After a cut in Squier’s _Serpent Symbol_. There are two of these rings in the walls of one of the buildings twenty or thirty feet from the ground. They are four feet in diameter. Cf. Stephens’s _Yucatan_, ii. 304; Bancroft, iv. 230.] [Illustration: FROM CHICHEN-ITZA. A bas-relief, one of the best preserved at Chichen-Itza, after a sketch in Charnay and Viollet-le-Duc’s _Cités et Ruines Américaines_ (Paris, 1863), p. 53, of which Viollet-le-Duc says: “Le profil du guerrier se rapproche sensiblement les types du Nord de l’Europe.”] It seems hardly to admit of doubt that the cities—if that be their proper designation—of Yucatan were the work of the Maya people, whose descendants were found by the Spaniards in possession of the peninsula, and that in some cases, like those of Uxmal and Toloom, their sacred edifices did not cease to be used till some time after the Spaniards had possessed the country. Such were the conclusions of Stephens,[1048] the sanest mind that has spent its action upon these remains; and he tells us that a deed of the region where Uxmal is situated, which passed in 1673, mentions the daily religious rites which the natives were then celebrating there, and speaks of the swinging doors and cisterns then in use. The abandonment of one of the buildings, at least, is brought down to within about two centuries, and comparisons of Catherwood’s drawings with the descriptions of more recent explorers, by showing a very marked deterioration within a comparatively few years, enable us easily to understand how the piercing roots of a rapidly growing vegetation can make a greater havoc in a century than will occur in temperate climates. The preservation of paint on the walls, and of wooden lintels in some places, also induce a belief that no great time, such as would imply an extinct race of builders, is necessary to account for the present condition of the ruins, and we must always remember how the Spaniards used them as quarries for building their neighboring towns. How long these habitations and shrines stood in their perfection is a question about which archæologists have had many and diverse estimates, ranging from hundreds to thousands of years. There is nothing in the ruins themselves to settle the question, beyond a study of their construction. So far as the traditionary history of the Mayas can determine, some of them may have been built between the third and the tenth century.[1049] * * * * *