The principal ruins of Yucatan are those of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza, and references to the literature of each will suffice. Those at Uxmal are in some respects distinct in character from the remains of Honduras and of Chiapas. There are no idols as at Copan. There are no extensive stucco-work and no tablets as at Palenqué. The general type is Cyclopean masonry, faced with dressed stones. The Casa de Monjas, or nunnery (so called), is often considered the most remarkable ruin in Central America; and no architectural feature of any of them has been the subject of more inquiry than the protuberant ornaments in the cornices, which are usually called elephants’ trunks.[1043] It has been contended that the place was inhabited in the days of Cortes.[1044] [Illustration: FROM CHARNAY. Also in the _Bull. Soc. de Géog. de Paris_, 1882 (p. 542). The best large (36 × 28 in.) topographical and historical map of Yucatan, showing the site of ruins, is that of Huebbe and Azuar, 1878. The _Plano de Yucatan_, of Santiago Nigra de San Martin, also showing the ruins, 1848, is reduced in Stephen Salisbury’s _Mayas_ (Worcester, 1877), or in the _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, April, 1876, and April, 1877. V. A. Malte-Brun’s map, likewise marking the ruins, is in Brasseur de Bourbourg’s _Palenqué_ (1866). There are maps in C. G. Fancourt’s _Hist. Yucatan_ (London, 1854); Dupaix’s _Antiquités Méxicaines_; Waldeck’s _Voyage dans la Yucatan_ (his MS. map was used by Malte-Brun). Cf. the map of Yucatan and Chiapas, in Brasseur and Waldeck’s _Monuments Anciens du Méxique_ (1866). Perhaps the most convenient map to use in the study of Maya antiquities is that in Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_, iv. Cf. Crescentio Carrillo’s “Geografía Maya” in the _Anales del Museo nacional de México_, ii. 435. The map in Stephens’s _Yucatan_, vol. i., shows his route among the ruins, but does not pretend to be accurate for regions off his course. The _Journal of the Royal Geog. Soc._, vol. xi., has a map showing the ruins in Central America. The best map to show at a glance the location of the ruins in the larger field of Spanish America is in Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_, iv.]