Identifier: travelsamongstam00brin (find matches)
Title: Travels amongst American Indians : their ancient earthworks and temples : including a journey in Guatemala, Mexico and Yucatan, and a visit to the ruins of Patinamit, Utatlan, Palenque and Uxmal
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Brine, Lindesay, 1834-1906
Subjects: Indians -- Antiquities Guatemala -- Antiquities Mexico -- Antiquities North America -- Description and travel
Publisher: London : S. Low, Marston & Company
Contributing Library: Brown University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brown University

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han the block of buildings on theeastern side of the quadrangle. The lattice work,in its appearance and general effect, seems to havean indefinable accordance with the wood and stonecarvings that are to be seen in the ancient quartersof Cairo, and the interior of the earliest Arabianmosques. Upon the opposite side of the quadrangle,the ornamentation upon the walls is of a differentcharacter and in some respects resembles the designsof Hindoo or Buddhist architecture. This confusionof styles is puzzling to the eye and embarrassingto the judgment. At Palenque the long corridors, the courts, andthe use of coloured stucco ornamentation appearedto have some vague relation to a mixed style ofMoorish and Spanish architecture. If a corsair, witha crew of Moors and a cargo of Spanish captives, hadbeen driven by the trade wind across the Atlantic,and the strangers, after landing upon the newcontinent, had married the daughters of the caciques;it would be intelligible that the descendants of the
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PALENQUE AND UXMAL. 353 mixed races might have constructed monasteries,temples and pyramids of this strange and complexdesign. Such was my impression when pacing thecorridors at Palenque. At Uxmal there were no coloured stuccoes andno corridors. The bold and fantastic style of thesculptures had a character more Eastern, and itmight be permissible to imagine that wanderingfakirs from Hindostan, or Buddhist pilgrims fromJava, Burmah or Cambodia, had reached the Pacificcoasts, and had implanted their incomplete acquaint-ance with the forms of Hindoo or Buddhist temjDlesu;)on the barbaric ideas of the Indians, and that inthis manner were produced the fanciful types ofconstruction or symbolism that are present atUxmal. These are only conjectures, but it cannot besupposed that this knowledge of architecture and ofsculpture arose as suddenly as it disappeared, andsprang into existence as the outcome of the naturalcapacity of the Indian mind. The problem is inter-esting and attractive. It is

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