Rambles in Yucatan: Or, Notes of Travel Through the Peninsula, Including a Visit to the Remarkable Ruins of Chi-Chen, Kabak, Zayi, and Uxmal ... |
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Common terms and phrases
America ancient appearance arrived Aztalan beautiful Bochica broken building built CACIQUES calabash Campeachy carved Casa-real ceilings centre Chi-Chen church Cloaca Maxima corridors Cortez covered curate customs discovered door doorways dress edifices evidently façade feet high fifty feet figures finished four front Governor's House hacienda hammocks height hewn stone hieroglyphics horses Humboldt hundred feet idols immense Indians inhabitants interior José KABAH kind ladies language leagues lintels Maya Maya language ments Merida Mexican Mexico miles morning mounds muslin nations natives o'clock observed occupied ornamented Palenque piles pillars political portion present priests principal province Pyramid Quetzalcoatl race remains road rooms ruins says sculptured seen side similar Sisal South America Spaniards square stranger streets style surrounded temple terrace thing Ticul tion tortillas town traveller trees tumuli Uxmal Valladolid vegetation vicinity Votan walls whole Yucatan
Popular passages
Page 111 - Thebes's streets three thousand years ago. When the Memnonium was in all its glory, And time had not begun to overthrow Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous, Of which the very ruins are tremendous.
Page 240 - I possess the vocabularies. The variety of idioms spoken by the people of the new continent, and which, without the least exaggeration, may be stated at some hundreds, offers a very striking phenomenon, particularly when we compare it with the few languages spoken in Asia and Europe.
Page 176 - I shall never be able without seeing you in person, and perhaps not then, to inform you how universally and circumstantially the Tartars resemble the aborigines of America. They are the same people ; the most ancient and the most numerous of any other ; and had not a small sea divided them, they would all have been still known by the same name.
Page 179 - Whose lonely columns stand sublime, Flinging their shadows from on high, Like dials, which the wizard, Time, Had raised to count his ages by...
Page 282 - ... the plate.) As it respects the scientific acquirements of the builders of the works in the west, now in ruins, Mr. Atwater says, " when thoroughly examined, have furnished matter of admiration to all intelligent persons, who have attended to the subject. Nearly all the lines of ancient works found in the whole country, where the form of the ground admits of it, are right ones, pointing to the four cardinal points. Where there are mounds enclosed, the gateways are mdst frequently on the east side...
Page 297 - I have restored to them the true name of Otolum, which is yet the name of the stream running through the ruins. I should have been inclined to undertake this voyage and exploration myself, if the civil discords of the country did not forbid it. My attention was drawn forcibly to this subject as soon...
Page 240 - It appears that the most part of these languages, far from being dialects of the same (as some authors have falsely advanced), are at least as different from one another as the Greek and the German, or the French and Polish. This is the case at least with the seven languages of New Spain, of which I possess the vocabularies.
Page 288 - ... extending along the mountain that stretches east and west either way from these buildings, as if they were the great temple of worship, or their government house, around which they built their city, and where dwelt their kings and officers of state. At this place was found a subterranean stone aqueduct, of great solidity and durability, which in its course passes beneath the largest building.
Page 111 - I beheld before me, for a circuit of many miles in diameter, the walls of palaces and temples and pyramids, more or less dilapidated. The earth was strewed, as far as the eye could distinguish, with columns, some broken and some nearly perfect, which seemed to have been planted there by the genius of desolation which presided over this awful solitude.