But Aguilar was an idealist, and though, true to his Church's teaching,

casuist enough to keep on the right side of Hkin Cutz, he treasured a

hope of some day, somehow, returning to Spain and its Catholic joys.

With a view to hastening this consummation he so devoutly wished, he

took the Saints into his confidence, and, satisfied of their assistance,

promised at all costs to preserve that chastity which is believed by the

credulous to be still--as it doubtless always has been--the brightest

jewel in the crown of the Catholic priesthood. Aguilar's misogynistic

tendencies do not seem to have much troubled Hkin Cutz; but his

successor Ahmay was distinctly uxorious, and in addition appears to have

been something of a humorist. Aguilar's lack of appreciation of his

maidens worried him somewhat, and he determined to find out whether it

was the lack of opportunity or the lack of taste. When the young priest

was not cutting wood or drawing water, he was sent out fishing, going

overnight to the coast and sleeping on the beach till dawn, when the

fish were feeding. One day Ahmay ordered him to the coast, but as a mark

of his favour told him to take as his companion a very beautiful girl of

fourteen, to whom the cunning cacique gave instructions that she was to

"fish" for Aguilar while he--poor innocent--was seeking his lord's

breakfast. Aguilar did not much care for his girl comrade, but he did

not dare to refuse: so off they started, the chief first loading his

faithful servant with warm garments for the night journey and a sort of

_en tout cas_ bedspread. As the coast was not far distant, and the

travellers had not much to say to each other, they got over the ground

so quickly that the night was not far spent when they reached Aguilar's

fishing "pitch." Seeing his companion was sleepy, he gallantly made a

bed for her in the woods with the wraps Ahmay had so thoughtfully

provided, and then went off to the beach and lay down on the sand. But

the temptations of St. Anthony were not in it with those to which that

Indian minx subjected the young priest till dawn, and thus it is the

more gratifying to learn that he was able to keep his arrangement with

the Saints, whereby he passed into the highest favour with Ahmay, who,

poor weak mortal that he was, was convinced that Aguilar was a very

exceptional young man. This is a Spanish story, and must be taken with a

big pinch of salt.

But to return to more serious history. Undeterred by their predecessors'

misfortunes, the Spanish undertook a third expedition to Yucatan. On the

8th February, 1517, Francis Hernandez de Cordoba, with one hundred and

ten soldiers and three ships, sailed from Cuba, and on the twentieth day

sighted an island. On their approach five large canoes put off. Signs of

friendship prevailed on some thirty of the Indians to come on board

Cordoba's ships, and there such amicable relations were established that

the Spaniards landed, finding to their surprise every sign of a

considerable civilisation. For the first time Europeans saw stone

buildings in America. In the temple, approached by well-laid steps, they

saw incense being burnt in front of stone and wooden idols, while files

of women ministrants chanted near the altars. Hence Cordoba christened

the island "Isla de Mujeres" (Isle of Women). Another version has it

that the Spaniards found gigantic female figures of stone at the south

end of the island, but our careful search of the island and a

consultation of its records do not support this version. Thence he

sailed to the most northerly point of Yucatan, where he was welcomed by

the chief, who came out with his people in twelve canoes and repeatedly

exclaimed, "_Connex c otoch_" ("Come to our Town"), which the Spaniards

believed the name of the place: hence Cape Catoche, as the point is

still called.

The Spaniards, led by the treacherous cacique, landed, and were soon

attacked in a thick wood by a body of Indians armed with stone axes,

bows, and lances of wood hardened by fire, their faces and bodies

painted, wearing on their arms an armour of plaited cotton, beating a

war tune on turtle-shells and blowing horns of conch-shells. Cordoba

lost twenty men, and many of the Indians were killed. Returning to their

ships, the Spaniards sailed on to a point where at the mouth of the

river was a large Indian town called by the natives Kimpech, the modern

Campeachy. Farther on a disastrous fight took place which ended in the

loss of fifty Spaniards and the retreat of Cordoba. He himself received

twelve arrow-wounds, and but one soldier escaped unhurt. Within ten

days of his reaching Havana, Cordoba died of his wounds. This signal

disaster did not, however, deter enterprising Spaniards from looking

longingly towards this veritable will o' the wisp, La Isla Rica. In 1518

an expedition led by Juan de Grijalva sailed from Matanzas. This

resulted in the discovery of the island of Cozumel and a fairly complete

reconnaissance of the coastline of Yucatan. A third expedition,

commanded by the great Cortes, left Cuba on the 18th February, 1519,

made first for Cozumel; and thence, cruising round the north-east coast,

the Spaniards continued their voyage as far as what is to-day the city

of Vera Cruz, where the glittering promise of Mexico once and for all

removed the great Spanish captain from Yucatecan history.

But in Cortes's suite was one Francisco Montejo, a gentleman of Seville.

To him, on the 8th December, 1526, a grant was made for the conquest of

the "islands" of Yucatan and Cozumel. Fitting out a small armada, he

sailed from Seville in May, 1527, with 380 troops. He made first for

Cozumel, where he landed in September of that year, establishing

friendly relations with the chief, Naum Pat. Thence, taking with him an

Indian guide, he sailed to the east coast. With bombastic prematureness

the royal standard was planted on the beach, and amid cries of "Viva

España!" the whole country claimed for the King of Spain. But Montejo

was merely beginning his troubles. A disastrous march through the dense

pathless bush--his troops footsore and fever-stricken, hunger and thirst

their constant comrades--ended in a battle in which, with fearful

losses, the invaders barely held their own. A retreat followed; but,

undismayed, in 1528 Montejo with the remnant of his army marched on

Chichen Itza. The old chroniclers contradict one another as to this

expedition to Chichen. We believe Montejo made but one, though time

would allow for two visits and two temporary settlements there, as some

writers believe. In the metropolis of the Itza tribe a friendly

reception at first was accorded him; but he unwisely divided his forces

by dispatching his captain, Alonzo Davila, with some foot and horse to

the westward. Thus weakened he was soon driven out of Chichen, and

forced to the sea at Campeachy. Davila fared no better. Arrived in the

dominions of a neighbouring cacique, his request for provisions was

fiercely answered by the latter, who said he "would send them fowls on

spears, and maize on arrows." After two years of weary struggle with

hunger and fever, harassed the while by Indians, Davila rejoined his

chief at Campeachy. Nothing had been achieved: Yucatan was still

unconquered. Montejo now returned to Cuba for reinforcements, and, thus

heartened, he made an attack on Tabasco, leaving a few Spanish at

Campeachy. These few, weakened by privations, were after some years

reduced to an effective force of five only. The camp was abandoned.

Gonzales Nieto, who had planted the flag amid such bombastic shoutings

on the eastern beach nine years earlier, was the last to leave. In 1535

not a single Spaniard remained in Yucatan.

Two years later Montejo, whose attempt on Tabasco had signally failed,

returned to the attack, landing at Champoton, where once more the

Spanish flag was raised. The Indians, grown shrewd, left the heat and

General Malaria to do their skirmishing, and when Montejo's camp had

become a hospital, a pitched battle all but drove the Spaniards into the

sea. Worse than this, the rumours of the wealth of Peru and Mexico, of

the dazzling conquests of Cortes and Pizarro, caused desertions (for the

poverty of Yucatan had now become notorious), and one by one Montejo's

men slunk off. Nineteen stalwarts at last were all that were left at

Champoton. Montejo sent his son to Cuba with urgent requests for relief.

In 1539 stores and men arrived, and Montejo, distrusting his own

fortune, placed the conquest of Yucatan in his son's hands. The latter

marched out from Champoton, gave battle to the Indians, and completely

routed them. Advancing into the land, in one day three fights took

place, the Indian dead being so numerous that they literally obstructed

the roadway. After a march of many months, during which his troops

suffered incredible hardships and fought their way almost league by

league, Montejo reached the great city of Tihoo early in 1541.

A preliminary victory ensured the invaders some months of peace. But the

clouds were gathering: the caciques formed a confederation, and on the

11th of June a final battle took place. Little reliance can be placed on

the figures, but if they are anywhere near the truth, the pious

historian, Father Cogolludo of the Franciscan Friars, may be forgiven

for exclaiming, in an ecstasy of faith, "Divine power works more than

human valour!" For the Spanish mustered but 200, while the Indians, it

is alleged, were 70,000 strong! Be that as it may, the Spanish firearms

won the day, and the 6th January, 1542, saw the formal founding of the

city of Merida, built out of the stones and on the ruined site of

Tihoo. The Indians never rallied; and the brutal work of enslaving them

was thenceforth to be pursued with few interruptions. In 1561 French

pirates attacked Campeachy and entered Merida, and in 1575 English

buccaneers sacked the city. Forced to withdraw, they renewed their

attack in 1606, but unsuccessfully. In 1632 the Dutch appeared on the

scene, and two years later British pirates made a descent on the coast.

For the next half-century Yucatan was the prey of pirates, and Merida

was attacked again in 1684. Meanwhile the country had been constituted a

Spanish province under a Captain-General; a see of Merida was created,

and Spanish towns built on the ruins of the Indian pueblos.

The internal history of the peninsula from 1684 during the next century

and a half is a story of Spanish cruelty and bigotry, of Franciscan

arrogance and vandalism. The Spanish settlers, not content with the

conquest and enslaving of the Indians, busied themselves in the

destruction of everything--buildings, books, statues--which had to do

with earlier days. Towns were built on the ruins of Indian villages;

large churches--the majority now in ruins--were constructed, for the

most part, out of the stones of Indian palaces, and the great haciendas

were formed and worked by gangs of miserable natives whose spirit was

broken.

In 1824 Yucatan, which had borne its fair share in the War of

Independence against Spain of the previous year, became a Federal State.

Amicable relations with Mexico were interrupted in 1829 and again in

1840, when heavy taxation brought about an armed revolt. In the June of

the latter year the rebels drove the Federal forces out of Yucatecan

territory, and independence was declared. In 1843 General Santa Ana, the

head of Mexico, by a successful campaign forced Yucatan into the

Federation once more. In 1847 a serious Indian revolt occurred, and this

was not suppressed till 1853, when a treaty of peace was signed granting

autonomy to the Indians of the east. A year later trouble broke out

again, but in 1860 an army 3,000 strong attacked and captured Chan Santa

Cruz, the Indian capital. The town was almost at once, however, retaken

by the natives with a loss of 1,500 whites, and until 1901 it remained

in the hands of the Mayans. Of the war which was then declared against

these stalwarts, of the injustice of its inception, and of the barbarous

methods now being employed against them, we shall speak later. The

Mexican Government have done their best to hide from the outside world

what exactly is happening in far Eastern Yucatan, but despite official

discouragement we penetrated the district and are in a position to tell

the whole story.

Of the authentic history of Yucatan previous to the Conquest it might

almost be written as succinctly as in the famous chapter "Snakes in

Iceland": there is none. Even its ancient name is in dispute, though

there is little doubt it was "Maya." Columbus is the first to record

that name. For the first half-century or so after the founding of

Merida, the Spanish vandals were far too busy, in their ruthless

Christian zeal, with the destruction of the Mayan towns and palaces,

with the butchering of men and the outraging of women, to give much

thought to the past of the unfortunate race which they were bent on

degrading and enslaving. Bishop Landa, one of the earliest of the

Catholic bishops of Yucatan, bears terrible evidence on this point. The

Indian chiefs were burnt alive in many instances; women, after outrage

and gross and filthy indignities, were hanged, their babies being hanged

on their feet--thus making gibbets of the mothers' bodies. Landa says

that there is no doubt that until his countrymen arrived chastity was

dearly prized among the Mayans: death being the penalty for both young

man and maiden proved unchaste before marriage. To-day Mayan morality in

all towns and centres where the Indians are in contact, or have long

been in contact, with the whites is loose in the extreme. Prostitution

is terribly common, practically universal.

When, towards the end of the sixteenth century, the task of collecting

historical data was undertaken, naturally enough the Indians consulted

had little to give but a hotchpotch of tradition and legend. With an

alacrity positively suspicious the so-called books of Chilan Balam

cropped up in all directions. Each important township had one of these

almost worthless compilations based on the musty memories of garrulous

old Mayans, who thus sought to ingratiate themselves with the

domineering Franciscan friars. The Mayan hieroglyphics were, as they

still are, undecipherable, the temple records and picture writings had

been burnt, and the oldest Indian assisting at the manufacture of these

tradition books must have been in long clothes or the Mayan equivalent

when Cortes landed. Yet this lack of credibility has not prevented many

who have laboured earnestly and long in the field of Mayan archæology

from spoiling their work by plunging into the muddied tideway of date

and legend and emerging convinced of much for which there is not a

tittle of real evidence. Most of the tradition books agree in ascribing

Central American civilisation to the Toltec nation, and "Toltec" has

become the rallying cry, the shibboleth of those who struggle to unravel

the past of Central America. Learned professors from Berlin and Dresden;

enthusiastic young men from Harvard and other American universities;

foreign and native writers and students, clamber or tumble headlong over

the Toltec fence. With the perverse persistence of the National School

child, whose memory of dates is restricted to "William the Conqueror,

1066," at which moment its infantile mind supposes England, London, the

Tower, the Zoo, and Madame Tussaud's to have come into instant being, so

"648 A.D. Toltecs arrived at Tula or Tulapan" crops up in everything

these good people write. King Charles I.'s head never worried Mr. Dick

half as much as the Toltec bogey worries them.

Where Tula or Tulapan was, is, or ever has been: where the Toltecs

sprang from; what ethnical affinities they possessed; whether they were

kin to those affiliated tribes which have most certainly inhabited the

Americas since prehistoric times; how they came to have cut-and-dried

building specifications in what were equivalent to their breeches'

pockets, they never stop to tell us. One professor glibly remarks,

assuming his Toltec premiss, "While this [the Toltec] race was still

quite at a low stage of civilisation the Aztecs advanced out of the

north from at least 26° north latitude." No conjurer ever produced

rabbit from silk hat with more assurance than the professor produces the

Aztecs "out of the north." That "at least" is distinctly precious. Was

ever such begging of the question? The Aztecs were builders, too! Where

did they get their knowledge? They certainly would have difficulty to

find a hint of it in the vast North American Continent. The truth is

that, stripped of all nonsensical fetish-worship, there is not an iota

of real evidence for this Toltec theory. No Toltec nationality ever

existed; and the explanation of that civilisation which differentiates

the Mayan peoples and their Aztec neighbours from the natives of the

rest of the Americas is to be sought, as we endeavour to demonstrate in

Chapter XV., in an altogether different direction.

Well then, we have no real pre-Conquest history. All that seems certain

is that in Yucatan no kingship in the true sense existed. The land was

ruled by caciques (chiefs), each the head of a tribe or tribal family.

As is natural in such a régime, the predominating power was not always

in the same hands. About 1436 (Bishop Landa, writing in 1556, gives the

date, and this agrees with native tradition) the tyranny of the Cocomes

who ruled over the great city of Mayapan caused a rebellious

confederation of lesser caciques, which ended in the overthrow of the

Cocomes family and the destruction of Mayapan. This--the great event of

the more recent pre-Spanish history of Yucatan--was followed by the

uprise of the chief of Chichen Itza, who thenceforward till the Conquest

maintained predominance. These, the only dates upon which reliance can

be placed, fit in well with the date which we are inclined to assign to

the superb ruins of Chichen, which we describe in detail in a later

chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] While in Mexico City we visited in vain all the map shops

and Government offices in search of a map of Yucatan. All the maps

available were those based on the Mapa de la Peninsula (1887), which we

have proved to be hopelessly inaccurate.

CHAPTER IV

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF YUCATAN

A sea of greengage green, broken by scarce a ripple save where a shark's

fin curves up shiny black in the blazing sun; a semicircle of pale sand,

fringed by brown and mahogany-red boarded barns of warehouses, with here

and there a gaunt brick chimney; a thin belt of palm trees; three wooden

jetties, and beyond, houses stuccoed white and salmon-pink: this is our

first sight of Yucatan's only port, Progreso. There is no harbour, for

the shallows stretch far seaward, and steamers of any draught dare not

come within five miles of the coast.

The outward and visible signs of the town have scarcely come distinctly

into view, and we have barely lost sight in the heat mist of the monster

form of our liner, anchored miles in our wake, when the panting tug has

come alongside the pier and we are for the first time face to face with

Yucatecans. A Yucatecan crowd is a pleasant sight to look upon. Personal

cleanliness, bright-coloured vests and spotless linen breeches are a

welcome change for the traveller who comes from a Mexican port. The

Yucatecan and the Mexican, too, are physically very unlike, and the

difference is all in favour of the former. The crowd which awaits the

tug is a bright, clean-faced, orderly crowd, and as we step ashore, the

luggage touts, many of them remarkably intelligent-looking and handsome

fellows, take your "_No, muchas gracias_," for an answer, which is more

than you can say for the evil-smelling, vulture-faced, blackmailing gang

who throng the quays at such ports as Vera Cruz and Tampico. Alas!

months of sojourn in the land of the Mayans are to alter the first

favourable impressions of that Progreso crowd. Verily are Yucatecans

"Whited Sepulchres"!

And here perhaps it would be as well to define a Yucatecan. The

population of Yucatan, speaking broadly, consists of two classes, slaves

and savages. The former are the Indians, by centuries of brutality

degraded and robbed of that spirit which made them foes worthy of

Cortes's prowess, but still a kindly, hospitable people for whom every

English heart must feel a keen sympathy. The savages are the Yucatecans,

the mongrel people resulting from the early unions of the Spanish with

the Indian women; and if the epithet seems harsh, we would ask our

readers to reserve judgment till they have finished this volume. The

tint of the Yucatecan is that of a half-baked biscuit, but the eyes are

black-brown and often small, and the lank black hair suggests the Indian

crossings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

At the end of the jetty a lofty lich-gate of wood houses _Señores los

Aduaneros_, Messrs. the Customs House Officers. But our passports are

from headquarters and bear a Cabinet Minister's seal, so our baggage is

soon passed. Over the Customs House gate might be written, varying

Dante's terrible line, "All hope of cleanliness abandon, ye who enter

here": for once inside Progreso town you must do battle with tropical

dust at its worst. Through the railway yard, where the sun beats down

with a blistering heat on trucks, mules, and men, you make your way to

the train through filthy little arcaded streets, your boots disappearing

at each footstep in the ill-smelling, garbage-littered compound, your

eyes smarting in the clouds of it you kick up. The station is a barn,

the railway a three-foot gauge, the cars are rickety, low-roofed,

cane-seated yellow wood affairs. From engine to brake van the train is

American-made. There seems little to choose in comfort between the

classes, but for the sake of more elbow-room we "plunge" our three

centavos a kilometre (the usual first-class fare all over Yucatan), a

fraction less than a penny a mile, distinctly cheap if the rolling stock

were better.

As the little train jolts through the outskirts of the town, ringing its

bell, the dust it raises blending with the resinous smoke from the wood

fire of its engine, naked yellow babies look up from their play in the

dirt and scamper into shelter, while female faces peer out between the

iron bars which do duty for glass windows in the one-storeyed-high

flat-roofed houses. Northern Yucatan is as level as an Essex marsh, and

the line runs through miles of country at first glance quite English

with its dense covering of small trees like nut bushes and silver

birches. Nature has been niggard of soil to the whole peninsula, but

perhaps it is around Progreso that you realise most that the Yucatecan

must be content to sow his seed in the "stony ground." The sundried

undergrowth is of cactus, stunted shrubs, and sea grasses. Here and

there this breaks to give way to swamps, rich in purple and white

orchids and golden water plants, fair to look on as the sun touches the

water between the waving rushes, but surely enough the happy

breeding-ground of the "Yellow Jack" mosquito. Then come fields of

henequen or hemp, "the Green Gold of Yucatan,"--the plants like huge

green pineapples with waxy green feathers on top,--enclosed within grey

stone walls like those of Scotland.

As we near the capital (the distance is but twenty-five miles) the

carriages fill up, and you squeeze closer into your caned seat for two

to make room for some fat Yucatecan or his ill-shaped, chalk-faced

powdered dame. In the suburbs of Merida (there are miles of them) the

rail runs between rows of native huts, palm-leaf thatched frameworks of

wood upon which red earth is plastered and then stuccoed or whitewashed.

Each has its garden, evidently the despair of its owner, for dogs, pigs,

and fowls dispute possession of it with tin cans and refuse. But even in

these unfavourable surroundings tropic Nature beautifies with the

greeny-gold leaf of the banana and the heavy-hanging greener crown of

the cocoanut palm. Over all rises a strange vista. Merida might well be

called the "City of Windmills." On each side of the train you see the

horizon literally crowded with air motors for pumping water from the

limestone, and you hear it whispered in a tone of pride by a Yucatecan

to his neighbour that there are in Yucatan's capital 6,000 of these

eyesores.

Merida could claim another alias. "The City of Windmills" might as

appropriately be called "The City of Cabs." And they are curious cabs

too: cabs without sides or backs or fronts; mere frameworks of light

wood with leather tops and cloth curtains all round, which roll up and

button, or roll down and shade the "fare"; spectral four-wheelers, as if

in prehistoric times a London "growler" had emigrated here and

propagated a species of tropical growler, all skin and bones. Dozens of

these hackney phantoms await us in the station yard; the drivers in

spotless loose-flying linen shifts and linen trousers bell-bottomed over

their bare brown feet shod with sandals, their headgear wideawakes of

black or brown felt. The boxes are elaborately ornamented with brass

nails burnished to a dazzling brightness. The back seat (you must not

sit too far back or you will fall out) has room for two, and in front a

shelf like that in a victoria lets down for a third passenger. There are

hundreds of these cabs in Merida, and everybody uses them all the time.

They are not the luxury they are in most capitals, and are quite a

feature of the place. We had understood there is only one hotel in

Merida (it is a libel, for there are three), and, seated in the phantom

car we select, we bowl noiselessly over asphalted roads towards it.

It was on the 6th January, 1542, that amid--one can be sure--immense

bombast of trumpet-blare and drum-beat the first stones were laid of the

"Very Loyal and Noble City of Merida." This is what its charter, granted

by His Most Catholic Majesty Philip II., called it. It is a

double-barrelled misnomer. Merida has no claim to loyalty, for she

revolted from Spain as soon as she conveniently could, and she has never

been loyal to the Republic of Mexico, of which--much against her

will--the country of which she is the capital has formed part, off and

on, since the beginning of the nineteenth century. And Merida is in no

sense a noble city; never has been and never can be. But she is what

perhaps is better--a clean city. Cleanliness is next to godliness.

Merida thinks it comes first, and she has let the other virtue lag a

very bad second in her civic race.

But she has not always even been clean. Five years back her streets were

Saharas of ill-smelling dust to your boot-tops in the dry season, and

sloughs of despond in the wet. No one who has not visited Yucatan can

realise the Aladdin-like results of the showers of gold which have

fallen upon this Danaë land as a result of her staple product, henequen;

but directly you enter one of the phantom cabs you come under the spell

of a city which is magically perfect; as unlike any other

Spanish-American town as is possible. The millionaire henequen growers

are so rich that they really do not know what to do with their money;

and so it came about that the ex-Governor Señor Molina conceived the

idea of reupholstering Merida till its founders would never recognise

their handiwork. The shape of the city is much what it was, planned on a

vast chessboard system, all the streets running at right angles and

parallel to one another, forming nine square miles of squat stone-built

houses, almost all one-storeyed, their long windows heavily barred

instead of glazed. But just as a carpet makes a room, Señor Molina saw

that what Merida needed was paving, and so he proceeded to get an

estimate from a French asphalt company. The amount was so huge that his

brother-millionaires on the Council only smiled sickly smiles of

incredulity when he suggested "voluntary contributions." But if their

ill-gotten dollars would not come out of their pockets by fair means,

the Governor determined that they should by foul (at least, that was the

adjective which these much oppressed Crœsuses probably applied to his

methods), and he taxed every bale of henequen loaded at Progreso. In

this way he raised a gigantic sum for the beautifying of the capital,

part of which, no less than thirty million Mexican dollars (£3,000,000

sterling), was spent in paving the streets.

It took between two and three years, and the result is perfection. From

north to south, from east to west, side streets and main streets, for

the full three miles' width of the city, the surface is as smooth as

glass, as clean as marble. Never was there such paving, and never will

there probably ever be again, for there is no parallel to the

circumstances of unforeseen wealth which has come to Yucatan's capital.

We had been favourably impressed by the cleanliness of the Yucatecan

crowds at Progreso, and, as we moved easily and without a vibration down

street after street of well-matched and well-built houses, we rubbed our

eyes and wondered whether we were in a land where it was always

washing-day, for the people on the sidewalks, the people in the passing

carriages, the police at the corners in their trim holland uniforms, the

children playing at the pavement edge, the tradesmen at their

shop-doors, and the boys and girls in their neat linens returning from

school, were so spotless as to beggar all description.

But in the midst of our amazement we reached our hotel, a massive

three-storeyed building in two squares, neatly floored with tiles,

roofless, wide flights of stone steps leading up to galleries from which

was access to the bedrooms, stone-floored, very high-ceilinged, opening

through wooden sunblinds on to small balconies. We were very tired with

our journey, and the coolness of our rooms and the brightness of the

city had such a lulling effect that we were almost persuaded that we had

reached Utopia. There was nothing disquieting in our rooms from the

insect point of view, except a line of harmless-looking small black ants

which were taking an afternoon walk along the tiles at the corner, and

the fact that the small iron bedsteads were enveloped in mosquito-nets.

We had evidently reached Utopia. The air was balmy as we composed

ourselves to sleep that night, and there was not even a mosquito in our

nets.

* * * * *

Shortly before dawn the next morning (Sunday) we were roused from a

dreamless sleep by a din so terrific that to our half-sleeping wits it

converted itself into a giant tattoo beat on cracked tea trays. We

started up. _Boom-poom_ (a pause). _Pom-m_--_poom-m_. The last was a

ragged-edged sound, as flat as stale soda water, as lifeless as Queen

Anne. Then came a shrill noise such as might be produced by a violent

meeting between a butcher's steel and the treble octave of a "cottage

grand." Then _Pom-poom_ again, and then a noise as if the blacksmith of

"spreading chestnut tree" fame had gone suicidally mad and had spent his

dying fury and the full force "of the muscles of his brawny arms" in one

fell blow on his anvil.

Something must be done; we could not patiently bear this. Perhaps it was

a Utopian form of fire alarm, and we were doomed to cremation in our

mosquito-netting unless we roused ourselves. At this moment our door

burst open, and a fellow-traveller from Vera Cruz, in purple silk

pyjamas, his hair on end, a wild look in his eyes, cried out, "Do you

hear those awful bells?" Bells! Surely--we rubbed our eyes and gazed

open-mouthed at him--surely they weren't bells! What superhuman

intelligence was this he showed at such an early hour. We listened. Yes,

they were (that anvil note again!) meant for--bells; bells as cracked as

any March hare; the cathedral bells too, pounding their awful tea-tray

notes right across the plaza into our windows. We had never heard such

bells; nobody outside Yucatan ever has. It was bedlam in the belfry, and

with our fingers in our ears we walked on to the balcony to see how the

Utopianites were bearing them.

Merida was up, and did not seem to mind the bells a bit. Perhaps they

are an acquired taste; the people in the streets seemed not to notice

the noise, and there was as much crowd as there was din. This bell

scandal was evidently the rift within the Utopian lute; and presently,

thank heaven! the music _was_ dumb, and we were able to watch in peace

from our point of vantage the life of the awakening city. It was a

picturesque scene. The street was alight with bright colours and pretty

faces. The women of Merida were going to early mass. Here were a knot

of palefaced maidens in muslins, rainbow-hued in their variety, pale

blue, rose pink, saffron, heliotrope, white or green--hatless, their

raven-black hair decked with flowers, their service books clasped in

small hands. These were the upper middle-class femininity of the city

(the wealthiest women never walk at all). But a prettier picture still

were the Mestizas (half-castes, the name given by the wealthier

Yucatecans to their lowlier sisters), the beauties of the people, whose

soft skins were coloured a sweet brown by their Indian blood. Their

dress was a long spotlessly white softly-flowing shift of linen,

bordered at neck and hem with embroidery, cut open low round the neck,

and with no sleeves and exposing their bare feet and ankles. It was a

costume which framed their charms in quite a perfect style. And with all

these mingled the Indian women and girls, their complexions a warm

reddish brown, their black hair draped in cotton wraps of blue or brown,

green or pink, thrown sari-fashion round the head and falling over the

shoulders; their bare feet, innocent of shoe tortures, small and dainty,

if a little broad. There were few men and boys about, but those looked

cleaner than ever--spotless in their linens, with felt hats or panamas;

the laddies, in their tight linen knickerbockers with their plump bare

brown legs, looking the picture of boyish health. As the hour wore on,

Indian dames passed on their way homeward from the early market,

balancing on their heads large flat baskets filled with oranges,

bananas, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, eggs, large slices of salmon-fleshed

melons dotted with black seeds, small pineapples, lemons, limes, green

and red peppers and garlic, and often in the midst of this market medley

sat a small hen or two, as contentedly as if they were brooding over a

sitting of eggs.

A wealthy Yucatecan who has travelled much is credited with saying,

"After Merida give me Paris." There is really much to be said for his

patriotic view. Merida is a beautiful city. The vista down the long

street from our balcony, with the gay colours of the girls' dresses, the

snowy whiteness of the men's clothes, the smart brass-decked skeleton

cabs, the soft yellow of the houses (all houses in Merida are by order

painted yellow to prevent the unpleasant sun-glare which white walls

would mean), here and there a waving crown of green peeping over the

housetops from some garden-patio, made a right pleasant picture against

the deep blue of the cloudless sky. But Merida owes none of her

undoubted beauty to her buildings. There are but three worth mention,

and this not from any architectural merits but solely because of their

historical interest. These are the cathedral, the bishop's palace, and

the house of Francisco de Montejo, conqueror of Yucatan. They are all in

the Plaza.

The cathedral is a gaunt pile of plastered mediocrity, with naked façade

flanked by two turreted towers, lair of the accursed bells which had

marred the tropic beauty of the morning. It was completed in 1598 and

cost some £60,000, equivalent to-day to perhaps a quarter of a million.

Within, there is little worth seeing except the twelve immense columns

which support the roof. The hangings and drapings are as tawdry as is

the much begilded altar. The pulpit is dusty, dirty and old, and is

reached by wooden steps literally rotten and in holes. But if there is

nothing worth seeing there is something which is very astonishing. On

each pillar is hung a notice which reads: "_Sirvanse no Escupir en el

Pavimento de este Templo_" ("You are requested not to spit on the floor

of this church"), and on the flooring of the plain yellow-wood seats,

and all along each aisle at the entrance to the pews, are spittoons!

Yes, it sounds incredible, but they are there--right up to the

altar-rails a vista of earthenware abominations such as disfigure the

sanded quaintness of the bar-parlour of an old village inn. In a later

chapter on Yucatecan manners we shall have more to say of the habit thus

officially countenanced by the Church. That perspective of spittoons

from door to altar-rail in Merida Cathedral has probably no parallel in

any country.

The bishop's palace adjoins the cathedral, and bears the date 1757. It

is so hideous in its flat stuccoed plainness that it is really wonderful

that even the Yucatecans do not rebel and raze it to the ground. Beneath

it entrance is obtained by a large double wooden doorway to a

vestibule--opening into the bishop's garden--which forms a Lady Chapel,

where on a trestle, such as those upon which the cocoanut and sweetstuff

men do their roaring trades on Bank holidays at Hampstead, an iron tray

covered with small spikes is provided for the faithful to stick a tallow

dip--value one centavo (a farthing)--in front of a plaster image of the

Virgin.

The house of Montejo--now the property of one of the many branches of

the Peon family, the wealthiest of all Yucatecans--bears the date 1541,

and is thus the oldest building in Merida. The façade is fine, and the

doorway is a typically Spanish representation of militarism plus

bigotry--two knights, armed cap-à-pie, being engaged in the congenial

occupation of trampling underfoot two Indians who "take it lying down,"

as, alas! their descendants are still doing.

Life in Merida is as artificial as--indeed more artificial than--that of

Mexico City. The latter, owing, as we have said, her fashions and her

veneer of civilisation to Paris and New York, is assisted by her size in

still being much herself. Not so Merida. No self-respecting Yucatecan

wants to be himself. All of them are pathetically striving all the time

after a culture which they do not understand, and which fits them as ill

as his dress suit fits the hired butler at a suburban dance. "Scratch

the Russian and you find the Tartar." Most Yucatecans are the vulgarest

of parvenus, and by the least scratching you find the savage. They are

ashamed of their Indian past, and by an exaggerated class-arrogance they

try to widen the gulf between themselves and the Indians, as the

purse-proud woman thinks she will be mistaken for a lady if she calls

every servant a "slut." They love to emphasise their superior wealth by

dubbing their lowlier brothers and sisters mestizos and mestizas. The

truth is the Yucatecans form but one class, and they are all mestizos.

There are few pure Indians in the capital, and those are the domestic

servants of the wealthy families.

You do not see the great contrasts of wealth so marked in Mexico City.

The whole town has an air of prosperity, and it is not an air merely--it

is a fact. During the past twenty years the group of large henequen

growers--about a score--have divided among themselves as a result of

this "green gold," no less than 800,000,000 Mexican dollars. And this

vast sum has percolated through the whole place. Merida is a Monte Carlo

for extravagance and extortion. There is no social standard but £ s. d.

A man is or is not great socially in proportion to his banking account.

Nowhere in the world probably is money so absolutely God as here. We

shall show later what moral effect this fact has had upon the citizens,

and through them upon the whole of so-called civilised Yucatan.

Corruption and venality are rampant. Few races have stamina enough to

resist the corroding influences of sudden wealth. The silver mines of

Mexico proved the knell of Spanish imperial greatness. Lord Beaconsfield

said once, "Only a great man can stand power." In Yucatan wealth is

power, the only power, and the Yucatecans stand it very badly.

In this city of mushroom millionaires everything is naturally very dear.

Food is practically all imported. We had been told that at our hotel it

was impossible to get a square meal for less than five dollars (ten

shillings). It was not quite so bad as that, but for half that sum it is

true enough you could only get just such a snack as an honestly hungry

Briton would regard as a wholly inadequate

quick-lunch-talk-business-while-you-eat style of meal. Few of the

Yucatecans eat out of their own houses, and thus restaurants--at any

rate of the cleanly and better class--are few and far between. Those

which do exist are literally dens of robbers. The traveller in

Yucatan--as indeed in all Mexico--has to learn what to a Briton,

accustomed to more or less trust his fellow-man, is a very unpleasant

lesson, namely that you can trust no one. The only safety on ordering a

meal is to first drive a bargain. You must know down to the smallest

roll or condiment what your repast is going to cost you. No Merida

hotels or restaurants ever attach prices to their menus. They know a

trick worth two of that. Each restaurateur is a gastronomic Procrustes

who cuts his prices according to "the cut" of his customers. An article

served at twenty-five centavos to one diner will at the next table boom

to fifty at the discretion of the subtle waiter. It is very hard to

always remember to do this unpleasant bargaining before you take your

place at a table. But you are literally lost if you do not. On this

glorious Sunday morning we were successfully caught in a place where

they charged four shillings for three glasses of lemonade and three or

four fly-blown cakes. The cakes you would get anywhere for a penny, and

lemons could be bought in the street outside at six a penny.

The streets of Merida are full of life and bustle, the cleanliest of

bustle. Even the blind beggars (blindness is rather common) who crouch

against the walls, with their plaintive cry of "_Pobre Ciego_," are as

neat as a new pin. Smartly varnished mule-drawn tramcars tinkle their

way to and from the suburbs. Outside the railings of the cathedral sit

all day a line of Indian women in front of baskets filled with cakes,

flattish, appetising-looking, sometimes as much as two or three feet

across. Under the arcades of the Municipal Palace, which forms the north

side of the plaza, is a motley scene of life. Here are tiny

cigar-booths; small drinking-counters whereat are dispensed hour after

hour to thirsty crowds "_refrescos_," drinks of squashed fruits--the

deliciously sweet guanabana, limes, cocoanut water, pineapple or

whatnot--and iced waters; withered beldames with baskets of sweets;

lottery-ticket sellers and itinerant booksellers; while at the small

round tables set in the doorways the Yucatecan loafers drink coffee or

the native spirits, and from within the shaded rooms is heard the

eternal _click-click_ of billiard balls (billiards, the French game

without pockets, is a mania in Yucatan) as the young Yucatecans crowd

round the green tables. The edges of the arcaded pavements are occupied

by large chairs on daises; lolling in the chair the Yucatecan lad who

will polish your boots for fifteen centavos. The Yucatecan _jeunesse

dorée_ are dandies if nothing else, and this must be the reason why

there are more bootblacks to the square mile in Merida than in any

capital we wot of. But the lordly bootblack who waits for you to come to

him is not half as picturesque a figure as the peripatetic bootboy. All

day long these little roguish-eyed rascals wander round the plaza

carrying their boot boxes and begging you to let them kneel in front of

you and make your boots like looking-glasses. The boys are all so pretty

and have got such winning smiles that you are insanely inclined to have

your boots blacked every quarter of an hour. Joking apart, boot-blacking

has been reduced to a science in Merida, and the operators put out of

joint the noses of the London Boot Brigade.

Time was when Merida was far more picturesque than she is to-day. In the

old city, when few of the citizens were grand at reading, streets were,

as indeed they were once in London, known by their signs. Thus at one

corner there was a wooden image of a flamingo; this was Flamingo Street.

Another was the street of the "old woman," the corner being decorated

with an effigy, highly coloured, of a bespectacled dame. There was a

Tapir Street adorned with a representation of that queer pig-deer which

still haunts the swampy forests of Southern Yucatan and Chiapas; a Crane

Street, and so on. But all this is a thing of the past. America has

invaded Yucatan even to her street-naming, and Merida, with her 48th and

63rd Streets, with the street-numbers reduplicated on the corners thus:

503, 62nd Street, 503, is as maddening and intricate as New York. Only

one of the old signs remains, that of the elephant.

As you cross the plaza towards the market, it is difficult to picture

what the old city must have been like when roads were not roads and the

plaza, now a wonderfully kept square of grass, flowers and stone, was a

mangy patch of leprous grass dotted with trees, to which were tied mules

which had brought in produce from the country.

But the alterations in Merida are surface alterations. The only wonder

is that the city is as healthy as it is, for there is no attempt at any

general sewerage system, no main drains, and every householder is a law

unto himself on this vital question. Each hot season there are

outbreaks, sometimes very serious, of yellow fever. But the city is a

healthy city; there is no doubt about that. There is a general avoidance

of well-water for drinking purposes, and as a substitute the most

elaborate arrangements are made for storing every drop of rain-water

during the wet season. This is done by every house of any size having

enormous cemented tanks under their patios, the water-pipes from the

roofs connecting with them. Thus the two huge quadrangles of our hotel

were nothing but gigantic reservoirs tiled over. The rainy season

practically never fails Yucatan; and, though not as regular in its

advent as the Indian monsoon, keeps up year by year its average of

supply. Surface refuse is dealt with summarily by the most picturesque

set of road-sweepers imaginable. Neatly uniformed in white drill or

brown holland, they wear pith helmets adorned with metal badges bearing

their number, and look like soldiers. In front of them they push by

means of a long handle a tin shovel, some four feet long, which runs on

neat little wheels. These men are everywhere, and take very good care

that garbage is nowhere. The water-carts, too, are worth a mention:

gigantic wooden hogsheads painted in yellow stripes. These generally

work at night, and take up their supply from huge water-taps which jut

out from the walls of buildings, and upon which the men tie brown

holland piping in the most primitive fashion to fill their carts.

The evenings at Merida are the gayest times, for then all folks, rich

and poor, come out to spend the cool hours in the plaza. There is very

little twilight ever in the tropics, and as soon as the sun is down and

it is dusk enough, the wealthy Yucatecans have a queer habit of sitting

in rocking-chairs outside their houses. A whole group of ladies will

thus take the air in front of the huge doorways of the biggest houses,

surrounded by two or three cavaliers. Later on the carriages are

ordered, and sleepy-eyed beauties drive round and round the plaza in the

dark, apparently enjoying this rather queer form of carriage exercise.

In the centre of the plaza itself the town band assembles, and this is

a signal for a nightly promenade of the humbler Meridians. Nothing can

be more picturesque or typical. The seats are filled for the most part

with the older people; fat old men, linen-suited and besandalled, armed

generally with an incongruous ill-rolled umbrella, smoke and doze;

beside them solid-looking Yucatecan matrons with gold chains round their

necks from which hang gold coins and a metal or ivory crucifix; at their

feet a baby or two, dressed in the shortest of shifts, play about.

But young Merida walks. Yet here again there is something which attracts

the English eye, for there is a complete separation of the sexes. The

girls walk together in twos, threes and fours one way, and the young

dandies, in their spotless white-linen bell-bottomed trousers, belted

with ornamental belts, over which are hung blue and white striped cloths

reaching to their knees like butchers' aprons put on sideways, gaudily

coloured silk-cotton vests and over these white-linen coats, walk the

other. All the youths have a pretty habit of going hand in hand, or with

arms round each other's necks. They are there to see the girls, and in

the hope that the girls will see them. But the curious thing is that you

never see them look at one another. The groups of chatting youths and

maidens pass and repass one another round and round under the trees, in

and out of the paths, and watch as hard as you like you will never see

an ogling glance or catch a hint of that coarse chaff which is

inseparable from such a congregating of lower-class youth of both sexes

in a city like London. It really is quite extraordinary, the naïveté of

it all, the determined way in which the eternal sex problem seems

tabooed here. We sat for hours watching the orderly crowds, and never

once did we see a girl stop in her walk to speak to a man or any youth

attempt to speak or to walk with a maid. It was decorum _in excelsis_.

It reminded one of the famous description of Boston as the place "where

respectability stalks unchecked."

But respectability is usually perilously near being a synonym for

mawkish dullness. Here it was not so. You had absolute decorum; there

was no suspicion of noisy horseplay or hooliganism; there was not the

slightest need for a policeman (as a matter of fact none appeared during

the whole evening) to keep order; and yet the crowd was as perfect a

specimen of the brightest popular life any city could show. They had all

come out to enjoy themselves, and they enjoyed themselves like

children, with a simple unaffected gaiety which was very infectious.

With all their faults the Yucatecans have the saving grace of good

temper, not from a geniality of disposition so much as from a physical

apathy which makes them reluctant to the effort which losing one's

temper involves. And this merry, laughing crowd in the plaza, the simple

unadorned beauty of the dark-eyed lassies, the knots of handsome youths

arms-linked, the plump babies contentedly playing in between the legs of

the strollers, the old people dozing in the shady seats, and the mellow

light from a huge electric standard dappling with a moonlike radiance

the exquisitely cleanly pathways, made such a picture of pleasant

contentment as was quite Utopian. In the darkened roadways the wealthier

beauties of Merida drove round and round the plaza like bats circling

round a lamp. But though there were many of them whose lascivious beauty

would have made most men forswear their most cherished convictions, our

hearts were in the plaza with the chattering, happy crowd, and we were

quite sorry when the band, which, with an extraordinary display of

energy, had played four tunes in two hours, struck work and the folks

dispersed.

CHAPTER V

A YUCATECAN BREAKFAST, AND OTHER "SIGHTS"

Unless one is endowed with the appetite of the proverbial ploughboy

there is surely nothing which puts you off your food more than having

too much on your plate. One's sympathies go out to the irritable old

gentleman at the London club who, having ordered a plate of beef and

getting beef and a plate, snapped out angrily to the waiter, "Do you

think I haven't eaten for a month?" The next worse thing to having too

much on your plate is to have too much on the table. Every traveller

knows the bewildering effect of those breakfasts served on the Paris and

Mediterranean Railway, when seven dishes are placed before you, with

fifteen minutes in which to eat their contents. But though there is no

time-limit for feeding in Yucatan, you have got to get accustomed to the

whole meal, in all its courses, being placed before you at once.

We had brought with us to Merida several letters of introduction, and on

the Monday we presented one of these to a Yucatecan millionaire whom we

ran to earth in his office (he was mayor of the city) transacting

official business. After our preliminary greetings he said, "We

Yucatecans never ask anybody to our houses, but I should like you to see

the interior of a Yucatecan home. Therefore, will you breakfast with me

to-morrow at 11.30?" In fulfilment of this engagement we turned up the

next day in his patio at the appointed hour. The house is one of the

finest in Merida, and is so typical of the people as to be worth a short

description. Entering through the patio, bright with flowering shrubs,

with orange trees loaded with the golden fruit, with palms and

evergreens, you ascend a short flight of stone steps into a long central

tiled hall forming a kind of glorified verandah on two sides of the

courtyard. On the tiles are thrown a few cheap coloured mats. Ranged in

two rows facing each other are eight or ten American bentwood

rocking-chairs. On the walls hang a few oleographs. Here we were

received by our host in a linen suit, and his Señora, a celebrated

Meridian beauty, daintily dressed in a pink muslin frock, the mother, as

we afterwards discovered, of seven children, though she herself looked

little more than out of her teens. One or two other guests, male

relatives, all in cool linens, having arrived, our hosts lead the way to

the further end of the hall, out of which opens the dining-room. Not at

all such a dining-room as we English associate with the sacred

occupation of feeding. It is really nothing but another tiled annexe to

the hall with huge doorway, but without doors (there are no real doors

between the rooms in Yucatecan houses), at which the chickens and

turkeys from the back yard are congregating to see the fun, hopping,

cackling, out of the way of the half dozens of Indian women servants who

are pattering in with bare feet from the kitchen of which you catch a

glimpse down a vista of tiled yard.

But here's the table, and what a spread! There are only eight of us to

breakfast, for it is the children's school hour, and thus they are not

present; but if there were eighty-eight of us we feel, as we look at the

groaning board, that the Indian maids would be able, when everybody's

appetite was satisfied, to gather up of the fragments that remained many

basketfuls. As we take our places, our host perhaps detects the

amazement in our eyes, for he says with a wave of his hand, "I wished

you to have a Yucatecan meal. It is always our custom to have everything

on the table at once." There is certainly everything, almost everything

you can think of. There is a dish of steaks; a stew of rabbit; a great

plate of pork sausages; chickens stewed and chickens roasted; turkey

minced with egg and turkey in _puris naturalibus_; a greasy mess of pork

joints; a great heaped-up mass of venison; a vast soup-tureen of beef

broth; a dish of chopped eggs and tortillas; a huge salted sausage in

red skin, a favourite food of all Yucatecans; a minced mess of meat

known throughout Yucatan as _Chile con carne_; a plate of veal cutlets;

a large boiled fish, the famous red-snapper of the Mexican Gulf; and

last but not least, turtle steaks. And for vegetables there are dishes

of tomatoes, of green and red peppers, of garlick and onions, of black

beans (frijoles) squashed into a greasy dark purple pulp, of snowy

pyramids of rice, of boiled plantains, of sweet potatoes, and boiled

Indian corn. But the sweets are here too; jellies and stewed fruits,

cranberries squashed into a luscious disguise of pipless semi-liquid

jelly fringed round with cream; pineapples stewed in thick slabs, and

peaches floating in a wine-tinted syrup. And among all these _plats de

jour_ (the wonder is that the Indian maids have found room to place them

on the table) are china baskets of fruits, apples from California,

oranges from our host's farm, bananas and banana-apples, peaches and the

purple-brown _caumita_, which looks like a cross between a rosy-cheeked

apple and a nectarine and has a white soapy flesh with a taste which is

somewhat like that of a green fig soaked for an hour in a lather of

delicately scented soap. And to wash down this Gargantuan feast there

were three cut-glass short-stemmed long-bodied goblets beside each

breakfaster, which were kept filled by the Indian maids with red and

white wines, aërated waters, iced lemonade made from the limes from the

patio, fruit drinks, or iced milk.

Bread-throwing at school, if we remember aright, was an offence

punishable with the sixth book of the Aeneid to write out and the loss

of a half holiday as the minimum penalty. In Yucatan it is all the

fashion in the highest circles. No sooner had we taken our places at the

table than an Indian maid brought in, holding them in her brown hands, a

towering pile of soft white doughy tortillas, each about as big as a

large Abernethy biscuit. These she placed at the side of our hostess,

who at once began to throw them to us all. It was so adroitly done that

before you had recovered from the amazement with which the mere act

filled you, you found yourself admiring the exquisite dexterity of the

gentle thrower. Those of our readers who have visited Monte Carlo and

admired, as every one must, the marvellous precision with which the

croupiers flip the golden Louis to the lucky "punters," will be able to

imagine something like the dexterity of our hostess. A tortilla whizzed

circling across the table under your very nose, and landed with

exquisite softness, like a tired dove, at the side of your host's plate.

Whizz, whirr! here comes another! Why, it's like boomerang-throwing, for

this last, you'll swear, circled round you before it sank nestling under

the edge of the plate of steaming pork-stew in front of you. The air is

thick with these doughy missiles. Nobody is the least surprised except

us, and we become quite absorbed in watching the friendly bombardment.

Our host engages us, as the newspapers say, in "animated conversation";

enquires the purposes of our tour, and our theories as to the origin of

the Mayan people. It is hard to give him our whole attention, for we

feel we are losing all the fun. For the tortillas are whizzing over the

table now and round it just like boomerangs, and then the hostess's

supply is exhausted. But here is a plump Indian maid with a fresh

supply, snowy white and softly fluffy, such as would fill a London

muffin man's heart with envy. It is all very funny, and the climax is

reached when your host peels an orange of some very rare flavour, and

offers you the juicy dripping quarter in his fingers, following this up

with a like exhibition of his hospitable wish to share with you his

apple and his peach.

We had defended ourselves as well as we could from the unbridled

hospitality of our host, but all the same we felt like boa-constrictors

who had made an injudicious meal of goats whole, when we packed

ourselves into a skeleton cab to pay a visit of inspection to the Merida

prison, which is one of the sights of the place. The drive thither was

through one of the finest thoroughfares in the city, lined with

substantially built bungalow-houses of stone and stucco, each standing

in its picturesque tropical garden, a mass of bloom and waving

fan-palms. This street debouches upon the broad Avenida de Paz, a

wonderful stretch of asphalt running the full width of the city and

forming its western frontier. Beyond this opens out the really fine

Plaza de Porfirio Diaz, a great oval of lawn intersected by broad paths

of asphalt meeting in a large central space ornamented by a small

artificial lake with fountain. The Penitenciaria Juarez fronts upon the

plaza, a long low building of limestone stuccoed, one-storeyed save over

the central doorway, where a turreted second storey forms the residence

of the President, as the governor of the gaol is called. This official

met us at the doorway. He was a Mexican of about forty, a tall,

handsome, military-looking man, swarthy-skinned, with a big black

moustache. He impressed us very favourably, for there was in the face a

certain charm of frankness and straightforwardness which is not

characteristic of the Mexicans, and is almost wholly lacking in the

Yucatecans. His smile was quite kindly, though behind it it was not

difficult to detect a certain official grimness which suggested a man

capable of anything if duty demanded. He had been imported into Yucatan

because of his reputation as a specialist in the governing of gaols, and

what we saw of the administration of the building under his control

suggested that Yucatan had been very wise in her importation.

Armed with an ordinary walking-stick, in linen suit and a panama hat, he

led the way across the central hall, where loafed half a dozen soldiers

in holland uniforms ornamented with green and white braidings and

wearing a cap of the French kepi type, to the interior of the prison.

The iron gates were unlocked by a convict dressed in a red and white

striped shirt, the President explaining that all the short-term and

good-conduct men wore these, while the more desperate characters have

blue and white striped shirts. From the gateway three long corridors

branched off, and we passed down each in turn. Out of these opened on

each side the cells, small cubicles of stone, their only furniture a

wooden shelf, some three feet wide, let into the wall about three feet

from the ground and supported by two wooden legs. Upon this shelf the

prisoner sleeps, his bed-clothes the simple blanket universal throughout

the country. In the corner of the cell was a small gutter and drain for

washing down the cell, which was ventilated by a small grated window in

the corner furthest from the corridor. At the end of the central passage

was a large stone room where convicts in blue striped shirts were busy

making hammocks. The place reminded one of a hop garden in Kent. There

were long rows of posts, two to each man, between which were stretched

the rough string frameworks of the hammocks, the men passing up and down

between the posts threading the strings backward and forwards like

carpet-weaving. Passing through this, we came into a large garden

quadrangle at the further end of which, in a big shed, scores of

red-striped convicts were busy carpentering. At a signal from the

President's stick the buzzing of lathes and saws stopped, as if by

magic, and the men stood at attention. The superintendent-carpenter was

called up, and explained everything to us, and the President called one

or two of the men to him and asked particulars of their cases. One of

these was a nigger who rejoiced in the British name of John Williams.

With a broad grin which showed his white teeth to the gums, he told us

that he was serving a month's sentence for fighting a man in the street.

All the men looked well cared for and contented.

On the other side of the courtyard was a large washhouse with baths for

the men and big sinks in which the prison washing was done. Close by was

a blacksmith's shop where a score of men were engaged in all sorts of

iron work, much of it quite artistic, the chief job at the moment being

the designing of railings for the outside of the Penitenciaria, which

had been opened only a short time. Here the President told us that much

vigilance had to be exercised to prevent the more desperate men from

using their opportunities to make less innocent things than railings.

Only a few days before our visit one of the workmen had been found in

possession of a bloodthirsty-looking knife which he had manufactured

with the purpose possibly, as the President coolly said, of trying its

metal upon him. Close by, sitting in the garden, were a row of men busy

weaving sacks from henequen fibre. Crossing the yard, we were shown the

kitchens. Here were two or three large circular blocks of masonry, into

each of which were let several coppers or ovens, the fireplaces beneath.

The whole building had a businesslike and cleanly air, and a couple of

convicts were engaged in manufacturing a stew which had a very garlicky

Yucatecan smell. We complimented the President upon these kitchens,

which would certainly very favourably compare with those in even a

first-rate British barracks.

After having inspected an excellent miniature hospital which formed an

annexe in the rear of the gaol, we were taken by the President to his

private room, where from a safe he produced the prison books. These were

most interesting volumes from the criminologist's point of view. To each

prisoner was devoted a page, headed by a photograph of him, stripped to

the waist and with head shaved. Thereunder were entered details of his

crimes, birth, parentage, age, health, weight, and any physical

peculiarities. They do not go in for fingerprints in Yucatan. Two or

three facts struck us as we turned the pages of these truly human

documents. First, there appeared to be no Indians in the gaol. Secondly,

the clean-shaven presentments of the culprits emphasised to a startling

degree the physiognomical lowness of the Mexican type. The majority of

the men--certainly of those imprisoned for the more serious

offences--were Mexicans, and not Yucatecans. Some of them were mere

lads, but one and all had features which suggested the atavism of crime.

They were born murderers. And thirdly, as was logical enough,

four-fifths of the offences chronicled in these books were homicide or

robbery with violence. It was a curious sidelight into the condition of

even this peaceful corner of the Mexican Republic--"that purple land

where law secures not life." We were astonished, too, to notice that the

maximum penalty for murder appeared to be fifteen years' imprisonment.

The President explained that as a rule capital punishment was not

inflicted, but was reserved for parricides and murderers of the most

brutal kind. We ventured to suggest that, in such a land, this was a

somewhat ill-judged leniency. But the President shook his head. He

probably thought that it would make too serious an inroad upon the

population of the Republic if every murderer was shot. The supreme

penalty of the law here, as in Mexico, is always by the rifle bullet,

never the rope.

The President explained in detail the administration of the prison, and

the regulations seemed to be quite Utopian in their mildness. Thus each

prisoner is allowed to see his relatives once a fortnight, and they can

bring him food. During these visits the utmost vigilance is needed to

prevent the smuggling-in of contraband articles, money and so on. As

illustration of this, the President took from his desk a broken tortilla

into which had been kneaded two half-dollars and the tortilla then

cooked. The ruse had been discovered, and now the rule is for every

tortilla brought into the gaol to be broken in two by the guards. The

Gilbertian element, which we had noticed so much in Mexico, was

represented here by the truly astonishing provision of a gaol band,

which discoursed sweet music to the culprits every afternoon. Evidently

our friend the President firmly believed, with Congreve, that

"Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast."

Another benevolent regulation was that by which the prisoners received

on their release all the moneys which they had earned by industries, the

only deduction being for the purchase of materials and the upkeep of the

working sheds. The President took us out to a gallery where were stored

a quantity of really excellently made pieces of furniture, tables,

writing-desks, wardrobes, washstands, chairs, and carved cupboards. In

this way a prisoner on his release is sometimes entitled to as large a

sum as six hundred dollars (£60). Having inspected the school department

where the humanising effects of education were tried upon the criminals,

we were taken up to the roof of the prison to view the method of

guarding it. Between the outside street wall and the inner wall of the

building was a moat some thirty feet wide. In this were stationed at

intervals soldiers armed with rifles. On the outside wall, some two or

three yards broad, paced more armed sentries, who thus commanded an

entire view of the whole prison. In bidding the President good-bye we

said, what we felt, that he was the head of an establishment which did

him the utmost credit, and from the humanising and rational system of

which the English Prison Commissioners might take many valuable hints.

There is a Museum in Merida, a poor affair and badly housed in three

dark rooms; but there were several things we wanted to see specially, so

we made our way thither after leaving the prison. With some

difficulty--for our driver did not appear, with true Yucatecan

stupidity, to know that his city contained such a very unnecessary

adjunct--we ran the national treasure house to earth in a back street,

where a small brass plate on a decayed-looking doorway announced itself

as "El Museo." The director, a middle-aged Yucatecan, whose amiability

was only equalled by his archæological ignorance, was routed out of his

hammock by his little ten-year-old son who opened the door to us, and

sleepily proceeded to do the honours of the place. It is a great pity

that, with such limitless wealth and such boundless opportunities,

Merida has taken no pains to establish a Museum worthy of her position

as the capital city of the Egypt of the New World. What we saw, if it

had not been so sad, would have been really comic. Absolute confusion

reigned. There was no catalogue, the smiling director forming a

peripatetic one. Exhibits bore numbers which were thus meaningless to

every one but himself. It was Mexico Museum over again on a humbler

scale. Wretched pieces of Spanish carved stone-work from the interiors

of churches or from the façades of seventeenth-century houses, were

jumbled up with really marvellous pieces of Indian workmanship, figures

in bas-relief of gods and animals and warriors in feathered dress. But

the good director had not been content with making a hotchpotch such as

one sees in the shop of a dealer in marine stores and scrap-iron. He was

guilty of archæological crime, for on the top of a Spanish church pillar

he had actually cemented a carved Indian head from one of the temples.

In another corner a slab of stone, an eighteenth-century Spanish

coat-of-arms, had joined forces by means of cement with a wonderful

Indian frieze. The result was ludicrous in the extreme; but when we

expostulated with him, he smilingly explained that he had done it to

"prevent them from falling about"!

There was, as far as quantity is concerned, an excellent display of

Indian pottery, incense-burners, water-pots and domestic utensils, and

small stone figures of gods. But these were all lying haphazard in a

case with Spanish pottery and tile work. One of the most interesting

exhibits from the archæologist's point of view is the much disputed

"Cozumel Cross." Found on the island of Cozumel in the seventeenth

century, it was brought to Merida and placed first in the patio of the

Franciscan Convent, then in the Church of the Mejorada, whence it was

removed to its present position. It is a very ordinary stone cross,

standing some three feet high with a two-foot cross-piece. On it, in

half relief, is an image of the Saviour, made of plaster, coloured, with

the hands and feet nailed. Chiefly upon this relic has been based a

ridiculous theory that at some remote date Christianity had been

preached to the Indians and that the worship of the Cross was found to

exist in Yucatan by the Spaniards. The truth is, as the American

traveller J. L. Stephens showed years ago, the "Cozumel Cross" is

nothing but a poorly sculptured piece of ornamentation from the first

Catholic church built in the island of Cozumel by the order of Cortes.

The director made vigorous efforts to convince us of its Indian origin,

but one look at it was enough; and we passed on to an exhibit which was

the special object of our visit.

In Guatemala, around Copan and Quirigua, skulls have been unearthed from

time to time the teeth in which had in some instances been ornamented

with tiny discs of polished jade. The workmanship was of the most

exquisitely precise nature, and the object had evidently been adornment

and not dentistry. When these skulls were submitted to expert dental

surgeons in America, they declared the work so excellent as to be

unsurpassable even with the present-day mechanical devices and

instruments. Since these finds, archæologists have been searching for

years in Northern Yucatan for some skull which exhibited a like dental

ornamentation. A few months before we arrived in Yucatan their

persistent hopes had been fulfilled. About twenty miles to the

north-east of Merida, at a town called Motul, during casual excavations

at a hacienda, a skull was found which now lay before us. Several teeth

in the upper and lower jaw were missing, but in the former two of the

front teeth had let into their centre tiny discs of bluey-green jade so

firmly done that, after the lapse of centuries, the stone still formed a

surface flush with the enamel of the tooth. Since our return to England

we have seen in the British Museum a skull from Ecuador, in which some

of the upper teeth are ornamented in the same way, but with gold.

Only one room of the three was devoted to Indian antiquities, and after

the director had made a special point of showing us a gigantic broken

stone phallus which appeared to interest him and his little son more

than any of the other exhibits,--(characteristically enough, for the

Yucatecans are nothing if they are not phallic worshippers),--we spent a

few minutes in rambling round a medley of cases containing such

incongruities as fœtal monstrosities in bottles of spirits of wine,

pistols which in their youth had had the honour of dangling round the

waist of Yucatecan heroes, a model of a gas engine, examples of

sixteenth-century ecclesiastical furniture, moth-eaten collections of

bugs and beetles, examples of the coinage of all nations (very faulty

collections), and some battered Spanish armour. There is a great deal of

Ego in the Yucatecan Kosmos, and these rooms represented

self-complacency run amuck, with its mementoes of persecuting Catholic

clerics, pseudo-heroes and municipal nonentities; with the tag-rag and

bob-tail of their wretched relics, their chairs, their wigs, their

coats, their walking-sticks, their slippers and their snuff-boxes. On

the walls were a series of ill-drawn pictures representing poor (!)

Spaniards being disembowelled, hanged, quartered, and burnt by ruthless

Indians; and as we made our way to the door, our cicerones pointed out

to us four large wooden wheels which had supported the truck upon which

Dr. Le Plongeon had had the Chacmool he discovered at Chichen, and which

we mentioned in describing Mexico Museum, brought to the coast. If

Merida had not got the statue--and in the circumstances she has probably

not lost much--she at least had the genuine cartwheels.

The attitude of Mexico towards foreign archæologists is that of the "dog

in the manger." This is more particularly noticeable in her policy

regarding the comparatively recent activity of German and American

students in Yucatan. We were the first Englishmen to approach the

Government for permission to cross the Peninsula, but we found ourselves

somewhat the victims of the indiscretions of foreign rivals, whose

conduct during the past few years has gone some way to justify the

churlishness of the Mexicans. The Mexican or Yucatecan is, as a rule, an

illiterate sensualist, who cares not a jot about his country's past and

is incapable of differentiating between a magnificent ruined Indian

palace and the stuccoed carcass of a hideous eighteenth-century church.

Too mean and too indolent to enter upon researches for themselves, they

regard with suspicion and dislike all who would study the ruins. The

passport granted us was none too generous, and its wording made it clear

enough that our archæological enthusiasm was scarcely welcomed.

In accordance with its terms, we had reckoned our most important

official duty in Merida was to call on the Conservator of Monuments. We

expected an Ancient of Days whose talk on Mayan problems would be a

treat. But nothing is as you expect it in this Gilbertian land. We found

the Conservator gently rocking himself amid the orange trees of his

patio. He was a sleek, self-satisfied, shiny-booted, white-waistcoated

young man, good-looking of the barber's-block style. He languidly

informed us that he had never seen the ruins of Chichen: a confession

equivalent to the Keeper of England's Regalia admitting that he had

never set eyes on the Koh-i-noor. Our amazement was so obvious that he

apologetically added that he had photographs. It was irresistibly

reminiscent of poor Dan Leno as private detective, tired of watching the

suspected house, taking a photograph of it and sitting at home in

comfort watching that.

Months later we learned that a bitter battle had been waged in Mexico

City by contending bands of German and American archæologists to

influence the Federal Government to appoint their respective nominees to

the then recently created post of Conservator. What might not result

were the work of guarding and studying the marvellous ruins of Yucatan

in able and competent native hands? The Germano-American battle had

ended in a compromise. As they could not get their special candidates

appointed, they had agreed that it was safest to have a nonentity. The

Federal Government had certainly granted them this favour.

CHAPTER VI

AMID THE PALACES OF THE ITZAS

By all means let the sluggard go to the ant, if he feels equal to the

journey; but on no account let him go to Yucatan. For if he ever arrived

at Merida he would never get further. It is only the early bird which

catches a Yucatecan train. Bradshaw would find himself in Yucatan one of

the unemployed, for there is no need of railway tables. All Yucatecan

trains start at dawn, one from each terminus, east, south, and west.

With the rising of the sun there is a setting of railway activity, the

only remaining excitement of the day being the reception of the incoming

train from east, south, or west, which has also started at dawn. Early

rising is accounted a virtue in most countries; in Yucatan it has become

a vice. It may have something to do with sleeping in hammocks.

Everybody, rich and poor, sleeps in hammocks in Yucatan, and until the

last year or two a bedstead, even in Merida, was scarcely known as a

curio, and even now the few existing are restricted to the hotel and one

or two American houses. For even the energetic to get out of a bedstead

"with the sun" is an undertaking, an enterprise, demanding real moral

courage and iron will-power. But the hammock is so different. You give a

sharp twist of the body to the left, raise your feet clear of the

blanket, and, before you know where you are, you are up, or, to speak

more accurately, you are down, for there are falls in plenty for the

uninitiated in hammock-sleeping. But whether it is due to hammocks or

not the Yucatecans are all early birds, though they seem to have no

designs on the early worms; for they simply sit about in the dark and

shudder with cold.

The stars were still bright and it was pitch dark when, cursing the

unearthly hours of Yucatecan railways, we tumbled out of our beds and

into our top boots on the morning of our leaving Merida. There are many

pleasanter occupations than putting the finishing touches to one's

baggage for a long journey in the wilds in a gloom which is almost

Cimmerian. The worst of the Yucatecans is that, having forced you, by

the intemperance of their railway methods, to leave your bed, they do

nothing for you in the way of providing food. Though the barbarians are

all up themselves and the markets opening, you could not get a square

meal for love or money. We were due to catch the dawn train going

eastward, and the irritability born of dressing in the dark had

developed into a sullen despair by the time we reached the station. It

was deadly cold, that penetrating coldness which is typical of the

tropics before dawn, and, as the little ramshackle train jolted through

the suburbs, we wondered at the obstinacy of a people who will get up

early and will not breakfast.

This eastern railway, which now runs as far as Valladolid--a small place

which we shall describe later--had only just been completed on our

arrival in Yucatan. Its total length is some eighty miles. At first the

scenery was much what we had seen in our journey from the coast.

Desolate, flat, stony country, all grey walls and henequen. After about

ten miles of this, the little ill-laid single line enters the forest,

which it thereafter never leaves, except at the clearings for the

stations. Some of these are primitive enough, the platforms merely

mounds banked up at the side of the rail. The monotony of the journey

was broken by one or two humorous incidents. The slowness of Yucatecan

trains is such as to make applicable Artemus Ward's sarcastic suggestion

in regard to the American trains of old times, "that it's no use having

a cow-catcher on the engine, for we shall never catch up a cow. It ought

to be at the rear to prevent the cows from boarding the train and biting

the passengers." We did not literally face this peril, but we did suffer

the indignity of being chased by a pack of barking dogs, and at one

point we had to slow down for a herd of cattle which had blundered from

the woods on to the track and galloped, tails in the air, in front of

the engine for about five miles. After we had been delayed for some

time, further on, by the wood fuel, stored on the tender of the engine,

catching fire, we eventually reached Citas, whence it is some eighteen

miles through the forests to the famous ruins of Chichen Itza. Citas is

a dirty village with a large church. There is something pathetic about

Yucatan's churches. They are all too big for their towns, and look as

much out of it as a boy of sixteen at a child's party. The smallest

village in civilised Yucatan always possesses a large church and a

small official with a big name, _el Jefe politico_, "the political

Chief," a kind of mayor without the sables and the chain of office.

Citas's mayor had very little on but a panama hat and a shirt, but he

was an intelligent fellow to whom, as strangers in a strange land, we

felt gratitude, for he had provided horses and an Indian guide.

It was our first experience of a Yucatecan road, and we were not

impressed. Even the best roadways resemble a Scotch trout stream with

the water dried up. Ledges of rock a foot or more high; stretches, a

quarter of a mile at a time, covered with boulders but a few inches

apart, make riding an absorbing exercise. The horses of Yucatan have

learnt to take matters quietly (they certainly would not last a week if

they fussed), and your mount will balance himself on a rocky promontory,

like a chamois, and deliberately look about for the best place for his

next hoof-step. A hold on the rein in case of a stumble, but no

steering, is the best rule for the rider in Yucatan. If you try to steer

your mount, you come to grief four out of five times; he knows best. The

light was fading with tropical quickness as we rode through the Indian

village of Piste, a ruinous settlement, thrice the scene of battles and

raidings in the native wars of last century. Thence less than a league

lies Chichen, and the road, deep embowered in trees, looked like a

cavern's mouth ahead of us till the moon rose.

We had been riding forty minutes or so, when of a sudden the trees

parted. Looming up, momentarily blotting out moon and sky, rose a mighty

pyramid, rearing its vast mass of ink-black shadow into the silver sky.

As we rode towards its western shoulder, the moon touched with a

glinting light the flat stones of its southern slope and struck on the

huge plinths and door-lintels of the temple which crowned it. Around us,

as our eyes became used to the light, we saw, rising gaunt above the

tree-tops, the crumbling walls and façades of palaces and temples. It

was Chichen! Chichen the magnificent! and this the "Taj Mahal" of

Central America, down the steep steps of which the solemn procession of

priests and victims had passed in their journey to the scene of the

sacrifice! Reining in our horses, we sat there gazing up at this grand

relic of a dead people. Instinctively, one almost held one's breath;

there was something so sublime, so awe-inspiring in this imperishable

monument to perishable gods. What did it all mean? The tyrant priests,

majestic in their bejewelled and befeathered robes, standing at the head

of those now crumbling steps, with supplicatory hands uplifted to the

starlit heavens; the mighty lord of the Itzas, at whose command tens of

thousands had toiled at the building for years in the blistering

sunlight; the gods, to appease whom the blood of human victims had

perchance flowed in rivers before their grotesque idols; all dead,

unutterably dead, impotent, discredited! As we sat there, from the dark

woods echoed the weird long-drawn cry of the Mayan night-jar--the

pubuy--like a spirit-wail over the fallen race.

[Illustration: EL CASTILLO, CHICHEN ITZA.]

The history of Chichen Itza before the arrival of the Spaniards is as

vague and as untrustworthy as all else concerning the ancient Mayans. In

a later chapter we shall review the evidence available as to the date of

its building. M. Desiré Charnay labours needlessly to prove that the

city was inhabited at the time of the Conquest. Of that, at least, there

is no doubt. Even if no credence could be given to the report of the

expedition thither of the elder Montejo in 1528, there is a sufficiency

of Spanish documentary evidence to show that the city was not only

inhabited, but the centre of a vast and powerful population in the

twenties of the sixteenth century. But there is no reason to doubt the

truth of Montejo's account of his sojourn there which has been outlined

in Chapter III. He found Chichen the metropolis of the vast tribe of the

Itzas. The Spanish historian Herrera asserts that Montejo had a return

of the population taken with a view to apportioning the Indians among

his soldiers as slaves, and that each Spaniard became master of between

two and three thousand. Montejo's troops possibly numbered on his

arrival at Chichen some 350, and this would make the census of Indians

work out at something like a million. This is obviously a gross

exaggeration, for even if there was any evidence that Montejo succeeded

so completely in subjugating the Itzas as to be able to enslave them, we

are quite certain from a careful personal survey of the district, that

the country around never could have supported, any more than it could

to-day support, so many inhabitants.

But as a matter of fact it is thoroughly clear that though Montejo

succeeded in making a lodgment at Chichen and possessed himself of the

principal buildings, occupying these for something like two years, the

vast horde of Indians were not in any sense conquered, but had simply

temporarily withdrawn into the surrounding woods and village suburbs of

the city. Unable in the face of firearms to recapture their palaces, the

natives played a waiting game, setting about slowly but surely to starve

the Spaniards into submission. Weakened by months of privation, with

every square mile of woodland thick with his enemies, Montejo's position

became at last desperate, and there was nothing for him but to evacuate

the city. This was done in a picturesque way. Choosing a dark night,

Montejo collected his men, keeping the sentries on the walls till the

last moment, and then, muffling with cloths the horses' hoofs, he tied a

dog to the bell-rope attached to the clapper of a bell, putting a piece

of meat a few feet away, but just out of his reach. Stealthily the

war-worn Spaniards moved off into the woods, and naturally, as the dog

saw them going, he pulled at the rope, thus ringing the bell. When they

were actually out of sight the dog presumably scented the meat, and

thereafter throughout the night made efforts to reach it, ringing the

bell the while. This ruse entirely succeeded, the Indians believing

their enemies still in camp; and it was not until their suspicions were

aroused by the continuous ringing of the bell until dawn that they

approached the buildings and found them deserted. But it was too late,

and the Spaniards on their horses were able to make good their escape to

the coast.

At the hacienda a kindly welcome awaited us from Mr. Edward Thompson,

Consul-General for America in Yucatan, who has for some years been the

owner of the property. A keen archæologist, he pluckily entered into

possession of the estate some fifteen years ago when the neighbourhood

had long earned an unenviable reputation. The last two haciendados and

their families had been massacred by the revolted Indians and the house

pillaged. Even to-day Chichen, which practically stands on the

borderland of the disaffected eastern district of the Peninsula, is not

as peaceful as it looks. A fortnight before our arrival a village some

thirty miles off called Xocen had been raided and burnt. But these

outbreaks do not distress Mr. Thompson, whose sympathies are with the

Indians, and who, speaking Maya like one of them, is beloved by all

around. An experienced traveller himself, Mr. Thompson gained our hearts

at once by introducing us, as soon as our greetings were over, to a

palm-thatched bathhouse in his garden, where in a stone trough we

revelled for some time in the pleasures of cold water after our dusty,

burning ride.

With the dawn we were up and out at El Castillo, to use the stupid

Spanish name of the great pyramid. It loses none of its majesty in the

daylight. It is a truncated pyramid close on 100 feet high, squared

almost to the four cardinal points, but not, we believe, orientated; the

northern side being the front because in that direction lies the Sacred

Cenote which we shall describe in a moment. The four base lines are

each, as near as can be, 200 feet long. On each of the four sides were

gigantic staircases. That on the west, still in fair preservation, up

which we must climb directly, is 37 feet wide. That on the north was 44,

but this latter and that on the east are so entirely destroyed as to be

barely traceable. The stairs on the south, about 40 feet wide, are much

broken and overgrown by cactus and shrub. The pyramid is built of rubble

and earth, and was completely faced with flat-hewn slabs of limestone

about 5 feet by 4 and 4 to 6 inches thick. In places these are still in

position. This is particularly the case with the south front. The four

corners were evidently once dressed with rounded stone blocks from top

to bottom.

It is difficult to exaggerate the magnificent appearance the mound must

have once presented. The stairways, which are so steep as to appear in

some places almost perpendicular, were balustraded, each balustrade

ending on the ground in those gigantic carved stone serpent-heads, the

jaws wide gaping, which we find again and again in Mayan ruins. The

climb of the 120 steps, on the average about 9 inches high and 8 broad,

is an undertaking before which any one not a practised Alpine climber

might be excused for quailing. Pausing for breath at the eightieth step

and looking downwards, your head reels; for the edges of the steps

appear to merge into one another by reason of their steepness, giving

one the feeling of being perched, fly-like, on the face of a grey cliff.

On reaching the top step, a few feet of platform separates you from the

temple. Climbing as you have been from the western side, the real

one-time grandeur of the sanctuary does not strike you. It is not the

front, and you must pass to the north, where was the state entrance to

the Holy of Holies. This is 20 feet wide and the lintel of the gigantic

doorway is supported by two pillars, 8-1/2 feet high, carved with a

snake pattern and once ending at the base in snakes' heads,

open-mouthed, the now empty eye-sockets having once been filled with

brilliantly painted stone or pieces of polished jade. These heads are

broken up, and only enough remained for the tutored eye to reconstruct

the whole. Entering, you are in a now roofless room running the full

length of the building east to west, 40 feet long and 6 broad. In front

of you is a second doorway, its massive door-posts carved with life-sized

figures of warriors in full ceremonial dress. By this you enter the

central room, 20 feet by 12. Two pillars, each 1 foot 10 inches square,

carved on every side with life-sized figures of warriors or priests in

feathered costumes, support beams of sapota wood, once carved, but now

too decayed to permit of the designs being traced.

There is no doubt that the building formed a temple. The religious

nature of the Castillo must be indubitable to any one standing in front

of it. Whether the bloody rites which are known to have been celebrated

by Moctezuma's people in honour of Huitzopochtli, God of War, on the

pyramids of Mexico had their equivalent on Chichen's mound is a very

different matter. There is really no proof for or against. And if it

were argued that the fact that there is no altar stone within, as is the

case, goes far to prove that there were no such rites, there would be no

value in such negative evidence. If bloody deeds in honour of a

Sun-Deity were here enacted, possibly the flattened serpents' heads at

the outer door, which would have been in view of the congregated

thousands on the plains below, formed the butcher-blocks upon which the

victim's palpitating heart, after his breast had been sliced open with

the silex knife, was torn from its tissues to be burned as an offering

to the god in the inner Holy of Holies; while the body, scarcely

lifeless, was pitched (as some writers who value the picturesque rather

than the accurate would like us to believe) down the steps to be

sacramentally eaten by the worshippers. On the other three sides of the

building runs a corridor 6 feet wide, three doors with sculptured jambs

facing almost due south, east, and west.

A woodland path, in places wide enough to merit the title of road, and

here and there showing signs of an ancient cementing, leads from this

grimly majestic shrine of fallen gods to perhaps the grimmest pool in

the world. Yucatan is peculiar in being riverless and lakeless. Rivers

and lakes there are, but these are all subterranean, generally from

fifty to two hundred feet beneath the surface. But dotted over the

Peninsula are deep holes or water-caves, reservoirs carved by nature out

of the limestone and fed by these underground sources. For these the

Mayan Indian name is "cenote," and they are often huge. Two of the

largest are at Chichen. Indeed the very name is due to them; for "_chi_"

is "mouth" and "_chen_" is "wells." Thus _Chichen_ was the city at the

"mouth of the wells."

But only one of Chichen's natural wells served as water supply. This

flower-bordered path we follow leads to the Sacred Cenote, round which

grim rumours have long collected; rumours which it is now our privilege

to confirm as facts. As we approach, the trees on either side give a

denser shade. A few yards further and the path debouches into a small

semicircular space with tiers of stone running round it to the left,

suggestive of a tiny amphitheatre. In front of you is a small stone

building, one-roomed, possibly the scene of the penultimate acts of the

terrible dramas played so many centuries back in this tropic woodland. A

step more and you are on the brink! Hold the branch of that sapota

sapling fast, for the fall is sheer! Seventy feet below you in a huge

limestone basin, two hundred feet or more in diameter--so nearly a

perfect circle that as you look into it you find it hard to believe it

has not been engineered by man, that it has worn thus from the

infinitely slow corrosive action of the rainfall and natural drainage

water--seventy feet beneath you lies the black, still water. It is an

inky black. High above it on the limestone sides of the great hole

sprawl ferns, cactus, and orchid; higher still, fringing its verge,

thorn-bushes and pale-green acacias, the grey-barked sapota, and the

heavy-leafed ceibo-tree raise their branches into the sunlight. But the

sun never touches that gruesome, deadly still, pitchy lake. Its very

glassy stillness sends a shudder through you. In its sepia depths what

wonder that Mayan priest and people saw the home of the terrible Rain

God, at whose will the land might smile with plenty or the spectre of

famine lay his bony hand on the shrinking townsfolk?

From the earliest days of the Spanish invasion to the present time

rumour has been busy in circulating many gruesome stories of the exact

sacrificial uses to which this terrible pothole in the limestone was put

by the ancient Mayan Indians. If Montejo the elder, during his stay at

Chichen in 1528, was cognisant of human immolation in the cenote, he has

left no record of it. But this is no evidence that he was not, because,

like most of his fellow-adventurers in the New World, he left no

chronicles at all. The probability is, however, that he knew nothing

accurately and certainly witnessed no sacrificial rites, for during the

foreign occupation of their city the ritual of the Indians would almost

certainly be in abeyance, or at any rate practised with the utmost

secrecy. The first actual written Spanish testimony to the sacred

character of the pool appears to be that of Bishop Landa in his

_Relación de las Cosas de Yucatan_ (1556). He writes: "A good wide road

led to a well into which in times of drought the natives used to throw

men, as indeed they still do, as an offering to their deities, fully

believing that they would not die, even though they disappeared.

Precious stones and other valuable objects were also offered; and had

the country been rich in gold, this well would contain a vast quantity,

because of the great veneration of the natives for it.... On its bank

rises a small building filled with idols in honour of all the principal

deities in the country, exactly like the Pantheon in Rome. I cannot say

whether this is an ancient practice or an innovation of the aborigines,

who find here their idols to which they can bring their offerings. I

also found sculptured lions, vases, and other objects, which from the

manner they were fashioned must have been wrought with metal

instruments; besides two statues of considerable size of one single

block, with peculiar heads, earrings, and _maxtli_ round their loins."

The bishop's remarks were based, obviously, on an actual visit he paid

Chichen and upon such tittle-tattle as he could obtain from the Indian

peasantry. A more serious notice of the cenote is contained in a report,

clearly inaccurate in detail and based on hearsay, which was drawn up in

1579 by the Spanish Governor of Valladolid and transmitted to Madrid. It

runs as follows:--

"Eight leagues from this town stand some buildings called

Chicheneca. Among them there is a _Cu_ (Maya name for pyramid) made

by the hand of hewn stone and masonry, and this is the principal

building. It has over ninety steps and the steps go all round so as

to reach to the top of it; the height of each step is over

one-third of a _vara_[2] high. On the summit stands a sort of tower

with rooms in it.... This _Cu_ stands between two zenotes of deep

water. One of them is called the Zenote of Sacrifice. They call the

place Chicheneca after an Indian named Alguin Itza who was living

at the foot of the Zenote of Sacrifice. At this zenote the lords

and chiefs of all the province of Valladolid observe this custom.

After having feasted for sixty days without raising their eyes

during that time even to look at their wives nor at those who

brought them food, they came to the mouth of the zenote and at the

break of day they threw into it some Indian women, some belonging

to each of the lords, and they told the women that they should beg

for a good year in all those things which they thought fit, and

thus they cast them in unbound; but as they were thrown headlong in

they fell into the water, giving a great blow on it; and exactly at

midday she, who was able to come out, cried out loud that they

should throw her a rope to drag her out with, and she arrived at

the top half dead, and they made great fires around her and

incensed her with copal, and when she came to herself she said that

below there were many of her nation, both men and women, who

received her, and that raising her head to look at some of them

they gave her heavy blows on the neck, making her put her head

down, which was all under water in which she fancied were many

hollows and deeps; and in answer to the questions which the Indian

girl put to them, they replied to her whether it should be a good

or bad year, and whether the devil was angry with any of the lords

who had cast in the Indian girls, but these lords already knew that

if a girl did not beg to be taken up at midday it was because the

devil was angry with them, and she never came out again. Then

seeing that she did not come out, all the followers of that lord

and the lord himself threw great stones into the water and with

loud cries fled from the place."

During the succeeding centuries there is no record of any effort on the

part of the Spaniards to solve the mystery surrounding the well. This is

not at all surprising, for from the first they took no kind of interest

in questions affecting the Indian past of the country, and their innate

avarice was not awakened by any well-founded suggestion that jewels and

the precious metals had been cast as offerings into the Zenote. The

mineral poverty of Yucatan was so obvious as not to permit of such a

belief gaining currency, as is clear from the quotation given above from

Bishop Landa. But there was another and a stronger reason why the pool

should hold its secret fast. This was the extraordinary mechanical

difficulty of dredging operations. As has been said, the height from

the brink of the cenote to the water-level is seventy feet, and the

basin is a complete and precipitous circle all round; there thus being

no means of reaching the water except by some elaborate contrivance of a

crane nature. M. D. Charnay in 1881 provided himself, in anticipation of

his visit to Chichen with two automatic sounding machines, one of which

was capable of bringing up half a cubic metre deposit. Owing, however,

to the height of the cenote walls, the depth of the water, and the

enormous detritus of centuries, he could do nothing. It has been

reserved for our good friend Mr. Edward Thompson, whose earnestness is

only matched by his persistence and his contempt for difficulties, to

wrest from this ugly hole the full measure of its secrets. Some twelve

months back he had set up an elaborate crane apparatus worked by

hand-winches which, projecting considerably over the cenote, and moving

in a large half-circle, supported a heavy iron dredger. By means of this

machinery dredging over the whole surface of the well-bottom has been

done to a considerable depth.

The water, regarded still by the superstitious Indians as fathomless, is

at present thirty feet deep, but was probably deeper once. The dredging

operations have disclosed the bottom of the cenote to be an accumulation

of earth and vegetable refuse, into which Mr. Thompson has been able to

probe to the depth of over thirty feet. These investigations have once

and for all established the fact that the pool was the scene of

countless human sacrifices. The quantity of skulls and bones brought up

by the dredger admits of no other explanation. For if it was urged, as

it may be, that such "finds" point possibly to the cenote having been

put to a sepulchral use, the answer is provided by the character of the

skulls and bones. In a pool which was regarded in the light of a

national Valhalla the majority of the skeletons would almost certainly

be those of men, and men, too, of advanced age, chiefs and war-worn

tribal heroes. But this is not the case. With scarcely any exceptions,

the bones are those of the young. We were privileged by the courtesy of

Mr. Thompson to see and handle many of the skulls, and our examination

of them satisfied us that they were one and all those of young females

between twelve and sixteen years of age. The disarticulated bones all

exhibited a like immaturity and sex. From these facts only one deduction

is possible, namely that sacrifices in the cenote did occur, and that

such sacrifices were of young girls who were hurled by the priests into

the chasm, possibly after defilement by the high-priests in the small

building at the pool's edge, thus symbolising the simultaneous surrender

of virginity and life to the Rain Deity.

It is of course impossible to say for how many centuries before the

Spanish Conquest this practice prevailed, but allowing for the natural

tendency of the bodies to entirely decay during anything like such a

vast period as some writers would suggest is represented by the life of

Chichen as a city, the quantity of skulls found in fair preservation

seems to indicate a comparatively frequent repetition of this cruel

rite; probably many maids each dry season. These grim mementoes of the

pagan past are not the only "finds" the cenote has yielded. While the

dredging has more than corroborated Bishop Landa's supposition that the

mineral poverty of Yucatan forbade the hope that countless ounces of

gold and silver lay hidden in the pool's muddy bottom, many

archæological treasures have been recovered. There is much reason to

believe that, aided by these, Mr. Thompson will be able to give the

world an absorbingly interesting reconstruction of pre-Conquest life in

Chichen, pieced together with that painstaking zeal which has

distinguished all his previous work in other parts of Yucatan.

To these "finds" we shall have reason later to refer more in detail, but

of one thing we would speak here. An enormous quantity of lumps of

copal, a resin obtained from several small trees or shrubs of tropical

America with compound dotted leaves, known to botanists as the order of

Burseraceae, have been dredged up. This copal was used as incense in the

Mayan temples, and it is certain that it was regarded as very precious,

for there is evidence that tributes to overlords were paid by vassal

tribes in so much weight of this resinous gum. There thus seems little

doubt that part of the ritual at the cenote edge was the casting in of

lumps of copal as offerings to the god, and it is more than likely that

this custom is referred to unconsciously by the Spanish official

reporting in 1579, when he says that "all the followers of that lord and

the lord himself threw great stones into the water and with loud cries

fled from the place." The pieces of copal recovered are in some cases as

large as a human head.

About one hundred and thirty yards to the south-west of the great

pyramid is the building known as the Tennis-Court. Running north to

south are two immense parallel walls 274 feet long, 30 feet thick, 25

feet high, and 120 feet apart. At each end, some 30 yards from the

walls, stand buildings roofless and wall-less on the Tennis-Court side.

That on the north still shows traces of elaborate carvings from floor to

roof, and on two pillars, where was once a doorway, are figure carvings.

The building to the south is not so richly decorated. The clue to the

purpose of this vast enclosure is given by a massive stone ring

projecting from the eastern wall 20 feet from the ground. A

corresponding one on the west side has fallen and lies among the bushes.

We found its measurements to be 3 feet 11 inches in diameter, 11-1/2

inches thick, and the diameter of the ringhole 1 foot 7 inches. The ring

still in position is obviously of the same measurements: it can be seen

in the photograph reproduced. On the flat surface and on its edges each

ring is carved with two serpents intertwined. These rings formed an

essential part of a ball-game, which seems to have been common to the

Mayan peoples in Yucatan and the Aztec subjects of Moctezuma in Mexico.

The native name for this pastime was _Tlachtli_.

The Spanish historian Herrera, in describing the amusements at the Court

of Moctezuma, has a detailed account of the game. He writes (we follow

the translation adopted by J. L. Stephens): "The King took much delight

in seeing Sport at Ball, which the Spaniards have since prohibited,

because of the mischief that often happened at it; and was by them

called Tlachtli, being like our Tennis. The ball was made of the gum of

a tree that grows in hot countries, which, having holes made in it,

distils great white drops, that soon harden, and, being worked and

moulded together, turn as black as pitch. The balls made thereof, though

hard and heavy to the hand, did bound and fly as well as our footballs,

there being no need to blow them; nor did they use chaces,[3] but vy'd

to drive the adverse party that is to hit the wall, the others were to

make good, or strike it over. They struck it with any part of their

body, as it hapned, or they could most conveniently; and sometimes he

lost that touched it with any other part but his hip, which was look'd

upon among them as the greatest dexterity; and to this effect, that the

ball might rebound the better, they fastened a piece of stiff leather on

their hips. They might strike it every time it rebounded, which it would

do several times one after another, in so much that it look'd as if it

had been alive. They play'd in parties, so many on a side, for a load of

mantles, or what the gamesters could afford, at so many scores. They

also play'd for gold, and feather-work, and sometimes play'd themselves

away, as had been said before. The place where they played was a ground

room, long, narrow, but wider above than below and higher on the sides

than at the ends, and they kept it very well plastered and smooth, both

the walls and the floor. On the side walls they fix'd certain stones,

like those of a mill, with a hole quite through the middle, just as big

as the ball, and he that could strike it through won the game; and in

token of its being an extraordinary success, which rarely hapn'd, he had

a right to the cloaks of all the lookers-on, by antient custom, and law

amongst gamesters; and it was very pleasant to see, that as soon as ever

the ball was in the hole, the standers-by took to their heels, running

away with all their might to save their cloaks, laughing and rejoicing,

others scouring after them to secure their cloaks for the winner, who

was oblig'd to offer some sacrifice to the idol of the Tennis Court, and

the stone through whose hole the ball had pass'd. Every Tennis Court was

a temple, having two idols, the one of gaming, and the other of the

ball. On a lucky day, at midnight, they perform'd certain ceremonies and

enchantments on the two lower walls and on the midst of the floor,

singing certain songs, or ballads; after which a priest of the great

temple went with some of their religious men to bless it; he uttered

some words, threw the ball about the Tennis Court four times, and then

it was consecrated and might be play'd in, but not before. The owner of

the Tennis Court, who was always a lord, never play'd without making

some offering and performing certain ceremonies to the idol of gaming,

which shows how superstitious they were, since they had such regard to

their idols, even in their diversions. Moctezuma carry'd the Spaniards

to this sport, and was well pleas'd to see them play at it, as also at

cards and dice."

This account by Herrera of the temples surrounding the playground would

be as accurate if it purported to be a description of Chichen instead of

Mexico. The two roofless buildings which we found north and south of the

court certainly suggested temples, but a more elaborate confirmation of

the religious element in this ball-game is found at the southern end of

the eastern wall, where stands another building larger than either of

those described. This is called "The Temple of the Tigers," from a

frieze design, marvellously lifelike, of jaguars (always called tigers

in Yucatan) pacing after one another. The building is built to the same

level as, and indeed forms part of, the wall of the Tennis Court. Its

position, with serpent-columned doorway, facing the arena, indicates

that it, too, figured in the ceremonies of the ball-game. Of the front

room nothing remains but the two columns and the back wall, out of which

latter a doorway leads into an inner apartment. Here are the most

remarkable Mayan paintings so far discovered. They cover, or, to be

accurate, they once covered (for they are much mutilated), the whole

wall space. The colours used are green, red, blue, a reddish brown (the

colour of the human skin in all Mayan paintings), and yellow. The

designs are coarse in outline, the colours are faded, the plaster is

chipped; but the humanity of it all holds you. The method employed in

these mural paintings was that of placing one layer of pigment over

another. Thus a green shield with yellow bosses studding it was depicted

by the shield being first painted entirely over with green, discs of

yellow chalky pigment being then placed on the green background. This

method, which at the time of the actual painting obviously must have

added to the glowing realistic effect, has its grave disadvantages in

the detaching of these superimposed layers of paint by crumbling during

the passage of centuries. Thus much of the original skill of the design

is for ever lost to us.

But it is all very human. Life as it was lived, loved and struggled for;

life with all its work and its play, its lights and its shades; the

drama of life in those far-off Indian days, is here pictured for you.

The long-dead past lives again in that crumbling fresco. By the magic of

even that crude draughtsmanship you are transported back through the

centuries into the living city. Close at hand you seem to hear the weird

chanting of the priests, to smell the resinous incense; from the

steaming plain below rise the sounds of hut-life, the grating of the

stone rolling-pin (universal sound in every Indian village) on the

_metate_ or stone tray as the housewife crushes the maize, the cries of

playing children, the barking of the housedogs, the crowing of the

cocks. You seem to catch the echo of sharp words of command, of the low,

long-drawn, grunting cries of the toilers as they drag huge plinths up

the newly banked sides of the pyramid; while from the distant quarry

comes the incessant "tap-tap-tap" of nephrite chisels as the masons

shape the vast blocks of limestone. On the other wall the artist shows

you warriors, shields and flint-headed spears in hand, in the full crash

of battle; while above them the women have come out upon the

battlements of the city to watch the struggle. Truly is there nothing

new under the sun. To one's mind come those lines of Matthew Arnold:

"Men shall renew the battle on the plain;

To-morrow, as it hath been, it shall be;

Hector and Ajax shall be there again;

Helen shall come upon the walls to see."

Scrambling down the broken wall to the ground-level, at the back of this

painted room is another looking towards the pyramid. The back wall, all

that remains, is covered with figures of warriors carved so closely that

it is hard to follow the design in the blaze of sunlight.

But there is one figure which demands attention. In the centre of this

bas-relief is the presentment of a man who is distinguished from those

around by the fact that he wears a beard. This is very curious and very

important. Beards were never worn by the ancient Mayan Indians, as

indeed they are never worn to-day. In fact, physiologically the Mayan

cannot grow a beard, or at least a beard of anything but the mangiest

and most scrubby nature, a fact which is evidence of that Mongolian

blood which he shares in common with the American Indians of the North

and South. But beards are said to have been worn by the priestly caste

attached to the worship of the Mexican deity and culture-hero

Quetzalcoatl. This divinity, it has been believed, can be identified

with the Maya god Itzamna, and this belief certainly gains support from

the appearance of this bearded figure on the sculpture of Chichen, the

work of a beardless race.

In front, where the doorway of this temple once stood, are two square

carved pillars, not monolithic, but built of slabs a foot or more thick;

but the topmost slabs have come away and lie on the ground. Between

these pillars, the back hollowed as if for a ceremonial seat, is the

much broken form of a tiger (jaguar). Between this building and the

pyramid are heaps of fallen stones, and in the dense bush we find and

photograph huge slabs of limestone 3 or 4 feet square and more than a

foot thick, upon which are carved quite brilliantly lifelike

representations of a much bewhiskered jaguar and a parrot eating a nut

of the mamey tree. Among these littered stones are, too, many serpents'

heads and pieces of a curious frieze decorated with skulls and

crossbones.

Standing on the top of the Castillo platform, looking northeastward, one

sees shining white amid the trees the pillars of what is known as the

Temple of the Tables, so called in allusion to its chief feature, a

series of tables, huge stone slabs supported on Atlantean figures. These

latter are of extraordinary interest. They have the square, severe

Egyptian headdress and fillet, and so closely resemble in features and

general appearance the Sphinx-forms of Egyptian mythology that one

starts back in amazement on first seeing them. One curious thing, too,

is that a close examination shows an extraordinary diversity of feature.

Whoever the sculptor was, he was not content with producing a

stereotyped face, but actually aimed at and obtained a series which one

might reasonably guess to be portraits. But of these squat figures, more

when we come to our conclusions as to who the Mayans were.

Away to the north of the Castillo, but a few yards from the path which

leads to the Sacred Cenote, is a small ruin known as the Temple of the

Cones, because in front of it are perhaps a hundred small cone-shaped

stones about 2 to 3 feet long, looking for all the world like the

10-inch shells fired from modern artillery. Some writers have found a

suggestion of phallic worship in these, but the close inspection we made

convinced us this is not the case.

To the east of the Castillo in the dense woods are an extraordinary

series of short columns, the difficulty of explaining which has so far

defeated all students. Hundreds of these columns, now broken and

scattered, built, as all the columns at Chichen are, of square slabs

mortared on to each other, appear to have stood in rows five or six

abreast, and some 12 feet apart each from each, forming the sides of an

immense square. These columns would seem to have been finished by plain

square capitals which lie about here and there. The most reasonable

suggestion offered in explanation of these groups of pillars, none of

which evidently exceeded 6 feet in height, is that of M. Charnay, who

was at Chichen in 1881. He believed them to mark the site of the

market-place of the ancient city, and found in the columns the supports

for that low colonnade which, he pointed out, was known to have bordered

the market-places in Mexico at the time of the Conquest. He quoted

Clavigero, who wrote: "In Mexico the judges of the commercial tribunal,

twelve in number, held their court in the market buildings, where they

regulated prices and measures and settled disputes. Commissioners

acting under their authority patrolled the market-place to prevent

disorder." The position of these strange columns at Chichen, in the very

heart of the old city, as they must have been, within a hundred yards of

the Castillo, certainly seem to support M. Charnay's guess, and there is

no difficulty in believing that a large arcade supported by rows of five

columns abreast ran round the market-place to afford shelter from the

sun to those who, like the judges mentioned by Clavigero, had by reason

of their duties to be there all day. M. Charnay, however, does not

attempt to explain what has become of the roof of such arcade, for there

is no sign of it among the littered stones. The explanation undoubtedly

is that the roof would have been formed not of stone but of a framework

of light beams thatched with palm-leaves, the thatch periodically

renewed, as is the case to-day with every Indian hut where the thatching

lasts little more than a year. This roofing of the arcade would have of

course long ago entirely rotted away.

In the woods to the south-east of the Castillo are a series of ruins

which, while intrinsically interesting, are perhaps of most value in the

discussion as to the actual age of Chichen. We shall refer to them in a

later chapter, and at present would content ourselves with saying that

we believe them to represent an older Chichen than that which flourished

at the time of Montejo's visit. They consist of a series of mounds some

30 feet high, crowned with now ruined buildings. In their midst are two

temples. The first is very remarkable. Its roof has gone, but the

majestic carved pillars, 10 feet high, which supported it are still for

the most part in position. Here Mr. Thompson recently unearthed a

life-sized recumbent statue of the Chacmool type to which a reference

was made in our description of the Museum at Mexico City. Its head is

half turned, and its features and headdress are those of the Atlantean

statuettes. A hollow in the body between the navel and ribs, three

inches wide by three-quarters of an inch deep, suggests a receptacle for

incense-burning; the figure probably being altar and idol combined.