We next visited the pyramid. It was approached by steps, but the temple which once crowned it had fallen and was a mass of stones, none of them apparently carved. But the most extraordinary ruins were what had evidently been two pillared halls standing about fifty yards apart. That on the south was the largest, and stood on a stone platform 90 feet long and 33 feet wide. The building itself measured 60 feet by 17 feet, and in two rows down the centre, ten in each row, were immense pillars, many monolithic and some as much as 8-1/2 feet high. These had originally supported the roof, now fallen and making a rooting place for trees and undergrowth which covered the whole platform. Around the platform on the ground-level was a paved walk, 16 feet wide, now buried under the fallen walls. The building on the north was no better preserved. It was exactly the same except that it had three rows of pillars running the length of the building, in their broken state looking like grey-barked trees severed by an axe. When newly erected these twin pillared halls must have been really magnificent. The architecture of all the buildings was rougher but more solid than that of those of the mainland. A noticeable feature, which we remarked again in Cozumel, was the prevalence of the monolithic pillar, which we found nowhere on the mainland among the richly decorated ruins such as Chichen, Labna and Sayil, where the pillar, almost always carved in relief, is square and built in sections a foot or two high. Of mural ornamentation there was no sign; and the general appearance of these Cancun ruins showed cruder workmanship than the rich façade work and carvings of Chichen and Palenque. On our way back to the shore we discovered a small group of ruins, a mound and two or three houses, in hopeless decay. The isolated position of the island and its difficulty of approach perhaps explain the fact that no Spanish landing in the sixteenth century is recorded. Thus time and time alone has been the enemy of this city. Shattered as they were by the ravages of time, these Cancun buildings suggest--nay, they demand as their only explanation--a multitudinous population. The mere erection of the pillared halls by hand labour must have been a colossal task, and how the monoliths, many twice the height of the average Indian, were so perfectly hewn without metal tools seems almost a miracle. Cancun is a limestone island, and there is no doubt that the stones were quarried somewhere on its surface, though we were unable to find a suggestion of a quarry anywhere for miles around. [Illustration: PLAN OF CANCUN RUINS.]