"This edifice [Temple] stands on three ranges of terraces. The first terrace is _six hundred and forty feet long, and five feet_ high. It is walled with _cut stone_, and on the top is a _platform twenty feet broad_, from which rises another terrace _fifteen feet_ high. At the corners this terrace is supported by cut stones, having the faces rounded so as to give a better finish than with sharp angles. The great platform is flat. At the south-east corner of this platform is a row of {ROUND} _pillars eighteen inches in diameter_, and three or four feet high, [_i. e._ broken pillars] extending about one hundred feet along the platform; and these were the _nearest approach to pillars_ or _columns_ (circular) that we saw in all our exploration of ruins of that country." What "nearer approach" was necessary to prove the existence of circular columns, than his own description? Of this hereafter,--again he writes: "In the middle of the terrace, along an avenue leading to a range of steps, was a _broken round pillar_, inclined and falling, and with trees growing around it. In the centre of the platform, at a distance of two hundred and five feet from the border in front, is a range of stone steps, more than a hundred feet broad, and thirty-five in number, ascending to a third terrace, fifteen feet above the last, and thirty-five feet from the ground; which being on a naked plain, formed a most commanding position. The erection of these terraces alone was an immense work. _On the third terrace_, with its principal doorway facing the range of steps, stands the noble structure. [Temple] The façade measures _three hundred and twenty feet_. Away from the regions of dreadful rains, and the rank growth which smothers the Ruins of Palenque,--it stands with all its walls erect, and almost as perfect as when deserted by the inhabitants. The _whole building is of stone_, plain up to the moulding that runs along the tops of the doorway, and above filled with the same rich, strange, and elaborate Sculpture; among which is particularly conspicuous, the ornament before referred to, as _la grecque_." By a reference to the illustrated folio of Waldeck, it is found that this ornament is chiefly the meander, or the Grecian square border, used in the embroidery of the mantles and robes of Attica. "There is no rudeness or barbarity in the design or proportions; on the contrary, the whole wears an air of Architectural symmetry and grandeur; and as the stranger ascends the steps, and casts a bewildered eye along its open and desolate doors, it is hard to believe, that he sees before him the work of a race in whose epitaph, as written by historians,[3] they are called ignorant of Art, and said to have perished in the rudeness of savage life." [3] Dr. Robertson and others.