THE TEMPLES OF TABI AND THE HILL OF OKOP
If you shoot at a flying duck and seem to miss, it pays to watch the
bird till he is out of sight.
We were nearly to Santa Cruz Chico when we turned back to get a duck
which had fallen a mile behind us. I picked him and cleaned him while
the two boys unloaded our baggage on a short sod covered stone dock
which is one of the many reminders that Little Santa Cruz was quite a
town before the feuds of Indians and Mexicans wiped out its population.
When the _Imp_ and _Delirium Tremens_ pushed off from the dock, above
all when they swept out of sight around a distant point, I confess my
heart sank. Whether it was malaria, quinine or sun, I was wabbly. The
two hundred and twenty-five miles to Peto loomed up like twenty-five
hundred. I flopped on the grass beneath a lemon tree while Spinden
cooked dinner.
That was a lucky shot. The duck was a godsend. I revived enough to set
up my cot, or McClurg’s cot, for which I have discarded my hammock.
When I lay down on it the canvas broke.
The mules were not coming till night. I patched the cot with tape and
safety pins and prayer. Spinden repacked our dunnage, especially mine,
which was occupying an amount of space that could not be found on the
back of two mules--and I am entitled to only one and a half.
Now that we are in the bush our positions are reversed. Spinden is at
home here, and I am “at sea.”
It is going to be a great problem to get my bedding rolled up and
stowed away each morning before the sun is up. For it means nothing to
say that the sun is hot in this country. All you can say is that the
sun is a blow, a hammering on your head and back.
You rise with the east gray and feel a pleasant vitality flooding your
veins. You fold up your cot, fold blanket and “hangar” (_mosquitero_).
Perspiration begins to pour down your face, down your chest, off your
hands and into your boots. You start to strap your blanket roll,
and--the first rays of the sun hit you. It is a physical blow. You
reel, and the rest of the strapping-up process is torture.
But lemons are good. We had not gone a mile from Santa Cruz Chico when
I began to wilt in the saddle. The first tart sting of a lemon made
another mile seem possible--if the will were strong. Then a lemon a
mile for several miles, and suddenly the saddle, the mule were parts of
me. Ducking low to avoid the branches covered with thorns and stinging
ants became second nature. This was not a trail, it was a tunnel
through the brush, a succession of “low bridges.”
Here at last was a use for the silly pith helmet. It made a good buffer
whenever a heavy branch hit the lowered head.
At four o’clock Spinden finds it more comfortable to walk. The mules
are tired, chiefly by a half mile bog they floundered through, leg
deep. But no walking for me, not today.
The head _arriero_ rides in the lead, dismounting occasionally to cut a
new trail where the jealous bush has entirely filled the old one. That
he does not lose the way is a miracle, the result of some sixth sense.
He is a fine, lean, iron gray man, with a trooper’s straight back and
thin flanks.
His assistant walks behind the train, throwing sticks and stones
at lagging mules, cursing them constantly when he is not singing
outrageous love songs. They are too obscene to quote, except one
favorite refrain that he will excuse anything in a woman “so long as
she is pretty, and has a little foot.”
This boy is fifteen, but old in a rough world. He has sailed the whole
Caribbean as cook on a smuggling schooner, he knows the _cantinas_
and the brothels from Truxillo to Tampico, and he likes to air his
knowledge. He could live in this bush indefinitely with no equipment
but his _machete_, and he is as strong as a wrestler of twice his
hundred and twenty pounds. When the mules were bogged we took off their
packs. This boy trotted off with double the weight that Spinden or I
could handle.
We have passed several mounds of probable Indian origin, but no ruins.
That is not strange in this stony bushy desert, abandoned even by
buzzards. It _is_ strange to see here and there rotting telephone
poles, whose trailing wire now trips our mules, now threatens to cut
our own throats. This is a relic of the last futile Mexican attempt to
win back the jungle villages which the Indians sacked and burned in the
terrible War of the Castes.
It is nearly sunset when the head _arriero_ raises the welcome shout of
“Laguna!” It is the Lake of Nohbec.
Spinden flops to the ground beneath a big fig tree. He is completely
in, as thoroughly done up as I was yesterday. By some generosity of
God I am not “shot”; at least able to make supper while the _arrieros_
water and picket the mules.
What a blessing is tea. Yes, in the Tropics, hot tea. Ten, twelve
cups of it, for unboiled water is dangerous to drink and boiled water
is nauseous if unflavored. But tea is more than flavor, it is new
life. And with sugar and lemon and a dash of rum, why there you have
something better even than _grog Américain_--which won the Battle of
Paris.
These big trees around the shallow, grassy lake are the only ones
higher than thirty feet we have seen since leaving Santa Cruz Chico.
There is no scenery here, just flat limestone plain, and scrubby bush.
The second day is the same thing, only samer. I shoot a _chachalaca_,
a bird about the size of our ruffed grouse but with a longer neck. We
eat it for breakfast and take lunch out of saddle bags--dried raisins,
dried _tortillas_, and a can of peaches.
In the middle of the day it begins to rain, torrentially. So when we
reach the town of Petacab we strike camp. But the word “town” won’t do.
There are seven or eight thatched huts with upright log walls, or none
at all. These miserable shacks lie within the embrace of one of those
fine old military walls which tell how the Spanish Conquest came--and
went.
Lieutenant Concepcion Put (Poot) of General May’s military Government,
commands the emaciated villagers. He has a sick child and would like
to buy for it a little of our sugar. The gift of a pound of this luxury
wins his everlasting gratitude. We want ruins, do we? Well, he could
take us to two cities of old Maya buildings, but he does not dare to.
The rub is that “our people still use these places and General May
might not approve. Get his permission and I’ll show them to you.”
These places are called Huntichmul (Prominent Pyramid) and Ichmul
(Among The Pyramids). We have never heard of either before, and the
Lieutenant’s casual description of them as Indian rallying points which
no white man has seen throw us into a fever of eagerness to visit these
secret places.
But no bribe can move Lieutenant Put. He is obviously very much afraid
of General May’s displeasure, and quite convinced that he will earn it
if he takes us to these old Maya towns without authorization.
Tabi is forgotten for a while. We must hurry to Santa Cruz de Bravo and
ask May to let us see Huntichmul and Ichmul.
San Isidro is the site of our next camp after Petacab. The walls of
the Spanish fortress, with a turret at each corner, are still in good
condition. Spanish ruins are on every hand.
As we approach Santa Cruz de Bravo the trail widens overhead, but
becomes no softer underfoot. A crematory should be a good investment
in this country, where grave digging means cutting solid rock. Where
there is a little powdered earth over the rock it is reddish with oxide
of iron. A farmer who gets a living here deserves it. Small wonder
that the natives are giving up their _milpas_ and importing food with
the proceeds of their _chicle_. That commodity is to this region what
henequen (which gives sisal fibre) is to northern Yucatan. Two of the
most valuable vegetable products of the world, chicle and sisal fibre,
are products of this God-forsaken waste of bushy limestone plain.
The last five miles to Santa Cruz are made an agony by the high sun.
The same crowd of drunken _chicleros_ pulls at our stirrups as we ride
through the plaza with its unkempt grass and untrimmed orange trees.
General May cannot see us this afternoon. “Sick” again.
A night’s sleep puts him in shape for social duties. He is dressed in
his same white pyjamas, and receives us in the same chicle warehouse.
To make a long story short, though we plead for half an hour he refuses
politely but firmly to permit us to see Huntichmul and Ichmul. It is
easy to lose his meaning through the interpretation of his diplomatic
secretary, but it seems that one of the General’s chief objections
to our going to these cities is the fact that their temples _are_
still used for worship. We give him many English cigarets and the
best hunting knife made in the United States, but we cannot weaken
his decision. He suggests many other places where we may go, sites of
ruins, too, but outside his territory. Above all Huntichmul and Ichmul
are forbidden.
Before the conference is over the General’s secretary and two other
advisers present take an active part in it on their own account, and
the whole course of our expedition up to this time is reviewed. These
Indians are aware of every move that we have made, of every building
we have entered. And at last it comes out that our visit to the
subterranean temple at Muyil was particularly disliked, and that this
has so strengthened the party which has always favored our ejection
from the country that General May fears an open revolt might be the
result of his giving us permission to visit Huntichmul and Ichmul. We
observe that we have not injured any building or removed anything we
found therein. The General remarks gravely that this has been noted in
our favor. The way he says this makes me shudder, remembering how only
Spinden’s earnest pleading dissuaded me from taking a fragment of old
pottery from one of the altars of that sacred subterranean temple!
At the end this Indian potentate says:
“Every day my people are becoming more accustomed to the ways of the
outside world which chews our chicle. They begin to understand that you
archæologists come to our shrines in a spirit of reverence and not to
steal. Perhaps if you come back next year”--he throws a covetous look
at my hammerless double-barrelled shotgun, the first of its kind he has
ever seen,--“perhaps if you come back next year I can let you see these
cities you ask for.”
I hope to return next year with an _automatic_ shotgun!
This is not mere flippancy. The eagerness of these primitive people
for some of the mechanical advantages the white man has developed is
pitiful to see. In return for our shotguns and radio sets they can give
us light on the wonders of their past, as they have begun to give us
their mahogany and their chicle. Spinden does not exaggerate when he
says that “American archæology is founded on chewing gum.” But for the
introductions to these Indians which we were given by the privileged
Chicle Development Company and its astute agents we might not have
found half the buildings we have explored.
Chicle is rapidly breaking down the anti-foreign prejudices of the
Indians. A few years ago General May went to Mexico City and got
himself a French wife. When his people heard of this they made such an
outcry that he wisely decided to leave her at Vigia Chico on his return
to Quintana Roo while he went up to his capital and tried to soothe
his outraged subjects. But he failed in this, called the marriage off,
and sent the lady back to the more tolerant outer world. However, if
he still wants her he will be able to bring her to his capital in a
few years now, so rapidly are the old nationalistic prejudices of the
Indians melting away. The sad part is that the Indians are melting
away, too.
Forty Indians have just come into town to do their duty as a garrison.
(Each of May’s villages takes its turn at providing a guard for the
capital.) They are a sorry looking lot, anæmic, consumptive and
watery-eyed. They crowd into the room which Martin has given us again,
spitting incessantly and preventing our doing any work. (It is raining
so hard that we cannot start for Tabi.) They are fascinated with my
magnifying shaving mirror and the hammerless shotgun, for which they
offer me considerably more money that it cost when new. But above
all they marvel at the pneumatic mattress which Spinden bought from
McClurg. He blows it up with his own lung power, and the Indians insist
on repetitions of this performance till Spinden is blue in the face.
Most of them are still afraid of being photographed, and throughout the
trip it has been almost impossible to get a Maya woman to pose. Four
or five of these soldiers, however, have just come around and asked us
to make a picture of them all at once, and they stand with ridiculous
stiffness while it is done, obviously encouraged to face the feared
kodak by each other’s moral support.
* * * * *
For four days we were cooped up at Santa Cruz de Bravo while the
heavens deluged the earth. But as we set out on the fifth morning there
was not a puddle on the trail. It had all been taken care of by the
wonderful natural drainage of this limestone formation. There were
holes as big round as buckets, dropping straight downward through the
rock as far as the eye could see.
The first night out of Santa Cruz we reached Tabi, but before we
arrived it was obvious that Camera is not the guide that he represented
himself to be. He was constantly asking the way of his assistant
_arriero_, a short, plump little fellow named Pancho. As we made supper
at Tabi, within sight of Spanish walls, Spinden asked if the ruins
Camera was “selling” us were like these.
“Oh, no,” he said, “the ruins are Maya. But we won’t reach them till
tomorrow noon.”
This ought to have made us suspicious.
The following noon we saw ahead the tall _piche_ trees which invariably
mark the site of an old Spanish or Mexican town. Camera had been losing
patience under our frequent queries as to the proximity of the ruins.
As we rode into a clearing bounded on two sides by remnants of a
Spanish fortification Camera said:
“Here are the ruins, _Señor_.”
“What,” roared Spinden, “these are your temples of Tabi?”
“_Si, Señor._” The _arriero’s_ eyes were on the ground.
It was simply too disgusting, too cruel. Camera is not a fool. And we
have spent hours explaining to him the difference between Spanish and
Maya ruins, and have shown him dozens of photographs of the latter. It
is just a cheap hoax, perpetrated apparently for the sole purpose of
gaining a few days employment driving mules. A cheap contemptible fraud
which costs us valuable time and not a few _pesos_.
I exploded into expletives, but what was the use. I sank on the ground
and reveled in the denunciation of the despicable _arriero_ which
flowed from Spinden’s lips. His just anger lent him an astonishing
facility in Spanish invective, in the biting, scathing dialect the
_arriero_ knows as none other.
The rest of that day--it was yesterday--was a dull gloom.
But anger has its uses. We rose this morning still in a rage at Camera.
The mule driver’s delay in starting did not diminish Spinden’s choler.
For this reason he marched straight through the remains of another
Spanish town where the _arrieros_ wanted to stop for a bite and a
drink, for it was noon.
Spinden was walking in the lead, and when he had plodded an hour or so
longer under the broiling sun even he began to realize the necessity of
refreshment. As he reached a point where the trail passes a lake filled
with bulrushes he called back to Camera:
“You can stop here a few minutes.”
Except for Spinden’s anger at Camera we had not stopped here--but
before this.
And when I walked down to the shallow water and looked across the green
level of reeds I noticed a hill on the farther side. A little hill it
is, yet unusually conspicuous for this flat country.
On the top of it I perceived a high excrescence, covered with growth
but distinctly square and sharp in outline.
“That looks like a ruin,” I suggested.
“No, it’s just a natural hill, _Señor_,” said Camera, “I have seen it
many times.”
“It does look like a ruin,” said Spinden with a black glance at the
_arriero_, “we’ll have a look at it after lunch.”
[Illustration: A lucky halt for lunch led to the discovery of Okop]
* * * * *
We bolt a few sandwiches of dried _tortillas_ and canned beef and start
up the trail, aiming to cut in at right angles to it as soon as we
judge we have passed the end of the lake.
Camera leads through the brush, slashing right and left with his
_machete_ and still muttering that the high mound we saw is just a
“natural hill.” When we have gone perhaps three hundred yards I climb a
tree. Ahead is a woody knoll. That may be it, and I direct Spinden to
continue as he is going.
But in pulling my leg over a limb I have been straddling I look
around, and there, towering over me, not one hundred yards away, is a
thundering big Maya _castillo_! Its size takes my breath away, I hang
in the tree, like a stunned bird, drinking in the majestic bulk and
symmetry of the pyramid. For me this is the biggest moment of the whole
trip.
At last I collect my wits, realize that Spinden and Camera are
disappearing, and shout for them to turn at right angles. Spinden is
skeptical of my directions, but heeds them, half convinced by the ring
in my voice.
I slide down the tree, falling the last ten feet in my haste. Running
over a small ruin I catch up to the other two, and slashing at the
brush abreast we reach the foot of a great stairway. The trees hide the
top of the temple, but there is no doubt in anyone any longer. This is
no “natural hill” but a whale of a _castillo_!
We toil up the stairway, cutting away wild henequen, its sword-shaped
leaves tipped with wicked black spikes. We clamber very gingerly, for
many of the stones are ready to give way underfoot and crash down on
the man behind.
A doorway yawns above and to the left. Like some of the lofty temples
of Tikal this one is built into the top of the great mound instead of
being raised upon its summit.
A clump of cactus bars the way to this chamber and we keep on to the
top of the pyramid. Out of breath we crawl up to the flat top of the
mound, a bush-covered plateau perhaps twenty-five feet square. If we
had any breath this view would take it away. On every side is a flat
expanse of forest like a great green ocean, melting off at the edges
into the blue of the sky.
“God,” says Spinden at last, “this by itself is worth the whole
journey.”
[Illustration: The great moment when Spinden reached the top of a
pyramid at Okop, higher than any mound at Chichen Itza or Uxmal]
* * * * *
We found the remains of seventeen other buildings scattered through the
ceremonial center of the ancient city, which center occupied an area of
perhaps 800 by 1000 feet on the high land overlooking the lake. We were
able to devote to their study only the two days we had planned to give
to Tabi, for Julio Martin needed his mules and we had promised to keep
them only these two days above the bare time required for them to make
the round trip.
We have called the ruins Okop, using the native name for an abandoned
Spanish settlement about a mile and a half north of them. But Okop
is a Maya word and was probably never applied to their town by the
Spaniards. It means “hollow land,” and may well refer to the bowl which
holds the reedy lake beneath the hill tipped by the great pyramid.
For it is a great pyramid. We found it to be 94 feet high with a
base 150 feet wide and 170 feet long. It is higher, therefore, than
the highest pyramidal mounds of Uxmal and Chichen Itza, although the
roofs of the temples atop those mounds are higher than the summit of
this pyramid, which has its temple in it rather than on it as just
explained. This is a single room, 19 feet by 7.
This hollowing out of the pyramid instead of building on top of it,
suggests that Okop is of fairly early construction. There are other
indications of the same thing, above all, the unusual thickness of
walls and heaviness of all construction.
All the buildings at Okop average larger than the later period
structures we found on the coast. Close on the southeast of the
Pyramid-Temple is a remarkable ruin, consisting of four buildings on
the four high sides of a mound 140 feet square, facing a tower rising
from a low center. About 130 feet west of the Pyramid Temple is the
massed stone remains of a building 110 feet by 130 feet by 45 feet
high. What appears to be the subterranean chambers of this structure,
probably lower rooms, are nearly buried by the caving in of the rooms
on top.
“Okop is undoubtedly older than the cities on the east coast,” says
Spinden, “with best indications of a connection with Labna, in
Western Yucatan, and other cities flourishing about the time William
the Conqueror entered England (1066 A.D.). It is reasonable to
believe that the stone buildings in the ceremonial center we found
were surrounded by many thatched huts. The place was not a center of
art and learning, but a good, substantial city of industrialists, who
took religion seriously and built heavy temples, wasting no time on
flourishes and decoration and not believing in evolution. Briefly,
good, substantial bourgeois fundamentalist Mayas built Okop.”
There is an interesting round stone altar at the foot of the stairs
of the Okop _Castillo_, a stone perhaps five feet in diameter and two
and a half feet thick, looking not unlike a great sundial. Also there
are several traces of walls indicating the division of land. There
is no doubt that excavation would be profitable, perhaps especially
in the case of the great two or three story ruin lying west of the
_Castillo_--a ruin which seems to have had a number of rooms and in
some respects suggests the “Nunnery” of Chichen Itza.
The pleasure of finding this oldest of the seven cities we have
discovered was much heightened by the fact that we came upon it
entirely by virtue of our own efforts. After leading us to the false
“temples of Tabi” the worse than worthless Camera did his best to keep
us from visiting the important temples of Okop.
And with such lazy aid as he could give us about the ruins we were
unable to clear a single building enough to get a good photograph of
it. The trees are large here, doubtless because of the proximity of
the lake, and several days hard labor would have been necessary for us
four to clear the _Castillo_ alone. We used all our available time
in measuring the buildings and taking notes on their architectural
features. For if most of the hieroglyphs still baffle science Maya
architecture is a fairly open book.
Not till we were very near Peto did Spinden and I find native villages,
and when we completed the first archæological traverse of Quintana Roo
and reached the railhead on March 22 we felt as if we had crossed the
country of the dead.
We continued to find many marks of Spanish energy, fortresses and great
deserted churches which would alone have been worth going this distance
to see. Indeed, from the time we left the schooner till we reached Peto
we saw on every hand traces of the three occupations of Quintana Roo
prior to the three successive abandonments, first, the Maya; second,
the Spanish, and third the Mexican. Now that the modern Indians seem to
be decreasing a fourth desertion of the hot, silent bush impends.
The many evidences of the work of the Spanish conquerors prove them to
have been a remarkable people. Undaunted by the bush, discouragingly
thick, and the rocky, thorny trails varied by bogs in the southern
part, they left remains of walled towns, turreted stone forts and moats
and deep wells through the solid rock such as few people today have the
energy to build. They did this under the almost constant menace of
the natives and the piratical raids of other powers.
[Illustration: We found magnificent Spanish churches deserted to the
hot, silent bush]
The hill fortress of Bacalar, overlooking the lake; the turreted ford
of San Isidro, a small fort, moat-surrounded, a mile and a half north
of Okop; the cathedrals of Bacalar, Santa Cruz de Bravo, Saban and
Sakalaka are notable memorials of the Spanish occupation.
When we reached Merida almost the first person we met was Dr. A. V.
Kidder, a colleague of Spinden’s in the Peabody Museum. He had just
returned from the ruins of Coba.
It seems that Gann did not go down the east coast after all, but came
to Merida and visited Coba with E. L. Crandall, photographer of the
Carnegie Institution. Although its Mexican discoverer’s description
of this city was published by Stephens in 1843, and although Teobert
Maler, the Teutonic explorer, visited Coba and photographed it thirty
years ago the place seems to have been under-appreciated. Kidder
visited it with another representative of the Carnegie Institution
a week after Gann, and each of these parties found buildings not
previously described. But neither Gann nor Kidder found the mural
paintings Stephens reported. Alas, they have perhaps vanished with
crumbling walls. Here is the tragedy of the world’s neglect of the
Mayas. Works of art and hieroglyphic inscriptions of inestimable
value have been allowed to wear away in neglect while we moderns have
perfected bridge whist and the cross word puzzle.
Before we separated Spinden and I went to Chichen Itza to look at the
excavation of that rich site being done by the Carnegie Institution of
Washington. With Mrs. W. M. James of Merida, Mr. O. O. Gilmore of Los
Angeles and Mr. E. L. Crandall of the Carnegie Institution I amused
myself exploring the caves which debouch on the _cenote_, or great
natural sunken pool, from which the ancient inhabitants of Chichen got
their drinking water. Mr. Edward Herbert Thompson, the owner of the
ranch of Chichen Itza and the discoverer of the hollow pyramidal mound
called the Grave of the High Priest, has made the exciting suggestion
that there may once have been a connection between these caves and this
tomb. The tomb lies 575 feet west 30° north from the _cenote_. Entering
a cave on the west face of the steep circular cliff about the pool we
found that a few yards in it forked. The right branch ran 241 feet
west 65° north. The left branch ran 488 feet south 35° west. But the
interesting thing was that both these tunnels had been blocked where
our measurements stopped by partial cave-ins, and as we peeked through
crevices in the piled up débris it seemed that both tunnels continued.
Without shoring up the roof it would have been dangerous to clear out
the fallen earth and rock, and we did not have the time for that.
Thompson’s suggestion of a connection with the tomb does seem romantic,
yet a complete excavation of this cave might be worth while. Both
tunnels are of regular shape, about four feet high and six feet broad.
They were considerably higher, but the rains of centuries have covered
their floors with a thick layer of soil.
Meanwhile on one of the two square columns in the little temple
back of the Temple of the Jaguars Spinden was finding a heretofore
unnoticed low relief carving of Toltec goddesses, stripped to the
waist. The latter feature is extraordinary, for the art of the ancient
Mayas scrupulously avoided the nude and anything which carried sexual
suggestion.
These stones were recently set up by the Mexican Government, and
formerly only the bases were known. One side is fully clear and shows
a female divinity carved in low relief, and nearly complete in detail.
The other sides do not show the heads clearly. But all have women
in narrow skirts decorated with crossbones. In one case there is a
sacrificial knife stuck in the girdle. The heads were probably grinning
skulls, and there are strong associations with death as in many other
pieces at Chichen Itza. The upper parts of the body are bare except for
a heavy necklace which partly conceals the breasts.
It is possible that these dead women represent the companions of dead
warriors. The Toltecs and Aztecs had a peculiar belief that men who
died in battle and women who died in childbirth went to a special
heaven because of their sacrifices for the benefit of the State.
The return to Merida marked the end of our expedition. I took a steamer
to the United States, leaving Spinden about to embark for Honduras to
get some stone tables (articles of furniture, not tablets) which he
had cached in the bush up the Plantain river on a previous expedition.
These relics of the Chorotegan culture, which is related to the Maya
but inferior to it, were wanted by the Peabody Museum.
On returning home I undertook to write a series of articles summarizing
the results of our work. I had hardly begun this task when there came
a letter from McClurg, in Chicago, commenting on his exploration of
the head of Ascension Bay and the lagoons back of Boca de Paila, which
proved that Allen Point is an island not a promontory.
Two days later I opened a morning newspaper to see that he had suddenly
died.
[Illustration: The author was glad to reach “civilization,” at Chichen
Itza]
For three days I sat about in a daze, unable to work, unable to believe
this news. It still does not seem possible--six months after the event.
Of the five Americans who sailed along the Maya coast in the _Albert_
he and Griscom seemed the healthiest, the least likely to crumple. How
can such a vital personality as his be wiped out?
The answer is that it cannot, as I think Josiah Royce has proved. To a
varying but palpable degree his influence lives in each of us four who
survive him and from us will pass on to others in accordance with laws
over which we have no control.
I remember that night in Belize that he said good-bye to Whiting on the
porch of Miss Staine’s weather-beaten boarding house, then walked down
the steps with me to the car which was waiting to take him to the dock.
The car started; I remember the friendly wave of his white-sleeved
arm, the flashing smile on that strong, tanned face, the last shouted,
“Good-bye, old man.”
It may be my fortune to sail on many another cruise. But never with a
finer shipmate than Ogden McClurg.
Perhaps it is needless to say that there was not a particle of truth
in a newspaper story to the effect that in Yucatan McClurg had been
ambushed by Indians with poisoned arrows, and suggesting that his
death was the result of a “curse” cast upon him for disturbing the
tombs of the Maya priests. If there were such a curse as superstition
suggests it would have fallen upon McClurg last of all of us, for
least of all of us had he to do with ruins. And it would have fallen
long ago on archæologists of mature age like Saville, Tozzer, Morley
and Spinden, who have spent their lives in what superstitious persons
please to call the “profanation of Maya tombs.”
Now for that summary of what our expedition accomplished....
Our foremost goal was the discovery of a ruined city. We found the
remains of seven cities, in order named Muyil, Xkaret, Paalmul,
Chakalal, Acomal, Saint Tomas and Okop. Also several lesser sites,
suburbs, you might say, for it should always be remembered that the
Mayas were a city dwelling people as we of the United States of America
are coming to be.
Maybe seven was our lucky number, for Griscom found a small fly-catcher
on Cozumel which may prove new when specimens in Europe can be
examined. A little blue-gray gnat-catcher from the same locality was
his sixth new species. He established the existence of some 200 species
on the mainland in Quintana Roo, the majority of which had never been
recorded there. He also proved that there are on this peculiar island
about a score of birds which live nowhere else in the world. Of this
important achievement he announced to the New York _Times_ from the
American Museum of Natural History:
“Cozumel Island has long been remarkable for possessing a number of
peculiar species, which not only do not occur on the mainland, some
twelve miles away, but are found nowhere else in the world. Mr. Mason
afforded me full opportunity for my task of securing adequate series
of these peculiar species and of determining that they do not occur
on the adjacent mainland.
“The problem of the origin of these peculiar species is a question
which has engaged the attention of scientists for a number of years.
As a general rule islands lying within the continental shelf have
a fauna which is closely related to that of the adjacent mainland,
and Cozumel Island has always been one of the great exceptions to
this rule. Not only are the peculiar species very distinct, but
nearly half of them are related to birds in the West Indies instead
of Central America. One of them, a thrasher, closely related to our
brown thrasher of the Eastern United States, is the only tropical
representative of its group, which does not occur nearer than the
mountains of Southern Mexico, distant some 800 miles.
“The observer is also impressed by the remarkable fact that a
considerable group of North American species which migrate South in
Winter to the West Indies occur also on Cozumel Island (and on Great
Key on Chinchorro Bank), although they are unknown in the mainland of
Mexico and Central America. It is a reasonable inference that these
birds cross the Caribbean from the West Indies to these islands every
year. One also finds that these peculiar birds are by all odds the
commonest on Cozumel, and that such mainland species as also occur
are comparatively rare and local.
“One cannot avoid the inference from these facts that the peculiar
birds of Cozumel got there first and that Cozumel must have been an
island for a long time, and was perhaps in past geological time far
nearer to the Greater Antilles than now.
“The fact that at least 100 species of land birds are found on the
adjacent mainland which do not occur on Cozumel Island shows how
sedentary many tropical species are.”
To return to archæology--the extent of Maya territory still to be
explored has been greatly reduced as one result of our expedition. We
discovered many interesting and important variations in Maya art forms,
including a type of mural painting entirely different from anything
heretofore found on the East Coast of Yucatan. This is the sort of find
peculiarly gratifying to the student of the Maya past.
Many were the interesting features of architecture which we found,
including proof that in several respects the directors of the last
efflorescence of Maya culture were more skilled than archæologists have
previously believed.
As we look back at this phase of the trip, the features that stand
out most sharply are the extraordinary subterranean temple at Muyil,
the mystifying round tower at Paalmul--once devoted to who knows what
occult rites--the statues guarding temples on Cozumel Island with right
hands raised as if forbidding entrance, the hidden City of Xkaret
with its protecting wall and its lovely lagoon entrance, and the fine
characteristically Maya pyramid temples of Muyil and Okop.
Knowledge which we gained largely through incidental and indirect
evidence, however, gives us new light on the nature of the old Mayas
and on their connections with the present world more significant than
any mere recital of buildings found can convey. Walls borne down by the
trunks and torn apart by the roots of _zapote_ and _ramon_ trees told
us a tale as illuminating as any to be found in a volume of history.