The nature of old Indian centers of population differed, of course,
according as the settlement was made principally for defense or for the
performance of religious worship, or merely for the maintenance of a
king or a prince. In the table-lands of Guatemala and Chiapas, where
a number of warlike peoples and independent hostile tribes of one and
the same nation dwelt in close proximity to each other, the fortified
character of their buildings naturally prevails, and they usually con-
tained also the palaces of their rulers, and the temples of the deities.'
Nature here offered in abrupt eminences, which were entirely or par-
tially severed from the adjoining table-land by deep ravines, or on
mountains with a level plain on their summit, places that could easily
be defended and were really used for that purpose by the Indians. In
building towns here, where nature had limited the space, the builders

'At times the princes also lived in oi^en towns which they abandoned at the out-
break of war, withdrawing into near fortified places, as in the year 1525 Caibil-
Balam, King of the Mames, retired at the approach of the Spaniards under Gonzalo
de Alvarado from his capital, Chinabhul (Huehuetenango), to the fortress Saculeii.
INDIAN SETTLEMENTS IN CENTRAL AMEEICA. 541

saw themselves compelled to crowd the structures as much as could be
done, and this closely compressed disposition is hence characteristic of
the ground plans of towns ou the table-land of Chiapas and Guatemala.
