over the palace rises a tower of three stories, thirty feet square at the base, decorated profusely with symbols no longer suggestive. A strange thing about the palace is that the staircases look new, the steps whole and unworn, as if the people who built it had suddenly taken flight soon after they erected their chief buildings. [Illustration: TABLET OF CROSS AT PALENQUE.]