measured six hundred and twenty-four feet north and south by eight hundred and nine feet east and west. The general feature of the ruin is that of an immense pyramidal terrace, with a platform elevated about seventy feet above the ground. The river side of the terrace is perpendicular, while the remaining sides are sloping; viewing the ruin from this general platform seventy feet high, depressions such as amphitheatre-like courts descend from it in some instances thirty or forty feet, or about half way to the level of the ground, while above the level of the general platform pyramidal structures rise to a considerable height, in one instance one hundred and twenty-two feet. It is difficult to conceive of what might have been the nature of the superstructure, if any surmounted the general platform. It is probable that for the purposes of assembly the amphitheatres with their sloping sides may have answered every purpose, while the pyramids may have been surmounted by temples now in ruins. Of the sculptured columns of this locality we will speak farther on. Utatlan, the former capital of the modern Quiché kingdom, would naturally be selected as a point at which to seek for remains of the newer Quiché styles of architecture. The conquerors, however, left little that can serve as the basis for architectural study. The city was surrounded by a deep ravine or barranca, which can be crossed at only one point, and there long lines of stone fortifications still guard the passage. A fortress, called El Resguardo, is among these works. It rises one hundred and twenty feet high in the form of a terraced pyramid, with a stone wall plastered with cement enclosing its summit platform, on which a circular tower provided with a stairway was built. Only fragmentary walls of the Quiché palaces remain; their dimensions were eleven hundred by twenty-two hundred feet, and nothing but their cement covered floors have survived the vandalism of the conquerors and the architects of the modern town; the latter having carried away the upper portions for building purposes. A pyramidal structure near by, known as El Sacrificatorio, presents no architectural contrasts to pyramids already described. Its stairway, composed of nineteen steps each eight inches broad and seventeen inches high, is characteristically Central American.[515] In the province of Vera Paz, especially in the Rabinal Valley, Brasseur de Bourbourg observed numbers of tumuli, resembling those of the Mississippi Valley both in material and structure. These were especially prevalent in the neighborhood of the villages, and sometimes were associated with pyramidal structures equal in finish to any we have described. The name _cakhay_, “red houses,” is generally applied to these tumuli.[516]