in perfect seclusion, and offer expiatory sacrifices for the royal dead who reposed in the vaults beneath.[1]
The village of Mitla was formerly called Miguitlan, signifying, in the Mexican tongue, "a place of sadness;" and, by the Zapotecs, Léoba, or "The tomb."
These palace-tombs formed three edifices, symmetrically placed on a romantic site. The principal building (which is still in the best preservation,) has a length of near one hundred and fifty feet. A stairway leads to a subterranean apartment of about one hundred feet by thirty in width, the walls of which are covered with ornaments, à la grèque, similar to those that adorn the exterior walls represented in the drawing. These ornaments are inlaid in a mosaic of porphyritic stones, and resemble the figures found on Etruscan vases, and on the frieze of the temple of the god Redicolus, near the Egerian grotto at Rome.
The engraved fragment represents a corner of one of the edifices, and you cannot fail to remark a similarity to some of the designs presented to the public by Mr. Catherwood, in his researches farther south.
The ruins of Mitla are distinguished, I believe, from all the remains of ancient architecture in Mexico, by six columns of porphyry, placed in the midst of a large saloon, and supporting the ceiling. They have neither bases nor capitals, and are cut, in a gradually tapering shape, from a solid stone rather more than fifteen feet in length. The dimensions of the stones that cover the entrances of the principal halls, are stated by Mr. Glennie to be as follows:
| Length. | Breadth. | Thickness. | ||||||||||
| 1 | 19 | feet | 6 | inches. | 4 | feet | 10 | inches. | 3 | feet | 4 | inches. |
| 2 | 18 | " | 8 | " | 4 | " | 10 | " | 3 | " | 6 | " |
| 3 | 19 | " | 4 | " | 4 | " | 10⅛ | " | 3 | " | 9 | " |
Mr. De Laguna has discovered, among the ruins, some curious paintings of war trophies and sacrifices; and Humboldt remarks, that the distribution of the apartments in the interior of this building presents some striking similarities to the monuments of Upper Egypt, as described by Mr. Denon, and the savans of the Institute of Cairo. "In comparing the grandeur of these tombs with the meanness of the habitations of the former race," says the Baron, "we may exclaim, with Diodorus Siculus, that there are people who erect their most sumptuous monuments for their dead alone, regarding existence as too short and transitory to be worth the trouble of erections for the living!"[2]
It was the same in Egypt. The hereafter, and not the present, engaged the hearts of its ancient race. In Mexico, the temple to worship in, and the tomb for final repose, seem to have been the chief care of the
