The second stela, twenty-two feet high, is by far the most artistically carved of all the standing monoliths. It has large, full-face human figures on the front and back, and both sides are occupied by hieroglyphs. The figure best preserved represents a man with a small chin beard. He is standing on a platform covered with symbolic carving. His feet, which are placed heel to heel, are shod with elaborate sandals. On his head is an immense head dress, made up of five superimposed grotesque faces or masks. From either side extend feathers, which are carved gracefully around the sides above the inscriptions, the whole effect being most striking.
The ears of the person are almost covered with huge ear ornaments. The breast and body to the waist are loaded with ornaments, and an elaborately worked loin cloth hangs from the waist, down between the legs to the feet. In the right hand is held a kind of wand or sceptre, much resembling a “jumping jack.” The upper part is a grotesque little figure, with a long nose, representing a deity. From the bottom of the stick hang feathers. The left hand is covered by a shield, on the face of which is a mask, probably a representation of the sun god.
Near at hand are two fallen stelae about ten feet in length, entirely covered with moss and vegetable debris. About eight hundred feet south of these two large stelae is a high truncated pyramid, more than one hundred and fifty feet in diameter at the base. A short distance east and northeast are three large monuments, and from three hundred to four hundred feet south in a plaza enclosed on three sides, is another group of stelae.
The most important of these is in the form of a conventionally carved gigantic turtle, the most extraordinary sculpture in Central America. Roughly described, it is a cube about eight feet in size and probably weighing twenty tons. It is entirely covered with picture and hieroglyphic writing, and representations of a symbolic character, among which are several exaggerated animal and human faces and figures. (A plaster cast of this is also found in the above named museums.) In addition, there is an interesting figure carved on another stela, representing a woman, with fat, round cheeks, which has been called the enano, or dwarf. Besides the monuments now standing there are several fallen stelae, some complete, while others are broken.