A LOST TRADE ROUTE
It was in the afternoon of Thursday, January 28, that we reached the
ruins. Now it is Wednesday February 3, and we are all back on the
schooner. Our fingers are stiff from gripping _machetes_ and axes, our
palms are broken and blistered. But for every blister a Maya building
new to archæology has been plotted on scaled paper for the archives of
the Peabody Museum of Harvard. Not since Oregon logging days have I
known a week of such physical labor; and never have I known labor which
brought such quick and overwhelming reward.
Our first morning at the ruins we tried to map out a plan of attack on
the bush, but it was impossible to stick to any plan. A man would begin
to cut his way in toward one building when he would catch a glimpse of
more enticing walls to one side. Before he was half through clearing
the bush about this he would be diverted by a shout from a companion:
“Hey, there’s a painting on the wall over the altar in this shrine,
come and look at it!” Or:
“_Hombre_, I just dug up a round stone in front of this temple. Part of
a pillar, or you can have my beans tonight. Come and help me dig up the
rest of it.”
Castillo says the ruins should not be called Chunyaxché, which is the
name of a native settlement several kilometers from here. He believes
the city now far gone in decay was called Muyil, and that it gave that
name to an Indian village which was so called, and which flourished
in the very midst of the ruins some fifty years ago. He says the
Indians call the small lake near the ruins _Laguna de Muyil_ and that
their name for the larger one is _Laguna de Xlabpak_ (or Lake of the
Big Wall, in reference probably to the temple Spinden named _Vigia
del Lago_ or to another ruin which Castillo says stands far down the
western shore of the lake, a ruin we have not had time to inspect).[1]
[1] After my return to New York an officer of the American Geographic
Society sent me a new map made for the chicle companies which shows
both these lakes. The smaller is here called _Lago de Muyil_ and the
larger _Lago de Chunyaxché_.--THE AUTHOR.
It was hard for us to give up the name of Chunyaxché but Muyil does
seem better supported by the evidence, and we have accepted it.
[Illustration: From this high building canoes approaching Muyil were
sighted before they could see the city]
Our first hasty survey of Muyil the morning after our arrival convinced
us that we could not do justice to the ruins without several days’
work. Axes were needed to cut trees too large for our _machetes_.
Rope was needed to make less dangerous the task of climbing the chief
temple, parts of which will soon cave in. Food was needed, iodine for
tick bites, and many other things. The junior member of the expedition
took the _Imp_ back to the schooner for supplies. Before we left he did
this so often that we came to speak of the “Whiting Ferry Service.”
For six days we worked from dawn to dark, with Amado Castillo and an
Indian helping us. Yet so thick was the growth of trees, shrubs and
vines over the buildings that this period was not sufficient to clear
them all. Consequently there were several interesting buildings of
which we failed to get photographs through the confused dim light of
the dense bush. One of these was a building which the Indians called
“El Centro,” the center. This was a temple on a terraced mound. We
had visited it several times before we found, under the base of the
stairway to the external temple, an opening into a passage which led
to an internal house of worship, a buried temple in the center of the
mound! One of our Indians ran away when he saw us going under ground,
but Castillo, who does not share native fears of ghosts and demons,
told us this subterranean chapel had been used as a hiding place by
Indians fighting Mexico in the revolt of 1848 and more recently.
Indeed, beside fragments of rotted baskets and gourd vessels was a
relic of much more recent times, a piece of a boat’s rudder with an
iron fastening. Twenty or thirty fighting men might easily hide in
this cavernous place of ancient worship, but why should they bring
the rudder of a boat with them? Were they repairing it while Mexican
soldiers hunted the shores of the two lakes for them? What dramas this
temple must have seen!
And what occult rites were observed here? The fact that it has three
altars, the fact that it was hidden under a building which some half
surviving tradition has persuaded the modern Indians was the center of
the ancient city--these facts and others suggest that this secret place
of worship had some special importance. Perhaps this holy of holies
was forbidden to ordinary devotees of Itzamna, the Supreme Deity,
Kukulcan, the Feathered Serpent, Ahpuch, Lord of Death, and other
Maya gods. Perhaps it was reserved for the devotions of those who had
reached the rank of priest. Perhaps Emperors or Sacerdotal Monarchs
themselves came here to burn their offerings of copal--the incense of
gum which is used by the Indians to this day. Of all the ruins at Muyil
this well-preserved subterranean temple has perhaps the most appeal to
a layman. If it were reproduced in an American museum it would draw
large crowds.
But to the scientist other buildings are more interesting because they
can give him more information about the age of Muyil and the nature of
the people who lived there.
Of course we are particularly on the alert for hieroglyphic
inscriptions. These are very often found on upright stone slabs,
standing apart by themselves with one end in the ground. On the
afternoon of our fourth day at the ruins Spinden found two of these,
one at each side of a shrine. But, alas, centuries of wind and rain
had erased the messages which almost certainly had been carved upon
their faces. This fact might lead the novice to the conclusion that
these slabs must be very old, for distinguishable glyphs have been
found dating as far back as the second century after Christ. However,
this conclusion would be erroneous. You cannot judge the age of a city
solely by the degree of erasure of its hieroglyphs, for the action of
weather upon stone is very variable. Where these _stelæ_--as the slabs
are called--have fallen face downward upon some soft bed of earth or
leaves the inscriptions are often preserved years after they would have
been obliterated had the carved mileposts in Maya history continued to
stand erect.
There is much evidence that Muyil belongs to the last great period
in Maya culture, the Period of the League of Mayapan. Of course, the
city’s location in the northern part of the Maya area would lead to
this supposition before an examination had been made. Then a look at
the grotesque faces decorating the four corners of the highest temple
would alone incline the archæologist to the opinion that Muyil is not
a First Empire city. Such faces or “mask panels” are common in Maya
architecture; but in the southern and older area the details of the
face are generally built up of stucco, whereas in the northern and
later area they are in relief. These faces at Muyil are in relief--that
is, cut into the walls.
This tall temple with the grotesque faces of conventionalized art
at its four corners presents one entirely new feature in Maya
architecture. This is a round cupola or small tower, which rises from
the roof of the temple proper, itself set upon a pyramidal mound of
five terraces, ascended by a wide stairway. The cupola enhances the
effect of height and grandeur.
The whoop of joy which Spinden let out when he found this cupola was
good to hear. We had been clearing brush and trees a foot in diameter
from the terraces and stairway for several hours. At the risk of a
dangerous cave-in he climbed to the top of the temple, where the brush
and cactus were so thick that he had hacked for fifteen or twenty
minutes before he could discern the outline of the cupola. I believe
his elation did much to convince the Indians helping us that we were
not hunting for gold--as their kind persist in believing.
We were interested to see that cactus grew about this cupola. There
was no such desert growth on the wet ground thereabouts, but the dry,
rock roof of the temple provided the right climate for the familiar
cat’s-claw of arid regions.
The roof of the temple was only fifty-four feet above the ground. But
the building and supporting mound of five terraces had been planned in
such careful proportion to each other and in such cunning relation to
their surroundings that not only did they seem bigger than they were,
but this impression of their imposing bulk was enhanced by each view of
them. The same thing is true of _El Castillo_ at Chichen Itza and of
the House of the Diviner and its supporting pyramidal mount at Uxmal.
In fact this is true of every good example of the Maya _Castillo_ type
of edifice, that is, a temple on a pyramidal, terraced mound with broad
stone stairway. I never look at such a structure without saying to
myself, “What a _satisfactory mass_.”
All Maya buildings are made of rough blocks of limestone held with a
mortar of the same material and often provided with a surface coating
of stucco. Nearly all Maya buildings, whether temples or palaces, are
placed upon artificial mounds. But in the southern area there was a
tendency to place these separate mounds on one large common base or
artificial acropolis. This sort of acropolis was not used in the north,
where the city planning seems to have been more haphazard. Indeed, it
was mainly in the south, too, that cities were carefully orientated
with regard to the four chief points of the compass.
Regular depressions or sunken courts, which may have been theaters, are
also characteristic of the south. The same thing is chiefly true of the
use of stelæ, or obelisks, carved with inscriptions.
Muyil, which has stelæ, and which is marked by some observance of the
principle of orientation, is situated in the southern part of the
northern area.
As we looked at the grinning faces of the gods carved on the corners
of Muyil’s _Castillo_ we thought of the barbaric spectacles which they
had seen. We recalled the description of human sacrifice on a similar
temple at Uxmal as pieced together by the imagination of the Spanish
historian, Cogolludo, from hints he had picked up among the natives:
“The High Priest had in his Hand a large, broad and sharp Knife made
of Flint. Another Priest carried a wooden collar wrought like a
snake. The persons to be sacrificed were carried one by one up the
Steps, stark naked, and as soon as laid on the Stone, had the Collar
put upon their Necks, and the four priests took hold of the hands and
feet. Then the High Priest with wonderful Dexterity ripped up the
Breast, tore out the Heart, reeking, with his Hands, and showed it to
the Sun, offering him the Heart and Steam that came from it. Then he
turned to the Idol, and threw it in his face, which done, he kicked
the body down the steps, and it never stopped till it came to the
bottom, because they were _very upright_.”
According to our standards the Mayas were cruel, no doubt, although
they made much less sacrificial use of blood than the Aztecs. But when
all is said and done the Mayas were perhaps the most deeply religious
race that ever lived. Remember that when an explorer finds a ruined
Maya city he is finding merely the stone buildings which formed the
ceremonial center of the ancient metropolis. The other buildings once
there, perhaps thousands of them, were constructed of wood and thatch
which turned to dust long before the arrival of the archæologist. It
is the great public buildings which remain, and the significant thing
about the Mayas is that nearly all of their public buildings were
devoted to religion. Even the so-called palaces probably housed priests
rather than lay kings, for church and state went hand in hand with the
Mayas and the rulers had a sacerdotal character. The spiritual impulse
dominated the whole life of this ancient people. Not the Sphynx of
Egypt, not the Temple of Heaven in Peking, not the Roman Forum, not
even the Acropolis of Athens cries out with such vigorous emotion as
these decaying shrines of the first Americans.
Think of their building their hundreds of cities without iron, think of
their cutting practically all these stones with only tools of harder
stone (for the few copper chisels which have been found seem to have
been a rather late invention never widely used). Then think of their
hauling those big stone blocks to the tops of their pyramids without
any modern machinery. Apparently they had no pulleys, not even a simple
wheel.
The majesty of the performance gives one faith. Yes though time has
tumbled most of it the remnant of the beauty which once shone through
every Maya city makes even the confirmed pessimist wonder if man is
such a contemptible insect after all.
Is it possible that the outcropping of a deep feeling for beauty is the
first sign of decay in a race? Once amid the loveliness of Chichen Itza
Xoch suggested this to me. It seems an obscene theory. At least if
there is anything in it our dear United States are safe from decay for
a long time to come.
About one-third of a mile northwest from our camp on the edge of the
lake we found a group of four buildings. Three were so far gone that
their past function was hard to determine, but the fourth was a fairly
well preserved temple. On clearing away a pile of rubbish from the
western and chief entrance to this we found that this portal had had
two sets of pillars at each side, one pillar behind the other, instead
of abreast of it. This is the first instance of this tandem arrangement
of pillars we know of in the whole Maya area. And like the cupola on
_El Castillo_ it indicates originality on the part of the men who built
this old city, and a flair for experiment.
Perhaps forty yards north of this group is a small temple which
interested us because of a fragment of painting on the rear wall over
the altar. Try as we did we could not bring to light enough of this
painting to tell what it had been, a scene of sacrifice, perhaps, or
a portrait of some grotesque, anthropomorphic god. At a point not far
behind this edifice begins a raised stone roadway which ends at the
foot of the western side of _El Castillo_. This structure is carefully
oriented.
When Whiting made the first of his many trips back to the schooner he
took with him Ambrosio and an Indian who had just reached the lake from
the interior with a mule train bearing chicle which Amado Castillo
wanted to send to Cozumel aboard the sloop, _Nautilus_. Part of this
cargo was put in the _Imp_, and part was loaded in a narrow eight-foot
dug-out canoe which Whiting towed. Castillo said this chicle came from
Chunpom, twenty-five miles northwest of Muyil. He calls Chunpom a “holy
city,” with a population of 5,000. Doubtless the truth is that the
vicinity of the village of Chunpom holds this number of Indians, for
these natives avoid close packed settlements as eagerly as the Chinese
seek them. Perhaps in all Quintana Roo there are not more than 15,000
Mayas left.
Spinden and I spent the first morning cutting trees growing out of
the sides and roofs of the four buildings in the northwest group. All
morning beans were cooking, the same beans which had been too hard to
eat the night before. Spinden and I sat out in the full force of the
tropical sun and ate hot beans and drank hot tea.
But an hour after we had gone back to work the sky was overcast, and a
chill, damp wind was blowing from the north. At the first sign of rain
the Indian who had been helping us, or rather who had been helping
Amado Castillo help us, scuttled for his hut. It seemed no great loss,
however, for he had been utterly lazy. But Don Amado explained that the
man is recuperating from malaria, which is ample excuse.
Before long Spinden and I were wet to the skin, and thoroughly chilled
in spite of our exercise. It seemed impossible that three hours before
we had been regretting the necessity of drinking hot tea. Now hot tea
was our greatest need.
We sheathed our dripping _machetes_ and jogged into camp, with the
wind whipping at our heels. There was no firewood in our hut and the
wood outside was wet. But luckily I had brought a sterno, one of those
little cans full of alcoholic fuel which constitutes a small stove in
itself. We hung the teapot over the can of fire, and piled about it
pieces of wood. The steam and smoke which the damp wood gave off drove
the mosquitoes out of the open sided hut, and at intervals drove us
out. The tea was so good that we decided to make a meal without waiting
for the _Imp_, whose return in this storm was unlikely anyway. We
consumed vast plates of hot beans and stewed apricots and endless cups
of tea. By this time our clothes were about dry enough to sleep in, and
it was dark. Spinden risked his life by tinkering with a damp quantity
of carbide and an involved carbide lamp, but at last he got a light
fixed so that he could read in bed.
We started to undress when Spinden thought he heard the sound of an
engine. Yes, despite the head wind and the lashing cold rain the _Imp_
was coming! We ran down to the little log dock and probed the night
with electric flashlights, to show them their way.
As usual the boat hit bottom twenty feet from the dock and her
occupants had to wade ashore. Whiting was followed by Griscom. The bird
man rushed up to me with rain sluicing off his familiar, disreputable
sombrero. For all the dark of night and gloom of storm he had sensed
the wild loveliness of this camp on the lake beneath the big _zapote_
trees and he gripped my hands, exclaiming exultantly:
“Gad, man, this is the real thing--what?”
“Is it wild enough for you at last?”
Through the dark brown stubble he grinned his hobo grin:
“This’ll do, fellah. When do we eat?”
Having finished mooring the _Imp_, Ambrosio trailed us to the fire, a
sack of grub over his right shoulder and a string of fish in his left
hand. He cleaned them rapidly while Spinden and I offered Griscom and
Whiting beans and apricots, and prepared to increase the menu with the
bacon, rice, flour, canned goods and rum Whiting had brought.
The fire now was a red roar, tingeing the black wet night as the wind
lashed it out under the loo’ard eaves. When we four had eaten all we
could hold Ambrosio began to cook his fish. They were deep silvery
fish about ten inches long, looking like the scup of Cape Cod. After
he had eaten six or seven the “Ambrosial Boy” smoked the rest. He then
stretched out on the floor, and in spite of the nipping ants went
quickly to sleep. The rest of us turned in, all slightly damp.
That was the coldest night yet. My two blankets were altogether
inadequate. The one thing that could be said for that night was that
the cold drove away the mosquitoes.
Before dawn we were all awake, stretching and grumbling. The first
definite remark was made by Spinden:
“Two zones of life meet here,” quoth he, with the air of an oracle.
“Ants and ticks?” queried Whiting.
Griscom’s quick, unrestrained laugh bubbled from his chest while the
tears rolled down his face.
“Well, I guess I’ll put on my trousers,” remarked the archæologist,
when his own laughter had stopped.
“Don’t put on mine,” I warned.
“You haven’t any,” he countered. At this the mirth became more raucous
than ever. My only trousers at Muyil had been slashed and punctured
from waist to knee by thorns and the sharp corners of stone buildings.
For although limestone is soft it is hard enough to tear cloth, and
whenever one is amid ruins one is always slipping on the loose stones
which lie about and tearing something. The last button was gone, and
a single, delicate safety pin held my lower garment up, and together.
Originally white duck the trousers were now a rich brown with black
mottlings gained from charred wood. When I sprang from my hammock to
don the infamous pants I so shook the roof of my “hangar” that a cool
gallon of rain water which it had collected in the night was deposited
on Whiting’s face.
It was Griscom’s brilliant idea to hire _Señora_ Castillo to cook for
us. For the rest of our stay we ate in the largest of the four or five
thatched shacks the _chiclero_ had built on the low grassy bank over
the creamy beach where we bathed at twilight and washed out our limited
laundry lists. At every meal the malarial Indian who lived here and
two or three others who came down from Chunpom with more chicle sat
and watched us gravely, now and then breaking out in silly giggles
at some mannerism of ours which struck them as unusually grotesque.
From hints which Castillo let fall we soon realized that he had sent
word to Juan Vega in Chunpom that some _gringos_ were here, and that
they had a schooner at Boca de Paila which would take “General” Vega
to Cozumel. There would have been no use grumbling about this even had
we been so inclined. And realizing how rare an event is the arrival of
a commodious boat at Boca de Paila, and well aware that both Castillo
and Vega had it in their power to help our work greatly or to stop it
altogether, we vowed that it would give us great pleasure to have the
“General” as our guest.
Frequently our meals would be interrupted by the sight of game, a scaup
duck swimming within a few yards of the east entrance to Castillo’s
humble abode or a parrot in a clump of trees within a stone’s throw
of the western door. Even if the bird was a woodpecker, too small to
provide much substance, it yet offered the flavoring for the delicious
gravy which Spinden was forever making with the help of our flour.
Plain rice is one thing, and rice under hot brown gravy is another.
Griscom got no new birds at Muyil, but he collected a number of
valuable ones including other specimens of his new rosy ant tanager and
oriole.
I shot a cormorant in the lake one day and as it flopped in the water
its mate circled about, in such obvious mental distress that I stayed
my trigger finger as I aimed at the second bird. Then, at the last
moment, I pulled; and perhaps the devoted bird really preferred to
share the fate of its companion. My desire to eat a cormorant once shot
on Long Island Sound had been thwarted by the cook’s flat refusal to
touch the ugly black bird, and I was determined to try the meat of one
of this pair. But before I was aware of what had happened their bones
had been picked by the Indians. Ambrosio, who took part in the feast,
says that cormorant should be cooked with plenty of red pepper and
garlic.
“The garlic keeps you from tasting the cormorant and the cormorant
keeps you from tasting the garlic,” he explains.
The wind continued to blow from the north but the sky cleared and the
weather warmed somewhat. It was neither temperature nor insects which
ruined our third night in camp; it was mules. The pack animals of the
chicle train stamped and snorted all through the hours of darkness.
As our hut had no walls we could not keep them out of it. One of them
nibbled at the mosquito netting which enveloped Griscom’s cot, and
another sampled some loose pages of notes which Spinden left under a
small stick beside his bed. Whiting avers it was this animal which
later suffered a violent attack of cramps.
Muyil is a paradise for insects, and were it not for the bugs the
place would be a paradise for humans. Here there is not the usual
scrubby growth of Yucatan, but tall noble trees, the real _monte_, or
“mountain,” as natives call big bush. Each night a plump moon struck a
silver trail across the lake and turned the beach to a ribbon of gold.
At that lovely hour we could almost forget the horseflies which swarmed
in the woods by day, and the mosquitoes, ticks and ants which nipped
and stung and burned our bodies regardless of the movements of the
planets. Anyway, we could avoid them in the lake, where we swam often,
with no fear of attack from the depths.
Whiting, who is very dependent on his spectacles lost them off the
_Imp_ in six feet of water. Twenty-four hours later he rowed back, dove
a few times, and found them!
They were somewhat scratched by the sand. Perhaps this was the reason
he missed by half a mile the western end of the canal between the two
lakes when he brought Griscom and me down to the schooner yesterday,
that is Tuesday, February 2. Of course, the wind, which had blown from
the north for four days, had to come out hard from the southeast,
dead ahead, just before daybreak. Even on the smaller lake the waves
ran high enough to splash water over the tarpaulin with which Griscom
protected his box full of precious bird skins. When we reached the
further end of the canal we were hammered by waves so high and so sharp
that the only way we could take them was bow on. This meant laying a
course which took us some two miles south of the outlet river, but we
had to do it.
The wind was blowing a young gale. Griscom and I were constantly
engaged while crossing the lake in throwing out water which came
over the gunwales as well as through the bottom in the usual way.
Nevertheless we reached the lee of the eastern shore without drowning.
To avoid the wind we poked along so close to the shore and out-running
bars that we grounded several times. But at last we found the river,
and said good-bye to the white temple from which some Maya priest kept
watch over the canoes which brought up this stream the quetzal feathers
for his rites, the plumage of the sacred bird from the highlands of
Central America. At least, Griscom and I said good-bye to _Vigia del
Lago_. Whiting was to maintain his ferry service one day more to bring
out Spinden and the overdue General Vega. (Spinden was to make a last
effort to find that building with pillars, which he had lost since
that first afternoon at Muyil. This gives an idea of how thick is
the bush.)
[Illustration: Vigia del Lago (“The Watch on the Lake”). Note
decoration over doors]
As we passed the temple a big bird flew down the river.
“Shoot!” urged Griscom. I fumbled the wet gun, shot late, and missed.
“Too bad,” said the ornithologist, “that was a tiger bittern. I want
one. You keep ready now and when I see something I want I’ll yell
‘shoot.’”
“Shoot,” he called a few minutes later, but I saw no mark. Half
standing, he could see a low flying bird, invisible to me. At last it
rose over a bush and I fired, at great range. To everybody’s surprise
the bird fell.
Whiting stopped the engine, and held the _Imp_ against the bank by
a root. We found the bird, a fine big tiger bittern. It was merely
wounded in the wing and was a splendid sight as it darted at us its
six-inch lance of a beak backed by the power of a long sinewy neck with
the tawny stripes which give the bird its name. Again I regretted that
my moving picture camera was out of order. This had refused to function
ever since we had reached Muyil, in other words, ever since I needed it
most.
Griscom never kills a wounded bird by giving it a second shot, or by
striking its head with a stick or with the barrel of his gun. Any of
these common devices of careless hunters would be apt to injure the
plumage. Griscom’s method is to apply pressure on each side of the
bird’s breast, above its heart. A small bird can be killed this way
by the use of thumb and forefinger alone. But this tiger bittern was
quite a problem. Its long beak was a really dangerous weapon. So I held
its head while Griscom applied the fatal grip to its chest with both
his hands. Even so perhaps three minutes had passed and he was nearly
exhausted before the film of death overspread the savage yellow eye of
the great winged fisherman.
Any hope that the wind was abating which we may have had under the
shelter of the banks of the river was dispelled when we saw the great
white-topped yellowish waves rolling across the shallow salt lagoon.
The _Imp_ took this buffeting bravely enough, but she had hardly gone
ten times her own length from the end of the river when the little
motor began to sputter and miss. The trouble was caused by spray
falling on the spark plugs. These two outboard engines have given us
hard faithful service, and since we have stopped feeding them kerosene
and iron filings we have no trouble so long as we keep the spark plugs
dry. On a wet day Gough will often take out the plugs and heat them
before trying to start the motor. His favorite method is to spill a
little kerosene on the _Albert’s_ deck and set fire to it, holding the
spark plugs in the flame.
In New Orleans I bought rubber jackets to cover the plugs with, but we
always seem to leave them behind in the schooner.
Whiting now put his rain coat on the end of an oar which I held over
the motor, which continued to run fitfully--not giving the propeller
one quarter of its full power. Our course did not lie directly into
the wind. The result was that our bow was constantly being blown to
starboard and we were continually shipping water over the port gunwale.
Griscom, who was sitting forward and getting the full benefit of these
douches, kept begging us to “head her up into it.” Pulling on an oar
with my left hand I managed to hold her bow up a little, but we dared
not run directly into the wind for that way lay a wide expanse of
shallows. Griscom did not know this, and it was hard to explain it to
him in the steady shout of the wind.
Gradually the spark plugs dried out under the rain coat and the little
motor putted with more and more confidence. If all continued to go as
well as this we would get across the wide lagoon ultimately. But when
we reached the ocean would we find the schooner there? This was the
question which worried us. There was only one reason to suppose that
Gough would remain on a lee shore in this blow, and that lay in the
fact that it might be even more dangerous for him to attempt to cross
the outer bar between the reefs than to stay where we had left him.
We had hit that bar twice coming in, and with the surf which must be
running there now the chances were that the schooner would be let down
between waves hard enough to break her back.
But if she had left the anchorage, there would be nothing for us to do
but camp on the beach until we had eaten our few crackers and drunk our
bag of water. Then, if the schooner had not returned, we could avoid
starvation by going back to Muyil.
It was a tense moment as we ran down the little inlet towards the sea.
If the schooner had not moved we would see her masts any moment now
over the sand bar to port.
“She’s gone, fellahs,” said Griscom, in the bow. There could no longer
be any doubt about it. Where the _Albert_ had been was only an expanse
of heaving green and white.
I remembered the thrill I had in reading _Treasure Island_ when Jim
Hawkins found the _Hispaniola_ had slipped her anchor. This was a
thrill, too, but of a different kind.
We ran on down the lagoon, scanning the horizon for a sail, half
hoping our boat might be standing on and off beyond the reef, waiting
to signal to us.
“Why, there she is!” exclaimed Whiting. And there she was, up the beach
half a mile, much nearer shore than we had left her. Perilously near
shore she looked, indeed. But the awning over the fore-deck suggested
that all was well. They wouldn’t let her drag ashore without taking in
that awning and putting sail on her.
Now that we had located the schooner the question was, could we reach
her? The inner bar was a chaos of bursting water. I did not like its
expression.
“What do you think, Whiting, can we make it?”
“It’s worse’n it was in my other crossings. But let’s run up and have
a look at it. Better have the oars ready, these spark plugs are still
damp.”
Before we knew it we were in the midst of high short rollers--we had
not realized that such waves could carry past the bar.
“I don’t believe we can make it, hadn’t you better turn back?” I
shouted at Whiting.
“Too late,” he yelled, “we’d capsize in these seas. And we might as
well spill on the bar where it’s shallow as here where it’s deep.”
At that moment the engine stopped.
“Pull, for God’s sake, steady and hard,” yelled Whiting, half standing
in the stern and scanning the broken water ahead for a possible spot
smoother than the rest.
Over my shoulder I had had a glimpse of great green curlers hammering
into white smother on the bar and I did not think we had a chance of
getting through. But as Whiting said, we might as well sink in shallow
water as in deep.
“Pull on your port oar _hard_--_HARD_! There, steady now. I’ll steer,
you watch your oars, don’t catch a crab. Save your strength till we’re
in it, just pull carefully.”
“More on the starboard oar now. That’s it. Steady. Watch it now, here
they come. NOW GIVE HER ALL YOU’VE GOT.”
A giant wave lifted our bow, seemed to throw us back ten feet. It was a
miracle that the oars were not knocked from my hands. I cursed myself
for not having inspected Gough’s oars before we sailed. These thick
nine-foot ash sweeps were much too heavy and long to be pulled with
only one hand to each of them. But I tried to concentrate on Whiting’s
voice as it came blurred through the wind from where he crouched in the
stern. I pulled till I was half blind.
“There, we’re through,” I vaguely heard Griscom say, but didn’t believe
my ears.
“’Atta boy, we’re over,” Whiting was yelling it now, “take it easy I
say, we’re over.”
Incredible, but true, we _were_ over. The waves were no longer
breaking. They were huger than ever but they were longer, far enough
apart so that we could turn safely and run almost before the wind to
the schooner.
Over my shoulder I saw McClurg aiming his little movie camera at us.
He laughed till he had to sit down from the weakness of it when we
clambered aboard the schooner.
“Whiting’s not so bad,” he managed to say to me finally, “he’s been
kept half civilized by his trips to the schooner. But you and Griscom,
I’ve seen some beachcombers in my time but, man, you two win the
celluloid binoculars.”
At that Griscom and I became rather jealous of each other, he claiming
that he looked the bigger bum, and I upholding my own claims. So they
lined us up on deck and had a “Biggest Bum Contest,” with McClurg,
Whiting and Gough as self-appointed judges. By unanimous vote Griscom
was declared the biggest bum on the schooner.
Griscom’s shirt was torn, his hunting coat and khaki breeches were
stained with mud and the blood of his birds. My only garment was the
infamous trousers, now unfortunately lent a certain respectability by
a belt I had found in the bottom of my duffle bag just before leaving
Muyil. Even so, the trousers were disreputable enough, and had I been
similarly clad above the waist I might have given the bird man a closer
contest. But where I was naked the ocean had washed me clean. And
cleanliness does not become a bum.
I said something to this effect, but McClurg cut me short:
“No, Mason,” said he, “no matter what you wore you wouldn’t have won.
You’ve been in the bush a day longer than Griscom and your whiskers
don’t compare with his. It’s his Weary-Willy stubble and that hobo grin
of his which would always make him the bum of this ship. You might just
as well shave and be comfortable.”
McClurg does not seem to have been bored by his week alone with the
crew. He has shot several birds valuable to Griscom, and their skins
were preserved for the American Museum of Natural History by the
efforts of Gough and Belize John, who is quite an adept with the knife
now. In _Delirium Tremens_ McClurg has explored the maze of lagoons
beyond the inner bar and he has proved the truth of what we had been
told by fishermen about the long strip of land whose northern end is
a mile south of us now and whose southern end is Allen Point, on
Ascension Bay. That is to say, McClurg has established the fact that
this is an island, not a promontory as is indicated on U. S. Navy chart
number 966. Part of the water which makes it an island is a mere narrow
lagoon, hardly a foot deep in places, nevertheless it _is_ an island
and should be so drawn on future charts.
There have been other events to prevent _ennui_ overpowering the men
on the schooner. One night a lantern, hung too high in our cabin, set
fire to the deck above it. And night before last Gough was awakened by
the roar of the surf on the beach only fifty yards from his ear. The
schooner had dragged her anchor.
There were several nasty seconds, vividly described to us by McClurg,
before they got one engine going just in the nick of time. The wind
was blowing so hard that all this motor could do was to hold the boat
even. They hung there on the foaming brink of destruction for another
five minutes before the engineers could start the second engine. It was
still dark, and they dared not try to find the opening in the reef.
Indeed they had seen so many coral heads by day that they dared not
even look for their former anchorage. When they had hauled offshore two
or three hundred yards they let go both anchors, which luckily held.
This is why we did not find the schooner where we had left her.
In the confusion of hauling off the beach someone upset a pail of
spider crabs which Gough had caught for bait. Several of the barefooted
sailors have been nipped by the vicious little creatures, and we have
been warned to be on the lookout for them. Fleas are also aboard, for
which McClurg blames the trip to Santa Cruz de Bravo, but admits the
laundress at Vigia Chico may be responsible. With Spinden’s lizard
still at large the schooner is no place for a nervous woman. As for the
dead lizards, which Spinden pickled in formaldehyde, they had to be
thrown overboard. The trouble was too little formaldehyde and too much
lizard.
As I said before this is Wednesday, six days since we went up to Muyil.
Whiting ran his ferry for the last time today and brought out Spinden
and General Juan Vega, with a dark, silent retainer of that Potentate.
I have never seen a less military looking man who was called “General,”
and I suspect the title is somewhat exaggerated--even according to
Mexican standards. Yet there is no doubt that Vega is a power among
the Indians, whether he is really second in command to General May as
Castillo says or not.
Like most of the men on this coast he is thin. He has an ingratiating
smile, an almost timid look, or it would be timid if there were not a
certain self-confident slyness in it. He is not an Indian by birth but
a Mexican who was kidnapped in boyhood by the Indians. He rose to be a
leader of his abductors by virtue of his naked wits, so doubtless the
sly look was well earned.
He confirms something that Castillo told us, namely, that there are
ruins on the mainland north of Tulum at places called Paalmul and
Xkaret. No ruins by these names are on archæological maps and we are
eager to cast anchor and sail north. But the wind keeps us behind the
reef tonight.
Only this morning Spinden found the building with pillars which
he “lost” after his first glimpse of it. The queer thing was that
Castillo did not seem to remember having shown it to Spinden that first
afternoon, and even said that Spinden was dreaming. Is there something
which makes Castillo regret his part as our guide about the ruins?
There may well be for Juan Vega imparts the interesting news that his
Indians held a council of war when they heard that we were approaching
Muyil. One party was for ejecting us at any cost before our presence
had contaminated the shrines of “the Ancients.” But others, more
accustomed to the ways of white men through the educating influences
of the chicle traffic, voted not to molest us so long as we treated the
ruins with respect, destroyed nothing and carried nothing away. How
glad I am that I followed Spinden’s advice not to carry off a few dusty
shards I found in that subterranean temple!
Vega makes a great point of declaring that he was the leader of the
faction which prevailed upon the belligerent Indians not to attack us.
It is obvious that he considers this well worth his passage to Cozumel,
which indeed it is, a hundred thousand times over.
For whatever may happen to the Expedition now it has attained its chief
objective. Our contention that ruins unseen by scientists could be
found within a few miles of the east coast of Yucatan has been proved
sound. Whatever ruins we may find from now on will be so much to the
good, so much velvet. There is no more excuse for lying awake nights
wondering if the plan of the Expedition was not just a romantic dream.
Altogether we found twelve temples or ceremonial buildings at Muyil,
and mounds too numerous to count where others had crumbled. In
his excursions through the big bush Griscom found these traces of
architectural decay over a wide circumference about the narrow area
where we worked. Muyil deserves much further study. If only the Mexican
Government would permit us to come down another year and excavate, or
would send its own men to do so!
As Spinden and I sit over his folding table in the schooner’s hold
and study the plans of buildings we drew and the notes we made the
significance of our discovery constantly grows. The ruins are important
merely as evidence of the high skill in the painting and carving of
stone possessed by the race which once flourished here. They are
even more important because they contain two new features in Maya
architecture, the use of tandem pillars and the stone cupola on the
roof of _El Castillo_. But they are most important because of the
testimony of much evidence, some direct and some indirect, that Muyil
was once an important post on a great Maya trade route.
Spinden’s expedition to Colombia several years ago convinced him that
the pearls and emeralds found in _caches_ of Maya treasure reached
Yucatan from the region of the present Colombia, that is, a part of
South America as far distant from Yucatan as New York is from Chicago.
It has also been established that the turquoise of the Mayas traveled
an even greater distance than the pearls, for the turquoise came from
what is now New Mexico.
Muyil’s buildings are in the style of a solid, commercial town. Muyil’s
location is the location of a seaport, speaking from the point of view
of shoal draft trading canoes. We believe that that river whose bends
and snags Whiting now knows by heart and that canal connecting the
two lakes east of the main group of ruins were once links in a great
commercial system of waterways and land routes which existed 700 or 800
years before the building of the Lincoln Highway and the Panama Canal.
[Illustration]