The south end of this gallery shows clearly that the monument ended here, and that the cloisters, as we have named them, constituted a separate pile, which was divided from the group of dwellings. Opposite to this, some 325 feet distant to the west, rose another pyramid crowned with a temple, of which nothing but mouldering ruins remain.
[Illustration: MEDALLION IN PASSAGE OF INNER WING.]
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF INSCRIPTIONS, PALENQUE.]
Palenque a Holy City—Bas-reliefs—Rain and Fever—A Grateful Cook—Temple of Inscriptions—Temple of the Sun—Temple of the Cross No. 1—Temple of the Cross No. 2—Altars—Mouldings and Photographs—Fire—Explorations—Fallen Houses—The Age of Trees in Connection with the Ruins—Recapitulation.
Some writers have called Palenque a capital, and the great edifice known as the palace a royal mansion, but they have erred, for if there was a royal palace it was not the one we have described. Like Teotihuacan, Izamal, and Cozumel, Palenque was a holy place, an important religious centre, a city which was resorted to as a place of pilgrimage, teeming with shrines and temples, a vast and much-sought burial-place. In this and in no other way can be explained the silence surrounding this great city, which was probably peopled by a floating population dispersed at the first alarm of the Conquest.
This important city is apparently without civic architecture; no public buildings are found, there seems to have been nothing but temples and tombs. Consequently the great edifice was not a royal palace, but rather a priestly habitation, a magnificent convent occupied by the higher clergy of this holy centre, as the reliefs everywhere attest.
Had Palenque been the capital of an empire, the palace a kingly mansion, the history of her people, fragments of domestic life, pageants, recitals of battles and conquests, would be found among the reliefs which everywhere cover her edifices, as in Mexico, at Chichen-Itza and other cities in Yucatan; whereas the reliefs in Palenque show nothing of the kind. On them we behold peaceful, stately subjects, usually a personage standing with a sceptre, sometimes a calm, majestic figure whose mouth emits a flame, emblem of speech and oratory. They are surrounded by prostrated acolytes, whose bearing is neither that of slaves nor of captives; for the expression of their countenance, if submissive, is open and serene, and their peaceful attitude indicates worshippers and believers; no arms are found among these multitudes, nor spear, nor shield, nor bow, nor arrow, nothing but preachers and devotees.
