It can be understood that if the Indian masons and stone cutters had wished to show their ability, they might have adorned their buildings with barbarous figures or rude idols, such as were carved by the natives of Easter Island out of soft volcanic stone. But at Uxmal they revelled in their powers. The walls of the Nunnery and the Casa del Gobernador are covered with designs deeply cut and perfectly joined. Thus it is proved that the sculptors had not only much capacity as workmen, but they must have been able to chisel hard limestone with ease and facility of execution. In the interior of the Nunnery many of the designs are most artistic. Nothing can be more graceful than the block of buildings on the eastern side of the quadrangle. The lattice work, in its appearance and general effect, seems to have an indefinable accordance with the wood and stone carvings that are to be seen in the ancient quarters of Cairo, and the interior of the earliest Arabian mosques. Upon the opposite side of the quadrangle, the ornamentation upon the walls is of a different character and in some respects resembles the designs of Hindoo or Buddhist architecture. This confusion of styles is puzzling to the eye and embarrassing to the judgment. At Palenque the long corridors, the courts, and the use of coloured stucco ornamentation appeared to have some vague relation to a mixed style of Moorish and Spanish architecture. If a corsair, with a crew of Moors and a cargo of Spanish captives, had been driven by the trade wind across the Atlantic, and the strangers, after landing upon the new continent, had married the daughters of the caciques; it would be intelligible that the descendants of the mixed races might have constructed monasteries, temples and pyramids of this strange and complex design. Such was my impression when pacing the corridors at Palenque. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CASA DE LAS MONJAS AND ITS ADJOINING PYRAMID AND TEMPLE, UXMAL.] At Uxmal there were no coloured stuccoes and no corridors. The bold and fantastic style of the sculptures had a character more Eastern, and it might be permissible to imagine that wandering fakirs from Hindostan, or Buddhist pilgrims from Java, Burmah or Cambodia, had reached the Pacific coasts, and had implanted their incomplete acquaintance with the forms of Hindoo or Buddhist temples upon the barbaric ideas of the Indians, and that in this manner were produced the fanciful types of construction or symbolism that are present at Uxmal. These are only conjectures, but it cannot be supposed that this knowledge of architecture and of sculpture arose as suddenly as it disappeared, and sprang into existence as the outcome of the natural capacity of the Indian mind. The problem is interesting and attractive. It is one that is exceedingly difficult to solve.