Now let us take that most characteristic of all features of Mayan architecture, the so-called Mayan arch. In the strict sense it is not an arch at all. It never reached the stage of being curved, but was a series of inverted steps rising to the roof and crowned with a slab, as will be plainly seen in our illustration. Sometimes the steps were hewn off so as to give an even surface on which plaster was smeared. Now this peculiar arch is found in ancient Buddhist structures and nowhere else in the world. John Crawfurd in his _History of the Indian Archipelago_ (3 vols.: Edinburgh, 1820), in vol. ii. p. 200, when speaking of the interior of the buildings there, writes: "The stones overlap each other within so as to present to the eye the appearance of inverted steps of a stair.... The builders of Bramhanan had possessed the art of turning the elliptical arch and vault, for the entrances and doorways are all arched and the roofs vaulted. A circular vault or arch, however, is nowhere to be found among the ruins; and the principle of turning an arch is nowhere carried to such a length as to convey the impression of grandeur or magnificence." This might as appropriately have been written of the Mayan buildings. Where in the very few instances the arch was continued along more than one side of the building, as in the Castillo of Chichen, it does not make a circular turn, but comes to a corner and then goes off at right angles. The only circular turning arch we saw was the continuously rounded one in the Caracol at Chichen. [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF MAYAN ARCH.] Next, let us take the interior wall paintings of the buildings of both countries. Most of the inner walls of the buildings in Central America bear traces of paints on the plaster. The biggest room at Chichen, that on the south side of the Nunnery, 47 feet by 9, was once covered with paintings from the floor to the apex of the roof. So were the smaller rooms. But owing to vandalism and natural decay of the plaster, they cannot now be properly traced. There is, however, enough to show that they represented the inhabitants of the city. Again, in the House of the Tigers, standing up gaunt and majestic on the wall of the Tennis Court, the everyday life of the builders is depicted by the artist in blues, greens, yellows, and a reddish brown.