This one is thirteen feet high and is constructed in the same manner as the one that is gone. Everywhere throughout Yucatan and the contiguous region the architecture is overloaded with ornamentation which many large volumes would barely be sufficient to describe. In Nicaragua, as well as in Honduras, there are found many carvings and sculptures, statues, stelæ, etc., but they are rarely equal to those found in the Maya ruins. It must be said, however, that the examination of these states has been even less thorough than that of the Maya region. Tribes of Nahuatl stock built and laboured in the country below the Maya, and in Costa Rica there are indications that the remains belong to Amerinds who differed from both Maya and Nahuatl. Some of the supposed metates or mealing stones found in Nicaragua are carved with legs and artistically decorated. One figured by Squier is a particularly beautiful specimen. It is a thin curved slab, concave side up, and has four legs. One end projects considerably beyond the legs, apparently forming the head or end where the operator sat or kneeled, and is carved in a wide band all the way across. In Chiriqui there are similar stones. Another class of carved remains found in Chiriqui is apparently a sort of metate, but it differs from the latter in being round, and Holmes designates them as stools, for want of a more exact term.[169] Some wooden stools have recently been obtained in Central America which are so nearly like the affair described by Squier as a metate, that it is probable the latter was also a stool. The figure on page 188 illustrates this class. They have a depressed upper surface and are carved basalt in one piece. An example of the round is given above. To carve an object like this from solid basalt must have been a work of great duration. It is in their metal- and claywork, however, that the Chiriqui Amerinds specially excelled. [Illustration: STOOL OF GREY BASALT, CHIRIQUI.] All works are dominated by the customs and religious ideas of the Amerind race, which were practically the same everywhere in different stages of development. Nowhere do we find a touch of idealism, which is such a marked characteristic of the work of the European race. The highest of it marks a development in art below the Egyptian. As in picture-writing we trace the growth of letters, so by the aid of the Amerind sculpture and carving we have a line of art progress from infancy to the present time. [Illustration: COPPER BELL FROM TENNESSEE] [Illustration: PUEBLO MEALING STONES] CHAPTER VIII SHELTERS, DWELLINGS, AND ARCHITECTURE