3-011-874 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Ruins of Copan, Central America: monolith, 1864. Engraving from a photograph by Mr. Osbert Salvin. 'Just where the ruins stand...the valley opens out into a small alluvial plain of great fertility. Over this plain, wherever the vegetation has been left untouched, forest grows. It would be difficult to determine how far the ruins extend throughout the valley, as sculptured stones are to be seen all along the road leading to what appears to be the central point of the ruins...The traveller comes unexpectedly upon sculptured fragments in almost every direction, and the natives point in the hills to a painted stone here and a carved stone there. The ruins of Copan comprise the walls of a supposed temple, 624 ft. in length, and many pyramidal structures...sculptured stones of all sizes lie scattered in profusion, some bearing hieroglyphics...With the exception of a few monoliths, hardly any of the ruins remain undisturbed. The terraces and pyramidal mounds have had their steps and stonework almost universally displaced. The mere force of the roots of the trees which grow upon and between the stones, or even the earthquakes to which they must have been subjected from time to time, seem insufficient to account for so general a dislocation'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.