THE FACES OF OLD GODS
The _Albert_ got underway at dawn and picked a hole in the reef about
a mile and a half east of Allen Point. The wind dropped rapidly, but
it had been enough east of north to leave tall oily seas, which threw
the schooner about with creaking of idle booms and skidding of loose
objects like a boathook, my rubber boots and Spinden’s cot. Spinden
was prostrate again, wedged against the _Imp_ on the forward deck. Our
temporary mutilations by insects are nothing to what he endures for the
expedition.
Boca de Paila is about eighteen miles north of Allen Point.
“Boca de Paila,” says Spinden, “is hard to get into, hard to stay in,
and hard to get out of.”
This statement is admirable, for it is at the same time succinct,
pertinent and complete. The Mexican name is well chosen. _Boca de
Paila_ means “Mouth of a Cauldron.” The “mouth” in the reef here is
narrow, and the water inside is nearly always turbulent, for the
insufficient reef merely knocks the white caps off the sea rollers,
does not stop them or even change their rhythm. Of all the alleged
harbors along this God-forsaken coast Boca de Paila most strains the
allegation. After dodging coral heads all the way in from the reef
mouth and bumping bottom twice here we were anchored in the midst of
them on none too good holding ground, pitching and lurching in a nasty
swell with the foaming beach only four hundred yards under our lee.
Spinden, who had lain in a coma all morning, was now in a fever to
start for Chunyaxché. This day was half gone and prudence suggested
awaiting the beginning of another before undertaking to reach ruins a
vague but considerable distance away over uncharted inland waters which
our pilot seemed to know none too well. But our archæologist’s ardent
yearning for _terra firma_ was a moving sight. With a haste which was
regretted later, duffle bags were packed by the shore party, consisting
of Spinden, Whiting, Ambrosio Pinto and myself. Griscom was to come
into the interior later if we found any land birds for him to skin.
Meanwhile he would hunt the beaches and marsh. McClurg had hydrographic
work to do, and, as usual, he preferred any schooner to any land.
His intense aversion for land and Spinden’s equal antipathy for sea
continue to be a spectacle for a philosopher to muse upon.
About half a mile directly behind the mouth in the reef is a break
in the shore, an opening into a great expanse of lagoons, lakes and
swamps. (Ambrosio says that not even the Indians know the exact limits
of this “lake country,” as they call it.) This inner _boca_ like the
outer one is guarded by a bar. A small sloop which had crossed this was
anchored on the inner side, but our schooner was too deep to follow
her. Indeed the surf on the bar looked as if the feat of crossing would
be difficult even for our small boats. We got into the larger one.
To make the _Imp_ lighter crossing the bar most of the baggage was put
into the other tender. In _Delirium Tremens_ the Captain now led the
way to the bar. (This does not sound like safe pilotage but it served
us well.) We were soon in smooth water, the hum of the two outboard
motors extinguishing the disappointed roar of the surf we had evaded.
Here at its entrance the lagoon offered loveliness to lure us into the
mud and mangrove horror beyond. Through deliciously clear tropic water
white sand gleamed under our keel, exaggerating the vivid gold and blue
and black of swift fish. The lagoon was so narrow that on each side we
could almost count the shells on a creamy beach.
The _Imp_ used the little sloop as a dock while she took her baggage
from the _Delirium Tremens_. This sloop, the _Nautilus_, at fairly
regular intervals brings here supplies from Cozumel for the Indians
and carries their chicle back. To make this exchange the Indians come
thirty-seven miles from their holy city of Chunpom, twenty-five miles
afoot or a-mule and twelve miles in fragile dug-out canoes nine feet
long and eighteen inches wide.
With our handsome and youthful guide in our bow we left the friendly
_Nautilus_ and _Delirium Tremens_ and turned toward the unknown. The
lagoon forked, Ambrosio Pinto waved his hand majestically to the right
and we rounded a point of black mangroves which blotted the other boats
from our view. Almost immediately we ran aground.
“You say you know this channel, Ambrosio?”
“_Si Señor._” He added that it was shallow for only twenty feet. We
all got out and dragged the boat through six inches of water. When we
had gone fifty feet Ambrosio said we were almost out of the shallows.
We got out of them after four hundred feet more of this back-breaking
pulling. At this point the water was deep enough to float the _Imp_ if
only one of us walked. Ambrosio was nominated. After another hundred
yards he found deep enough water to float his weight with ours. Our
little propeller threw up a wake of swirling mud. The lagoon was now a
wide shallow lake of brackish water with low shores of the monotonous
mangrove.
When we had reached the middle of this lake a jet of water as from a
lawn fountain sprang upward from the _Imp’s_ bottom. We regarded this
phenomenon with mild curiosity. It is surprising how short a time one
must be exposed to the constant risk of running aground, capsizing
and sinking in order to become callous to such matters. Mexican
indifference and fatalism was in our blood already. The water was only
four feet deep but that was enough to sink the boat and raise havoc
with our baggage. And I am sure that if the water had been four fathoms
deep our reaction would have been the same. A delicious humor filled
our veins. The leak was a matter for discussion, for debate but not for
emphatic action.
Spinden suggested it be stopped with my handkerchief. I happened to be
carrying two of linen and one of cotton. I wanted the latter to clean
my shotgun with but reluctantly began searching for it through stuffed
pockets while suggesting that the tail of Spinden’s pink shirt would
make excellent caulking. No, he had worn the shirt to impress the
natives and he would keep it for that purpose, tail and all.
I kept pulling out linen handkerchiefs but couldn’t find the cotton
one. Much of the lake was now in the boat and the rest was very close
to her gunwales. My regard for linen and Spinden’s for silk began to
be criticized by Whiting, who was running the engine and in its noise
was not appreciating the repartee. At this moment Ambrosio finished
whittling a plug from a pole we carried. The plug reduced the leak
to modest proportions. We were saved a two-mile wade back to the
_Nautilus_. And we had discovered a use for the “Venus de Mexico.”
Ambrosio could whittle.
Now another debate arose. The question might be stated this way;
“Resolved, that my baggage shall not be put in the wet bottom of this
boat.”
Everyone took the affirmative. And everyone suited the action to the
word and lifted his belongings to such spots on the commodious seats
of the _Imp_ as were not occupied by three wrangling Americans and a
silent Indian. The boat became top-heavy. This situation was dangerous,
but each man’s reasons for keeping his stuff out of the wet belly of
the boat were good.
Spinden: “Confound it, my bags are full of films, the water would ruin
them!”
Mason: “My duffle bag is loaded with beans and coffee and crackers. Do
you want them soaked in brackish water?”
Whiting: “My bag is full of ammunition, which is future food. Films are
a luxury, soaked crackers can be eaten, but you can’t kill a turkey
with a water-logged cartridge!”
Someone thought of a happy compromise. Ambrosio’s poor little duffle
bag was put at the bottom and the oars laid between that bag and the
anchor to make a rack for the other luggage. I began to bail with the
shell of a gourd.
At last we reached the other side of this expanse of open shallows and
entered a channel some hundred yards wide which wound among clumps of
mangrove. Herons, bitterns, white egrets and their reddish cousins and
roseate spoonbills rose at the buzz of the first gasoline engine they
had ever heard. In half an hour or so the channel narrowed rapidly. We
tasted the water, it was sweet. The wide, sluggish river had become a
freshwater stream with a very perceptible current.
Instead of deepening, however, it was shoaling. And it was narrowing
at an alarming rate. Consequently the current was increasing until our
motor could barely make headway against it. To add to our difficulties
the course of the stream now wound like the path of an erratic snake.
Our pilot sat in the bow, his beautiful face set in that vacant
expression characteristic of the least cerebral type of moving picture
actor. He sat in the bow--and looked backward.
Whiting stood up in the stern, cursing Ambrosio softly and steadily
as he threw the metal steering handle from side to side and tried to
determine which bank of the twisting rivulet harbored the fewer snags.
At each turn our stern would graze the bank and our following wash
over-ran the land.
It was like Mississippi navigation on a very Lilliputian scale. Where
the current bore around a bend and into the opposite bank there was
the deepest water and there we had to go despite the current. The
depths ranged from one to three feet, and we drew nearly one. In the
midst of some tiny rapids we bumped bottom, hung there a breathless
instant, then with the help of an extra oar moved ahead. As we grazed
a bank Spinden sighted rare orchids and jumped ashore. He could easily
walk faster than we were now going. It was navigation under the most
peculiar circumstances I have ever seen, and I dwell upon it because it
reflects an interesting light upon the builders of the ruins who poled
their canoes laboriously against this swift stream--as indeed do their
descendants who sell chicle to the white men today. If you chew gum
reflect that its fundamental ingredient may have been brought down this
difficult stream in a dug-out canoe.
For another reason this river is interesting; it is the most northerly
surface river we have ever heard of in the Yucatan Peninsula, which is
a limestone plain famous for its underground rivers, pools and lakes
but notorious for the absence of surface streams.
The swamp gradually gave way to savannah.
We swept around a bend, Ambrosio waved a majestic arm, and there was
the first temple, dazzling white in the sun!
It is a one-storied, oblong building, rather small--in short, an
outpost of the city. It faces a lake about two hundred feet west of
it, a lake of which the river we had been following is an outlet. With
happy inspiration Spinden promptly named the building, “_Vigia del
Lago_” (“The Watch on the Lake,” or “The Lookout on the Lake”).
There were no trees near the building except a dead one on its roof.
But there was a lot of brush and high grass, which had to be cut down
before we could get photographs of the front of the temple with its
three doors, and an interesting carving over them.
The size of the lake surprised us. Ambrosio says it is fifteen miles
long and three miles wide, but it is not shown on any of the maps we
brought. It was the narrow northern tip of the lake which we crossed.
[Illustration: We find an outpost of the commercial city of Muyil on an
old Maya trade route]
The stolid Ambrosio seemed to be leading us directly into a bank of
high grass when it suddenly opened and showed us a channel as narrow
as the upper end of the river we had left. The more we studied the
construction of this the more convinced were we that it was a canal,
a canal made by the Mayas centuries ago. It ran nearly straight, and
although its banks were covered with grass they were higher than the
land behind, and on each side of the water and paralleling it could be
seen the long mound made of the earth thrown out when the canal was
dug. A barely perceptible current moved against us.
After a quarter of a mile of this we entered a second lake, perhaps
a mile and a half broad and two miles long. On the farther side were
visible three or four roofs of thatch, and soon we could distinguish
two men observing us from a little dock made of logs. A dazzling white
beach belted the lake. Behind the yellowish roofs we were approaching
rose high trees--the beginning of the big bush. Altogether it seemed a
delightful spot to us weary of mangrove swamps and mud. We could not
yet see the insects.
The _Imp_ grounded a few feet from the little dock and we waded ashore.
One of the two men awaiting us was _Señor_ Amado Castillo, head
_chiclero_ of this region, right-hand man of General Juan Vega, of
Chunpom, who is second in command to General May, military commander of
all the Indians of Quintana Roo.
“Yes, there are ruins here,” said Don Amado, “I’ll take you to them.”
Spinden went off with him while Whiting and I carried baggage, cots
and my hammock under a thatched roof supported on a pole framework, a
shelter offered us by the hospitable _Señor_ Castillo. It was nearly
dark, and we began supper. Now we regretted the haste in which we had
started. I had forgotten bacon, lard and flour. But we made a makeshift
meal of pea soup, rice, dried raisins and tea under the thatched roof
which Don Amado lent us for the night.
Spinden returned in high satisfaction. He had seen two buildings, he
said, a structure with pillars and a temple on a pyramidal mound, a
typical Maya “_Castillo_,” to use the misnomer which has stuck to this
type of temple since the uncouth Spanish adventurers first applied it.
Dark had fallen before Spinden’s guide of the fit name (Castillo) could
show him more than these two structures. But Don Amado said there were
seven or eight other buildings in the bush, and any quantity of mounds
marking where others had already succumbed to decay.
As we listened to Spinden over our crackling little fire Whiting and
I forgot our fatigue, forgot the stinging ants which swarmed over us
from the ground on which we had stretched our aching bodies. Here was
success, complete, dazzling--and now that we had it--ridiculously
easy. Forgotten were not only the bites, the bruises, the sea-sickness
of today and yesterday, but the foot weariness and the heartaches of
the trying days of organization in New York. A city with eight or ten
temples still standing!
Spinden and Whiting put up their cots on opposite sides of this shack,
and in the middle I hung my hammock under the great billowing piece
of canvas and dangling mosquito net which the archæologist calls my
“hangar.” It was a cold night--and the knack of keeping blankets about
one in a narrow hammock has never been mine. Then there were tick bites
to keep me awake, and above all, wonder about these ruins.
Quietly I reached down for my boots, putting them on in the hammock to
avoid the ants which were swarming on the dirt floor.
Fully dressed I slipped out of the hut between my snoring companions
and followed the path I had seen Spinden return by a few hours before.
A branch led off to the right, and instinct told me to take that.
I had gone perhaps two hundred yards through the mystery of moonlit
woods when there rose through the trees at the left of the path the
high dark bulk of something which gleamed where moon rays reached it.
I worked around to the west of it, where there was a slight opening.
The low moon was now behind me. And there rising before me was a
typical-Maya pyramid, four sided with ascending terraces and a wide
stairway. And on its top a temple, shining like silver under the moon.
A true Maya temple not seen by archæologist until today. And carved on
its corners--one to each corner--the faces of old gods.
[Illustration]