To the immediate south of this, with the walls nearly adjoining, is a

second temple, now roofless. Against its southern wall stand three

carved pillars some 10 feet high, but the peculiar feature is a platform

3 feet high and 5 feet wide and 12 feet long on the north side which has

all the appearance of an altar; while a second feature, which we saw

nowhere else in Yucatan, was a terraced ledge at the eastern end about

4 feet wide running the full width of the building and approached in its

north-east corner by a flight of five stone steps well laid. Still

further to the south of these twin temples were two mounds parallel to

each other about 50 yards apart. Owing to the dense growth of bush

accurate measurements were difficult; but each appeared to be between 40

and 50 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 25 to 30 feet high. Excavations on

the second one showed three small stone houses, apparently

communicating.

In the woods to the south of the Castillo are a group of large and

well-preserved ruins. First the "Red House," a literal translation of

the Indian name _Chichanchob_, in allusion to the extensive colouring of

the inner walls. The building, which is 43 feet long and 23 deep and has

a richly ornamented cornice, stands on a low mound 62 feet long and 50

odd wide, approached by a stairway 20 feet wide. It has three doors

admitting to a room running the full length of the building; and out of

this again there are three doors to three inner rooms. Along the top of

the wall of the front room runs a tablet covered with two lines of

hieroglyphics. They are much worn, and we found it impossible to get a

satisfactory mould of them. The paints on the walls are still vivid, but

no pattern is traceable; the only striking feature being that "red

hand," which we found in far better preservation at a city we discovered

some months later in the island of Cozumel, and of which we shall write

later.

To the south-east of the Chichanchob is a most puzzling building, unique

as far as Yucatan is concerned. The Caracol, or "Winding Staircase,"

stands on two rectangular stone-faced terraces reached by steps. The

lower terrace measures 220 feet north to south, 150 feet east to west,

and is 20 feet high. The masonry is very rough, and may have been

plastered. At one end are the remains of four small pillars, and around

the building we found at intervals carved heads hollowed in the crowns

to serve as incense-burners. The stairs are on the west side, and are 45

feet wide; the broken remains we found suggested there had been serpent

balustrades. The second or upper terrace is 60 feet east to west, 80

north to south, and 12 feet high; the steps being a continuation of the

lower flight. The building is a large squat turret of about 40 feet

diameter and about 25 in height. Upon this turret a smaller one, now

largely fallen, stood. The main turret consists of two concentric walls,

enclosing two annular rooms and a circular core or pillar. The walls

are some 2 feet thick. There are four doorways facing the cardinal

points of the compass in the outer, and four facing the sub-cardinal

points in the inner, wall. The core is about 7 feet thick at the

floor-level and 8 feet at ceiling. The roof of each of these annular

rooms ends in a very pointed arch. Facing the north-east door is a small

opening in the core about 4 feet from the floor and measuring about 28

by 24 inches. J. L. Stephens in 1842 abandoned the attempt to explore

this, but we were luckier. By a total disregard of our clothes and of

the probability that the passage sheltered at least one rattlesnake, we

squirmed through and came out at the side of the topmost turret some 10

feet from the top. Undoubtedly this was once a stairway, for we could

feel (it was too dark to see) the broken edges of the steps. It is

reasonable to surmise that this unique winding-stair building was in the

nature of an observatory, though whether in connection with Sun or Star

worship it is of course impossible to say.

[Illustration: THE CARACOL ("WINDING STAIRCASE"), CHICHEN ITZA.]

[Illustration: THE TENNIS COURT, CHICHEN ITZA.]

To the south of the Caracol stands a ruin of remarkable beauty and in

wonderful preservation. The Spaniards called it "_La Casa de las

Monjas_" (Nuns' House), and there is much reason to believe that this is

a thoroughly appropriate title, and that this building did actually

house those virgins of noble birth of whose dedication to religious uses

we shall have to speak at some length in a later chapter, when reviewing

the whole subject of Mayan religion. The peculiar feature of the

building is the manner of erection. Apparently at first it stood on a

solid foundation of masonry 30 feet high and of the same size as the

building itself except to the north, where there was a platform 30 feet

wide. At some period, whether during erection or after completion it is

impossible to tell, the architect must have come to the conclusion that

the building was top-heavy, and decided to strengthen it by continuing

the northern platform all round. This new wall was not spliced and

mortised into the other as one would expect. A wall was built to the

outer dimensions of the support only 2 feet thick, and the space between

this and the main building was filled up with rubble and loose building

waste. The abutment on the northern side, down which thirty-four steps

lead to ground-level, was built in the same manner, giving it an

unsubstantial lean-to appearance. But we shall have more to say upon

this mode of building when attempting to date these structures in a

later chapter.

The buildings on the platform are two in number. The larger is 104 feet

long and 30 wide, and contains seven rooms, the largest on the south

side measuring 47 feet by 9 feet wide, its inner walls bearing traces of

figure paintings from floor to roof. The space on the northern side

corresponding to this room has apparently been filled up. The niches for

the doorways exist, but they are sealed to the lintel with masonry,

whether because sepulchral or to give support to the building above, it

is impossible to say. On either side of this closed space are two

smaller rooms and two more in corresponding places on the south side,

while at the east and west ends a room runs from north to south. The

lintels of the three sealed doorways, both underneath and on the

facings, are covered with hieroglyphics, as are also those of the doors

on either side, and the fact that none are found on the southern chamber

suggests that the sealing was for an important reason. Returning to the

north side and climbing sixteen steps, you reach the second platform, on

which stood a second house now merely a heap of stones. It was

one-roomed with two doors, looking north and south.

As we came down the steps we disturbed a huge iguana, which darted up

the face of the ruin and ran along its edge, stopping motionless at the

corner to peer over at us, its grey dewlapped head and hideous blinking

eyes making it look like some animated gargoyle. Once more on the

ground, we turned towards the eastern annexe of the nunnery, containing

five open and two closed rooms. Its façade has scarcely a parallel in

Central America. The twining-serpent frieze, the "elephant trunk," the

diamond pattern, and other designs common in Mayan ornamentation are

lavishly used, as can be seen from the illustration, while in a central

arched niche is a bust with a headdress of feathers. Over the door are

twenty curious cartouches, five in a row, and over these are six

ornaments like capital T's stuck into the building by their stems. As we

approach, two or three asses, startled from their grazing at the

doorways, clatter off into the stony woodland. Lizard and wild ass!

Could better illustration than these desolate, gaping palace chambers be

found for Omar Khayyam's lines:

"They say the Lion and the Lizard keep

The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep;

And Bahram--that great hunter--the wild ass

Stamps o'er his head, but cannot break his sleep"?

We sat awhile amid the fallen blocks of masonry in what must have been

the nunnery courtyard, watching the swallows as they flew in and out of

those timeworn doorways. Here and there amid the stunted wiry grass rose

clumps of cactus and coarse thistle-like plants, while over all climbed

a large blue convolvulus, its centre striped purple-red, making Nature's

perfect harmony of colouring with a dainty butter-yellow foxglove-shaped

flower which filled the air with a subtle musky perfume. Huge

butterflies of orange and sulphur, of striped black and scarlet, of

black and white, flitted among the blooms; while over us blazed the sun

in a sea of blue, the rich blue of the eternal Carib summer.

A few yards south-eastward of us stood Akad-zib, "House of the

Mysterious Writing," eighteen-roomed and unique as being the only

building in Chichen not on a mound. Its façade--a contrast to the

palace--is severely plain, but the building has importance. In the room

looking south, over the dark lintel of a doorway leading to an inner

chamber, are two rows of hieroglyphics,--the best preserved in

Chichen,--while on the ceiling of this doorway, carved in relief and

seated in front of what appears to be a basin of incense, is a figure in

full-feathered dress, a right angle of glyphs running round to its left.

Southward beyond the Akad-zib we could just see that greener patch of

woodland which marks where lies the huge cenote whence the Itzas drew

their water supply. Approached by a winding path which runs to the

water's level, the broken sides of the chasm admit the sunlight, and the

blueness of the water and the golden green of the palm-leaves make a

true tropic picture.

And so the reader has wandered with us round two square miles of

woodland, and glanced at the wonders of a city which in the days of its

greatness numbered its citizens by scores of thousands; a city which

architecturally, though possibly not culturally, remains the greatest

monument of Central American civilisation.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] _Vara_--a linear measure used in Spanish America, equal to

thirty-three English inches.

[3] _Chaces_--an old-time form of spelling "chases."

CHAPTER VII

VALLADOLID AND AFTER

There are two kinds of brigands in Yucatan. There is the honest fellow

who cuts your throat without apology or waits behind a tree and puts a

bullet into your back at a ten-yard range; and there is the oily-tongued

"_con permiso_" (detestable phrase! ever on Yucatecan lips) rascal who,

permission or not, will see to it that your last centavo is his, if he

can manage it. At Valladolid, whither we went from Chichen, we made our

first serious acquaintance with the latter. One or two pleasant little

episodes had occurred at Merida, but they were only in the nature of

dress rehearsals.

Valladolid--railhead, frontier-town--is the back of beyond in Yucatan.

To-day it is the most important township on the border-line dividing the

enslaved Indians from those few thousands who are still maintaining

their independence against the criminal-recruited forces of Diaz. In the

revolt of 1847 and in all the lesser Indian risings it has been the

jumping-off ground for the rebels. It is a long dirty street of shabby

houses, ending in a weed-choked down-on-its-luck sort of plaza, at one

side of which is a huge gaunt stuccoed church surrounded by tumbling

three-foot walls. The whole place has a shamefaced, seen-better-days

kind of air; and if it is indeed true that it has claims to be reckoned

a health resort, one feels, as did the martyr to gout, when recommended

to a very dull town for its baths, that "one prefers the gout."

It was on the 28th of May, 1543, that Montejo founded the town on the

sight of the Indian settlement of Chanac-há. This native name means

"large water," in reference to a great lagoon of sweet water on the

northward. It was the fertility of the country around due to this swamp

(for it was nothing else) which had attracted the Spaniards. But this in

turn betrayed them, for, ere a year had elapsed, the place had proved

so malarious that it was determined to move the town to the neighbouring

Indian pueblo of Zaci. There on the 24th of March, 1544, the Valladolid

of to-day was founded, its plaza being on the site of a huge Mayan

temple built on a lofty pyramid. Not a stone or trace of the Indian work

now remains, but tradition relates that in the temple was an idol of

pottery, regarded as of great sanctity and to which the Indians for

miles round made pilgrimages for adoration.

There is some reason to believe that this idol was in the form of the

tapir, in Maya called "_tzimin_." There is no doubt that the queer

"pig-deer," which is still found in the southern forests of Yucatan and

in Chiapas, held an important place in Mayan mythology; and the account

of this idol of pottery at Zaci worshipped as Ah-Zakik-ual, "Lord of the

East Wind," which is described as being shaped like a huge vase moulded

in front into an ugly face, suggests that there was here a temple

dedicated to that tapir god replicas of whose image have been found

moulded in vase form in many parts of Southern Yucatan, and especially

in Guatemala. The interior of the huge vase was not probably used for

the burning of copal, the figure thus being, as appears to have been so

often the case, idol and altar in one.

We had left Chichen, as we had reached it, in the dark. But this time it

was the darkness before dawn, and, with no moon, the Castillo looked

gloomy and awesome in its setting of black woods. With our pockets full

of oranges from the hospitable trees of the hacienda and our hearts full

of wonder at the ruins amid which we had spent so many interesting days,

we turned our horses' heads once more towards Citas, where we were due

to catch another early train. It was perilous work picking your way in

the gloom amid the boulders of the "camino real," as the Spaniards

euphemistically call these execrable highroads. One wonders what a sham

"camino" would be like, if this is a "real" one. But the dawn was worth

seeing in those dark woods, dripping with the heavy tropical dew.

The glorious sun came, and the slate-greys and blacks turned to silvers

and lustrous greens, and the dank sodden boughs changed to fairy wands,

trimmed with diamonds as the sun touched them. And the sombre sky turned

into such a blue, and the reds and ambers, the azures and the greens, of

birds and butterflies as they woke for another day were so wonderful,

that one caught the infection of it, the magic of God's tropic woodland,

and we forgot the troubles of boulder-strewn roads and horn-pommelled

Mexican saddles.

We found Citas the same dirty little place we had left it a week past

and the people as stupid as ever. But after some difficulties with our

baggage, we did eventually reach Valladolid towards midday. To the Jefe

Politico there we had a letter from the Governor of Yucatan, bidding him

treat us "in a very special manner." The Jefe was a feeble, melancholy,

epicene little man, who wore spring-side boots, carried a lady's

silver-topped umbrella and a fan, and perpetually smoked straw

cigarettes. His hair was dyed and his manner was wistfully bored. He was

fetched from his hammock to receive us, and extended a damp bird-like

claw of a hand. He offered us no hospitality but led the way down the

street to a filthy shop, in the rear of which was a barn, furnished with

two hammocks and an enamelled bowl perched on an empty soap-box, serving

as dressing-table and washstand. For food he directed us to a reeking

little drinking-den. Having thus exhausted his energies in this "very

special manner," he retired, promising to return in the evening to

assist us in the purchase of stores for our journey through the forest.

There was very little to see in Valladolid. The Spanish vandals had

taken care of that. All traces of the old Indian domination had been

effectually wiped out. At the Jefetura, the Court House or Town Hall in

the plaza, signs were not lacking of the troubled state of the country.

Bands of soldiers were loitering under the verandahs cleaning rifles and

smoking cigarettes. We call them soldiers, because that is what they

call themselves; but they were certainly the sloppiest, most

ill-disciplined body of men who ever disgraced that name. They were

dressed in loose flying cotton shifts and cotton trousers, rolled up to

the knee. Their feet were sandalled, and on their heads were queer

pudding-basin-shaped straw hats with red ribbon lettered in black 5 Bat.

G.N., which means 5th Battalion, National Guard. Ever since the war of

extermination, some of the iniquities of which we shall presently

relate, was started, Valladolid never knows quite where she is.

Raiding-parties of Indians loiter in the woods to the eastward, and make

periodic descents upon outlying houses and Government convoys. We

attached to us a Yucatecan lad, sadly enough far advanced in

consumption, who, unlike his fellow-citizens, was frank and

pleasant-mannered and anxious to please. With him as our guide we

visited a neighbouring cenote, the water supply of the ancient Indian

city. This was very unlike those at Chichen, for it was not very deep

down and was of open approach. In a basin some hundred feet wide lay the

water, grass-green with water-weed, and far over it jutted a natural

roof of rock, from which hung stalactites, a row of grey stone icicles

some thirty feet long, like a fairy fringe over the pool. We made our

way down the steep rocky side to a narrow ledge of rock which ran half

way round the cenote, some twenty feet above water-level. Here there

were caves where we were told jaguars sometimes sheltered.

The Jefe Politico was due to join us at eight o'clock, and on our return

to the town we waited with what patience we could for him. But he never

appeared. So we made the best of a bad bargain and a tour of the shops,

succeeding in being swindled over each item of our commissariat. On the

morrow, anxious to be starting, we walked over to the Jefetura to wake

the Mayor up. There under the verandah in a ring sat the "rude

forefathers" of this Yucatecan hamlet, the ancient Jefe in the middle.

There is a local proverb, "_Hay mucho vago en Valladolid_" ("There are

many loiterers in Valladolid"), and no better realisation of its truth

could there have been than this band of venerable officials, drowsing

their morning away. We were invited within the "magic circle," but even

our execrable Spanish failed to rouse them. They had nothing to do, so

they sat in the shade and did it; and the street crowd had nothing to

do, so they hung on the verandah railings and stared at the first

Englishmen reckless enough to visit the City of Dolittles. But smoking

cigarettes and endeavouring to remember the past and future tenses of

irregular Spanish verbs pall as occupations, and, losing all patience,

we informed the somnolent Mayor that unless our wants in the matter of

horses and a servant were promptly satisfied we would make a complaint

to the Governor of the State. This threat galvanised the band of

Vallado-littles into a frenzy of energy. Soldiers were summoned and came

forward at the salute with fixed bayonets. Two were dispatched to get us

hammocks; a third went off to seek a horse-dealer; while a fourth,

actually the sentry on duty, under the directions of the Jefe, solemnly

laid aside his rifle and set to work to peel a plate of oranges which

had been produced to assist in our pacification.

The hammock-seeking warriors returned with a string of Indian women,

each nursing "a special line" of hammocks. Of course prices had rushed

up at the mere rumour of us, and having been assured in Merida that

hammocks, a staple product of the town, were cheap in Valladolid, we

were naturally disappointed to find that the commonest of those brought

to be shown us were about three times their normal value. But hammocks

we had to have, so we bought a couple of strong cloth ones at an

exorbitant price, and a portion of the National Guard were told off to

string them.

Then came the horse-dealers with all the maimed, the halt, and the blind

of equine Valladolid. The prices asked for these chargers were truly

tropical, and had grown to a great height. But no Englishman had ever

visited the town before, and it was far too good a chance to be lost. We

do not want to libel the somnolescent Jefe, but it was probably as much

as his place was worth to refuse to "cock the blind 'un" on the frauds

which his fellow-citizens were attempting to play on us. He was no man

for half-measures in such a delicate matter, so he retired into the

Mayor's Parlour to take a nap while we argued. None of the mounts were

in the first flush of their giddy youth, and some looked Methuselahs.

There was a horse with a sore on its back as big as a cheese plate,

which the owner resolutely declined to part with for less than a hundred

dollars; while another steed, badly spavined, was so precious to its

lucky proprietor that with tears in his avaricious eyes he assured us it

would break his heart to accept for this peerless mount less than double

that sum. Fortunately we knew something about horses and were able

slowly but surely to weed out the "crocks," though the rapacious crowd

did all in their power to fool us. It ended in our giving a hundred

dollars too much for the three horses we selected; but they were at

least sound in "wind and limb," though the strongest, a stallion, was

blind in the right eye. The Mayor, having been waked up by a soldier,

then regretfully took an active part in the proceedings. To prevent

horse-stealing, the purchase of a horse in Yucatan is attended by the

utmost official ceremony. If the occasion had been an auction of

blood-stock at Tattersall's these fatuous Yucatecan officials could not

have made more fuss. Armed with note-books they waltzed round our sorry

purchases, marking down their peculiarities. We did not see the books,

but it is quite likely that they were entered as having "four legs and a

tail." At any rate it took the united efforts of the Town Council to

make out the official receipts, which bore so many stamps as must have

crippled the resources of the local G.P.O. for some weeks.

But it is one thing to buy a Yucatecan horse, and it is quite another to

load him with portmanteaux sewn into sacks. The stallion, which, as the

strongest of the trio, we had selected to carry the heaviest of the

baggage, had not "signed on" for any such nonsense; and fixing us with

his one eye, which rolled as viciously as it could in its deserted

state, he signified intense dissatisfaction with all loads and

portmanteaux in particular by letting out his heels at the Mayor, and

then rearing up and pawing the air, Pegasus-fashion, over a knot of

sloppy becottoned troops who broke and ran in all directions. He was

really quite a nice horse. We afterwards nicknamed him Cyclops, in

affectionate allusion to his ocular defects, and grew to be quite fond

of him. But he was not at all nice on first acquaintance, and a crowd of

jeering Vallado-littles--far too scared to come within the lash of his

hoofs--collected at a respectful distance to watch the fun. The Mayor

had half an hour before presented us with a soldier servant who owned

the name Contrario, and rejoiced on all occasions in deserving it by his

obstinacy. We had come into the country expecting to find every man a

Buffalo Bill; but these troops were very disappointing; they were so

obtrusively foot-soldiers. They evidently agreed with the Psalmist that

"a horse is a vain thing for safety," and Contrario, told to hold

Cyclops, absolutely refused. But the crowd was growing with our anger,

and it was no time for mutiny, so by sheer physical force we made the

poor shivering wretch carry out our orders. Again and again we tried to

get the baggage on. No sooner did Cyclops feel the first pressure of the

load, which we adroitly brought up on his blind side, than he plunged

and bucked like the veriest broncho, throwing the baggage into the dust.

Disappointed in their malicious hope that we should have to give it up,

one or two of the crowd began to take a friendly interest in our

efforts, and one man, a big fellow for a Yucatecan but obviously as

timid of horses as our soldier servant, volunteered to help. This time

we got the twin sacks well over the stallion's back before he plunged,

and a rope, adroitly thrown round, kept them in position till he quieted

down and made up his mind to the inevitable. It was all over except the

jeering, and, fearful as we were of mounting our saddle horses and

leaving the recalcitrant Cyclops with his hated load to the feeble

management of Contrario, we ignominiously led the horses out of the

horrid little town amid an accompaniment of this from the citizens. But

it was such an infinite relief to turn our backs upon the city of

do-littles and brigands that we could have calmly borne twice the

mockery hurled at us by that yellow-faced shambling crowd.

Our way lay for the next few days through forty-odd miles of a country

densely wooded but traversed by a fair road. This latter had earned a

bad reputation of late as being infested by bandits, Mexican criminals

shipped from Vera Cruz to serve against the Indians, who had deserted

and betaken themselves to the woods with their rifles. Only a few days

before our arrival a gang of them had murdered three Indians who were in

charge of a drove of pigs. It had been such collar-work inducing the

Do-littleians to do even the little they did that it was wearing well on

to four o'clock before we found ourselves out into the open. Once past

the outlying huts of Valladolid, the dust of the rock-strewn road

changed into a brick-red loam. In many parts of Yucatan for scores of

miles at a time the tracks through the forest are red like this,

suggestive of nothing so much as a rough cart road to an English

brick-field. Once you have seen one such road you have seen them all,

for they are as like as two pins. The dense woods hemmed us in on each

side, and the monotony was only broken now and again by meeting

straggling parties of Indians, naked but for breech-cloth, with rough

plaited straw hats, their long guns slung on their brown backs, a linen

hunting bag at their waist, on their way to shoot in the woods.

Throughout Eastern Yucatan every Indian is out at dawn and sundown to

pick up something for the pot. Their guns are for the most part

antiquated muzzle-loaders, single-barrelled, sometimes of obviously home

manufacture. They are poor sportsmen from the English point of view, for

they are out to kill, and they think nothing of following a bird up for

a mile or two till they can shoot it sitting. They were a very different

breed of men from those Indians we had seen nearer Merida, and some of

them even looked truculent. But they gave us a very civil "_Buenas

tardes!_" ("Good afternoon!") as they stopped to rest on their guns and

gaze with wonder at such an unusual spectacle as two khaki-clad

Englishmen and the three laden horses.

We were not able to make much progress before the sun was near setting,

and we kept our eyes open for a likely spot to make our camp. Shortly

before six we halted on the Tizimin side of the small Indian village of

Cursuc. We cut our way some fifty yards into the wood and with axes made

a clearing of some twenty feet square, slinging our hammocks between the

trees. Tethering the horses to stout saplings, we sent Contrario to the

village for water; but before we had got our saucepans boiling, darkness

was on us, and we had to make the best of a meal eaten in a gloom which

made it impossible to tell a spoonful of black beans from a spoonful of

egg till you tasted them. In this Cimmerian darkness we managed to make

the deplorable discovery that we had forgotten to provide cups, and we

found ourselves in the ludicrously Tantalus-like position of having a

saucepan, too hot to drink from, of boiling Cadbury's cocoa, and nothing

to put the precious liquid in. Then one of us had the happy inspiration

of utilising the saucepan lid. A great deal of real fun can be got out

of drinking boiling hot cocoa from a saucepan lid. It is so

aggravatingly shallow, so infernally hot to hold, and so top-heavy. But

we were far too tired with the dusty tramp, after our long day's battle

with the detestable inhabitants of Valladolid, to make mountains out of

molehills. If we had had cups we should have got through the precious

draught far too quickly, we reminded ourselves. Pleasure is

anticipation; and waiting in the dark, seated on a boulder by the fire

we had built in the red road, for your turn at the shallow draught was a

real joy. We got outside our precious Cadbury, the black beans, and the

eggs, and then we rolled ourselves into our hammocks, making cocoons of

ourselves in our Mexican blankets, and, with our soldier servant

stretched on a blanket on the ground between the two of us, we were soon

fast asleep.

Each day of our march through this forest country was much the same as

the last. We waked in the bitter cold of the early dawn, huge drops of

dew falling from the trees overhead upon the rubber sheeting which we

had had the foresight to take with us to act as counterpane. Each night

we camped afresh in the forests, making a clearing some little way from

the road; and despite the alarmist rumours which had reached us in

Merida and elsewhere of the dangers attending such forest campings, we

had but one serious alarm. We had been asleep some hours, dead-tired

with our day's march, when we waked to find the fire, which we had left

on the roadside mere embers, flaming three feet high. We did not know

why we waked and we do not know now, for there was no noise to disturb

us, and it was quite an unusual thing: as a rule we slept like logs. All

we know is that we did wake and to our astonishment saw the fire, which

we had carefully stamped out on turning in, blazing high. We were

wondering what this could mean, when in the rear of us we heard stealthy

footsteps, the brushwood crackling as if some two or three people were

creeping in upon us. It was a very dark moonless night, and altogether

the position was decidedly uncanny. We reached for our revolvers, which

always hung by their belts at the hammock head, and sat up waiting.

Whoever it was had seen us move, for all was still at first, and then,

after a few minutes of dead silence, we distinctly heard the footsteps

retreating. Possibly, as our horses were tethered on the side nearest

the road, the robbers did not care to venture in that way, but made up

our fire that the glare might guide them in a wide detour through the

wood in rear of us. They had no doubt hoped to find us asleep, to have

dashed in upon us and given us a slash over the head with their long

knives, and then ransacked our baggage at their leisure. Finding that we

were awake, however, and that they would have to fight for this

privilege, they decamped.

But brigand alarms, though the most dignified, were not our only

troubles in the forests. All Yucatan, wherever there are cattle, is

cursed with an insect pest--a cattle louse known as the _garrapatas_. In

these first days we suffered much from them. To look at they are like a

cross between the ordinary bed-bug and a sheep-tick, but they often have

markings on their backs like those on a garden spider. They get on to

coat-sleeve or riding-breeches, often tiny as money-spiders, in scores

at a time. They hang in brown patches upon the leaves and branches of

shrubs and bushes, and if you just brush against these, before you have

time to notice almost, the insects have climbed all over you, in a few

minutes fixing themselves in the flesh and digging their way in till

nothing but the rounded tops of their backs are visible. Their bites are

not at first painful, but become intensely irritable after a day or two

and cause troublesome swellings, if in any great numbers. It is nothing

uncommon to find fifty or a hundred of these tiny plagues on one after

a day's riding through the bush. Cleanliness is no prophylactic against

them. The only thing we found any good was to make a strong solution of

tobacco and smear this well over legs, thighs, and arms when dressing.

This keeps some of the less hardier ones at bay; but the really big ones

(we found one as big as a threepenny piece fastened on to the hinge of

the lid of a box-tortoise in the woods at Chichen) stop at nothing, and

no pulling will get them out. The only thing to do is to let them work

their wicked will of you, when, after a day or two, they fill up with

blood and turn a deep purple colour like a black Hamburg grape. In this

aldermanic condition of repletion they are very easily detached, ... and

alas! squashed.

The Yucatecans are a cleanly people and bathe a great deal, the poor as

well as rich; but nothing astonished Contrario more than our rubber

bath. This, which we had bought in London, folded into so small a space

that it was a treat to watch his face when we first unfolded it and he

saw an admirable bath four feet in diameter, spread out as if by a

conjuring trick. If we stopped early enough and the sun was still up, we

would send him down to the nearest well and have a glorious time

splashing about and sponging cool streams of water over ourselves, while

gorgeous butterflies of blue, scarlet, and amber fluttered round us in

the thicket, and green parakeets and the bushy-tailed grey squirrels

perched on the trees to watch us. Though probably as immoral as any race

in the world, the Yucatecans are singularly modest, and, though he saw

us minus everything but a smile revelling in the cool limestone water

and he would sit mournfully by trying to pick the garrapatas out of his

legs and thighs, nothing would induce him to take advantage of our

rubber bath, presumably because he feared we might look while he was in

the "altogether."

The villages we passed were monotonously alike: squares of

palm-leaf-thatched huts round a plot of wiry grass centred by the

village well with gibbet-like uprights and cross-piece of wood over which

hung the bucket. At all hours of the day there clustered here knots of

Indian women and girls, the _cantaros_ (earthenware water-jars) balanced

on their left hips as they pattered to and fro to their whitewashed huts

with the precious liquid. We generally called our midday halt between

these settlements, as we found that our arrival was hailed with the

same popular excitement as that which welcomes a circus in an English

village; and it is a trifle disconcerting, even if your menu is not very

varied, to eat one's lunch in the centre of a serried circle of

bright-eyed children and women, and grinning, wondering men. But the

fourth day at the little village of Pokboc we were so much tempted by

the wonderful shade of a large ceibo-tree which stood by the huge ruined

church, inside the gaunt staring walls of which a whitewashed Indian hut

now did duty for such infrequent services as were held, that we broke

our rule. Though we were now deep in Yucatan's cool season, the heat had

been blistering all the morning, and, steering as we had been due north

on a fairly straight road, the sun on our backs had made us feel quite

sick. Thus the deep shade offered by the giant tree, the leafiest of all

trees found in the country, was an irresistible temptation. The horses,

too, had suffered, and stood as meek as lambs to be unsaddled. But

before we had got far in our preparations for a meal half the village

was round us, to make way in a second for two men, one about sixty, with

a long tufted beard of grey, growing from the extreme limit of his chin,

the other some twenty years younger. They cordially introduced

themselves as the village Jefe and his son; the latter insisting upon

calling himself "el secretario." They kept the store and public-house of

the village, and, in the absence of customers, had filled up their time

by serving themselves so liberally that they were quite merry. They

insisted that we should come to their shop and take some of their "_agua

ardiente_" (fire-water: and it lives up to its name too); but we

explained that we were teetotalers.

At this moment there came racing across the plaza a perfectly lovely

little laddie, bare-legged and bare-headed, with the scantiest of cotton

vests and black-cotton knickerbockers on. El Secretario introduced the

little fellow as his son, "_Cipriano, su servidor_" ("Cipriano, at your

service"), and told us he was ten. We had a bottle of acid drops with

us, and diving in our saddle-bags we in a moment won Cipriano's heart

and cemented our budding friendship with the family by filling his

pretty little hand full of the sweets. By this time a baby sister had

arrived, and we found it impossible longer to resist the pressing

hospitalities of the Jefe. We were anxious, too, to taste the national

drink, which has the alias of "_anise_" and is made from crushed

sugar-cane and aniseed. So we temporarily threw our teetotal principles

to the four winds (or at least to where those most desirable elements

successfully hid themselves, for there was not a breath of air) and

walked over to the store. Once there, large glasses of the clear white

liquid were poured out, and our hosts, enchanted at the excuse for more

tippling, began drinking our healths in such lavish style as was ominous

of the great difficulty we should have in getting away from their

bibulous friendliness without the risk of a quarrel. We had just sipped

at our glasses, which was all we ever intended to do, when fortune came

to our aid. Looking across the plaza, we saw a stray village horse

biting our stallion's neck. With a hurried word of excuse, we rushed out

of the shop, our hosts shouting to us to return after we had righted

things. But we never did; and the somnolent effects of the last

"bumpers" of anise they had drunk were so complete that we were left to

eat our lunch in peace. By the time we had finished it was the siesta

hour and the village had crept into its hammocks. As we rode past the

store, we caught a glimpse of our friend the Jefe stretched full length,

fast asleep, on his own counter.

From Pokboc it was some three leagues (all distances in Yucatan are

measured by the league, which is not the well-conducted league of

Europe, but, like the French verbs, irregular to the verge of

impropriety) to Calotmul on a road which seemed redder and hotter than

ever. Calotmul is a town run to seed, a ruinous unwieldy place with a

plaza of mangy grass as big as Trafalgar Square, a long stuccoed,

arcaded building in one corner of which served as the Jefetura where

loitered some of Contrario's brothers-in-arms. Big as these decayed

Spanish-Indian villages are, there is never any attempt at an inn, the

very rare travellers by the roads being local Yucatecans who are sure of

having one or more kinsmen in each village. So knowing no one and having

been sated with Yucatecan interiors at vile Valladolid, we pushed on

through the town, preferring the freedom of our woodland hotel. Our

obstinacy much alarmed Contrario. He knew that Tizimin, the town to

which we were steering and which was to serve as the base for serious

exploration, was fourteen miles further on, and he thought we intended

to try and reach it that night. But he became easier in his mind when we

unhooked from the saddle our tripod boiler, which had throughout the

journey served as a pail for fetching drinking-water, and sent him back

to the well. By the time he had overtaken us we had selected a

camping-ground about half a mile from the village, the horses were

feeding quietly by the roadside, the baggage had been carried into the

woods and our hammocks slung.

We always made a practice of one of us seeing the horses properly

watered, while the other stayed in camp. As soon as Contrario rejoined

us it was time for "watering order"; and one of us started out on

Cyclops, while Contrario led the other horses, tied together. We had

given him the kettle and one of the water-bottles to carry. The well was

reached safely, the horses watered, and some corn bought at the local

store; but on return to camp Contrario was only carrying the kettle. He

had already annoyed us by the slow pace at which he had kept the horses

going and by loitering to talk with some of the National Guard. We were

tired and not in the best of tempers, and somewhat testily demanded to

know where the water-bottle was. He gabbled away in Spanish some

sentences we did not understand, but did not attempt to produce it. We

thought he had left it at the well and tried to say so, ordering him to

return for it. He entirely misunderstood, and believed we were accusing

him of stealing it. The fellow was a fool but he was genuinely honest,

and the most we were accusing him of was carelessness. But he would not

be pacified, and wringing his hands and in a snivelling whine repeating

again and again "_Yo soy no robo!_" ("I am no robber!"), he gathered up

his traps, and, regardless of pay, was about to leave when suddenly by

the firelight one of us detected the water-bottle, lying hidden in the

shadow of a boulder where he had set it down and forgotten it before

going down to the well. We were really sorry to have hurt his feelings,

and he saw it, and with almost childish pleasure accepted our apologies.

It was like a thunderstorm, it cleared the air; and as, after our frugal

meal of black beans, boiled eggs, tortillas, and Cadbury's cocoa, we sat

round the fire smoking, we became quite "chummy" with the soldier-lad,

who, delighted at the rehabilitation of his character, talked nineteen

to the dozen till hammock-time, when we cemented our new-found

friendship by giving him one of our blankets to aid his own flimsy

Mexican wrap in keeping him warm during the cold night.

The next day, in sunlight which was positively grilling, we completed

our journey to Tizimin. It was siesta time when we rode into the plaza

under the shadow of the gaunt walls of the hideous ruined monastery. The

town was quiet, almost like a city of the dead. The shops were closed;

and at the long grated window-spaces sunblinds were drawn. The grass had

invaded the streets; the whole place looked like a Rip Van Winkle city

which had got badly "left" in the race of civic life. Stretched in the

thick dust a mangy dog or two lay panting; here and there under the

shadow of a wall dozed an Indian, crouched on his haunches. We rode up

to the Jefetura, and there from a yawning soldier we learnt that the

Jefe was taking his morning tub, so we had some minutes to wait before

we could expect an official welcome. Meanwhile we had time to glance

round us. The plaza was of much the same size as Valladolid. In front of

the Palacio Municipal, where the becottoned National Guard were drowsing

in the verandah-shade, was an avenue of orange trees loaded with fruit.

On the other side of the square stood another of those huge stuccoed

churches we had become so accustomed to seeing. The seventeenth-century

Spaniards in Yucatan certainly had no taste in building. Nothing could

be more distressing than these great piles of stucco, flat-faced as any

Hottentot. Their bigot builders certainly preferred quantity to quality.

Even when new, these ecclesiastical eyesores must have always been such.

But now, ... with plaster peeling off, with tufts of rank weeds growing

from gaps in the walls, surrounded by a courtyard half cobble, half

leprous grass, the enclosing walls tumbling in ruin, the church gate

sagging on its broken rusty hinges or perchance replaced by a hurdle,

they admirably typify the bedraggled down-at-heel ceremonial which

masquerades throughout Yucatan as religion.

By this time our arrival had attracted representatives of the

Tiziminians in the shape of three of the fattest boys we had ever seen

outside a show. They were pretty fellows, too, about thirteen years old;

but they would have been a good deal prettier if they had possessed less

adipose tissue. Their tight holland knickers seemed on the point of

giving up the task of enclosing the luxuriant opulence of what one might

politely call their southern façades; while their bare brown legs were

so ludicrously plump and rounded that they looked as if they had been

blown up with a bicycle pump. The boys gazed at us and we gazed at the

boys; it was hard to say which of the two sets of gazers was most

astonished. But by this time a shuffling among the troops heralded the

approach of the Jefe, coming like a giant refreshed from his bath. He

was a great contrast to the epicene bird-like creature who had lorded

it over the civic fortunes of Valladolid. A grand old man of good

height, swarthy skinned, with a snow-white full patriarchal beard

reaching nearly to his waist, he greeted us with true Spanish courtesy,

with a hospitable wave of his hand inviting us within the cool stone

room, where above the row of rocking-chairs hung a life-sized coloured

print of the great Diaz. It was a most humiliating moment. Dusty, dirty,

sweaty, covered with garrapatas, with many days' growth of beard, we

were grieved indeed that this should be the snowy-haired Don's first

sight of England. We indicated as best we could that this was not the

normal condition of Englishmen, and that we should be more than grateful

if he would allow us to wash first and talk afterwards. But he insisted

upon hearing our plans, and when we told him of our intention of going

through the country to the eastward his face bore a look of alarm. He

declared the country "_muy peligroso_" (very dangerous); that the

Indians were hostile to the whites; that even for the contents of a

water-bottle travellers were killed, as in fact had actually happened to

two Yucatecans but a few weeks before. We were too much in need of a

wash to be much depressed by his pessimism, and were glad when he made a

move to find us lodgings. These we found without much difficulty, a

young Yucatecan being fetched and offering us a house for four dollars

the week. It was only a few yards away, nothing really but two or three

lofty whitewashed barns _en suite_, stone-floored, the walls decorated

with hammock-pegs. But the great advantage was that it possessed a small

paddock, rankly overgrown with shrubs and grass, which would serve as an

excellent corral for our horses. A well too, there was, and before the

genial Jefe had bade us "_Adios!_" we had our rubber bath out and were

preparing for a glorious wash.

We were now in what is known as the Kantunil district, and in touch with

the north-eastern branch of the independent Mayans. For Tizimin is the

last outpost of Yucatecan authority. Even the Indians living within the

town are a very different breed from the haciendado-ridden ones of the

Yucatan which lay behind us. And this is perhaps the best place to give

some idea of the physical appearance of the Mayan Indians generally. The

whole race throughout the Peninsula is still singularly homogeneous,

though it is in the Kantunil and eastern coast district, where crossings

with the whites or even inter-tribally are unknown, that the purest

types are found.

The Mayan is stoutly built and muscular, but seldom tall. His colour is

a rich dark reddish brown--a beautiful tint remarkably distinct from

that of the American Indian race in general. His hair is invariably

raven black, lank and coarse. His eyes are black or black-brown, usually

small and somewhat cunning-looking; straight set as a rule, but

occasionally with a suspicion of obliquity. The nose is well formed,

straight or slightly aquiline, and at times somewhat Semitically heavy

at the tip; but scarcely ever pyramidal in the pure Mayans. The noses of

the women one would almost declare their best feature. The hair of the

women, worn gathered in a knot at the back of the head, is often

luxuriantly long; but men are fairly closely cropped. Of baldness we

never saw a trace, though grey Indians of both sexes are fairly common.

Both sexes have a Mongolian lack of body hair; legs, arms and chests

being rarely hirsute. The teeth are always good, and add to the charm of

the sweet smile which at the least provocation comes to rob the faces of

both sexes of the rather sullen expression characteristic of them. Many

of the children are extraordinarily pretty, and young girls of twelve

(at which age they usually marry) are often fascinating pictures of

youthful bloom, quite statuesque in their grace, their exquisitely

developed figures showing through the clinging folds of their one

chemise-like linen garment.

Mayan women age rapidly; but between puberty (about ten) and their

twenty-fifth year they are remarkable for matronly health and strength

and their graceful carriage. They incline to flesh, and before forty are

often unwieldy to a degree which is really ludicrous; such "too, too

solid flesh" scarcely harmonising with the severely scanty lines of the

_huipil_. This--the universal dress of all Indian women throughout

Yucatan--is really nothing but a sheet, folded double and sewn down the

sides and a half-moon cut out of the middle of the fold. Through this

the head goes, and round this yoke runs back and front a flowered

border, stamped coloured cotton among the poorer, elaborately

hand-embroidered among the richer, women. The hem of the garment, which

reaches rather more than half-way down the calf, is also often

ornamented with embroidery. This shift or chemise--for it is little

else--is sleeveless; and the only attempt at underclothes is a plain

cotton petticoat; but many women and most young girls do not wear this.

In some of the wilder districts we visited the girls are stark naked

till puberty, while the old women and many of the young matrons wear

nothing but a short cotton kilt from waist to knee. Round her neck the

Indian woman wears a chain (though this habit is less common among the

independent Mayans than among the Indians of Merida and the north-west

district), oftenest of gilt or glass beads, with some small gold coin,

gewgaw, charm or crucifix attached. Large gold earrings, too, are much

worn. Round her shoulders she throws, when out of doors, a wrap of

cotton or silk, brought up over the head and then allowed to hang down

over the other shoulder. These wraps, which serve a practical purpose in

protecting from the sun, are most picturesque. In Merida, as we have

said, you see all colours; but a dark indigo or rich copper brown are

the most common in the country districts. Almost without exception the

women go barefoot, and their feet, though small, have from long

shoelessness become broad.

The Mayan man dresses in loose white-cotton trousers, which he usually

wears turned up to the knees, and a loose-fitting shirt of white cotton

tucked in at the belt. As often as not the shirt is discarded while at

work or in the bush, and the trousers give place to the _maxtli_, a

broad loin-cloth. A pudding-basin-shaped straw hat, home-plaited, and

sandals made of a single thickness of tanned hide cut to the shape of

the foot, with a piece of cord coming up between the first and second

toe, passing over the instep and through a string loop on either side of

the heel and then twisted round the ankle, complete his outfit. Every

Indian wears belted round him in a leather sheath the _machete_, the

native weapon universal throughout Central America. It is a sword-like

knife, the blade about thirty inches long and two broad, with a plain

hand-grip of bone or wood about four inches long. These are

fearsome-looking weapons even when, as is usually the case, the blade is

straight; but they are positively blood-curdling when they are, as one

sees them sometimes, scimitar-shaped or ending with an ugly hook, like

the finish of an English billhook.

[Illustration: THE NUNNERY (CASA DE LAS MONJAS), CHICHEN ITZA.]

The Mayans are a singularly healthy people, and free of skin complaints

and those other blood diseases which so often affect native races in a

low state of civilisation. But they are not constitutionally strong, and

die off like flies when exposed to an epidemic. Though so thoroughly a

tropical people, they are cold-blooded with sluggish circulations, if

one is to judge by the coldness of their hands, which, even in the

children, are froggy in their chilliness. They are a clean race, and the

Mayan labourer on coming in from his work would not dream of squatting

before his frugal evening meal of tortillas and beans till he has had a

hot bath. This he takes in a large shallow wooden trough, exactly like a

butcher's tray magnified four times. In this, one end resting on the

ground, the other raised on a low log of wood, the Mayan squats and

sponges the water over himself with a bunch of henequen or other fibre.

In this tray, too, the babies are bathed and the family washing is done.

It is always washing-day with the Mayan women, and the hut gardens are

always a-flutter with billowy white huipils. The Mayans are a singularly

modest people, and, sharing their huts, we were again and again

astonished at the decency which triumphed over the fact that a large

family of all ages shared the same sleeping-room and slung their

hammocks from the same beams.

With Tizimin as our base we explored the Kantunil district. The roads

marked even on the official maps in Mexico City no longer exist,

probably never existed. Overgrown and rendered impassable by luxuriant

vegetation, such as there are have become mere trails which even the

Indians can only use in single file. Thirty miles to the eastward of

Tizimin begins the region of unbroken primeval forest. The road, which

starts a good width, dwindles down into a mere path by which the Indians

from Chansenote and Kantunil come into Tizimin to buy powder or shot or

a new gun. Growing their own maize, raising cattle, pigs and poultry,

spinning and weaving their clothing, braiding their hats and netting

their hammocks, arms, salt, and luxuries such as women's finery or

spirits are all they need to buy. They come into Tizimin not in crowds

but one or two at a time, so as not to create suspicion, and meet their

friends outside with their purchases. Of these Indians some five

thousand are said to still exist in this north-eastern corner of the

Peninsula; but the Mexican authorities, after butchery as ruthless as it

has been fruitless, have been forced to retreat, and there is thus no

way of obtaining accurate statistics. The Jefe Politico of Merida

himself told us (we quote it as a proof that the Indians have triumphed

thereabouts) that his family property near Kantunil had not been of any

profit for years and was never likely to be again, as the Mayans denied

his agents access to it.

It was at Tizimin that we first realised the positively amazing

ignorance of the Yucatecan as to his own country or even his own

district. No definite information as to the road we should take, or

whether indeed we could reach the coast at all, was available. As it

proved, this was impossible. Between Kantunil and the sea stretch miles

of uninhabitable swamp which is impassable for horse, mule or man except

possibly in places at the end of the driest of dry seasons. When we were

there an average of three feet of water covered the coast lands. A

change of plan was thus essential, and we had to go first more directly

north and then take an eastward course. Meanwhile we employed some days

in exploring the north-easterly district. The road to Chansenote shows

signs of the struggle which has ended, at any rate for the present, in

the triumph of the Indians. Here and there the gaunt walls of ruined

haciendas, half hidden by luxuriant tropic weed, stand as silent

witnesses to the cowardly retreat of the Yucatecan landlords. A cruel

war of extermination has laid its desolating hand on all around, and the

hungry forest has swallowed up again _milpas_ (cornfields) and fruit

gardens.

The Indians themselves we found friendly enough if treated fairly and

kindly. The children would watch us solemnly from the hut-doors, and the

boys and men followed us at a respectful distance in our wanderings

through the woodlands in search of buried cities. We found little save

littered stones, but our excursions satisfied us that no Chichens exist

in this part of Yucatan. Chansenote itself, once a flourishing Indian

town, is now a group of mud-plastered huts with possibly three dozen

inhabitants. Kantunil is a larger settlement, strictly Indian now as it

always has been; the government vested in an Indian chief. Here the

Mayans live pretty much as did their ancestors four centuries back,

cultivating their milpas, rearing their farm stock, nominally Catholics

but really without religion, save a jumbled mass of superstition in

which Christian Saints and pagan gods are, after the long lapse of

years, inextricably mixed.

Due north of Tizimin the country is still for the most part in the hands

of the Yucatecans; but the cultivation of it is handicapped by a dearth

of labour, for here the Indians do not submit to the conditions of

serfdom existing in so-called civilised Yucatan, but will only work for

fair wage, and often not long for that. Kikil, some miles from Tizimin

on the north, is a straggling settlement of such working Indians, once

the site of a large Indian town before the Spaniards built Tizimin. Here

there were said to be extensive ruins, but we were disappointed as

usual. Nothing is more disheartening than the glib way the idiotic

Yucatecans send one on wild-goose chases after ruins which prove to be

hideous Catholic churches of the late seventeenth or early eighteenth

centuries. The Indians, too, are untrustworthy guides in such matters,

for they have a perfect indifference to the architectural skill of their

ancestors, and speak of their productions as "_xlap-pak_" (old walls).

Christmas week is a grand time for Tizimin, for it heralds in the great

local _fiesta_ of the year, a feast which lasts from Christmas day till

the New Year. Though synchronous with our Yuletide, it is not in

celebration of that, but in honour of the local patron saint. The great

feature of this gala are the bullfights. It is really doing them too

much honour, though, to give them this dignified name; for they are

really nothing less than a series of cowardly baitings of young

bullocks. Ichabod! Ichabod! The glory of the bull-ring hath departed from

Yucatan. We shall have more to say of this decadent torturing of

domesticated animals in a later chapter. But the people "see blood," and

in this respect the Indians are as bad as the mongrel usurpers of their

country, and crowds flock in from the settlements for miles round. They

bring with them their wives, their children, and packs of dogs; the

babies astride their mother's hips, the bigger children clinging to her

huipil; while the men bend under huge loads of basket-baggage slung on

their backs, but the whole dead weight of which is on the man's

forehead, the broad plaited string of the basket passing just above his

eyes. This is the queer way that all the Mayan Indians carry loads; and

as you pass them they look up at you from under the strings, their

uneasy attitude giving their eyes a quite unfair appearance of sneaky

shiftiness.

This fiesta week, then, we had the local life of Tizimin at its

brightest. The plaza turns itself into a fair, with rows of tiny wooden

booths whereat cheap gewgaws and tasteless finery in cottons and

tinsels, necklaces of beads and the inevitable rosaries hung with cheap

gilt crosses, bankrupt the Indian wife; while her lord fuddles himself

with liquid poisons at the drinking-shops. Foodstuffs leap up to famine

prices. The skinny fowl which would have cost you a dollar (two

shillings) "booms" to three; eager crowds surround the butchers' stalls

where from dawn are trays, none too clean, piled up with blood-boltered

lumps of meat (they never cut their beef in joints in Yucatan)

calculated to rob an average tom-cat of his appetite. Trays of

unspeakably sticky sweets reek in the sun, surrounded by eager-faced

children. Strung like onions, hundreds of tortillas hang festooned on

strings round the shops, as if some huge type of yellow mushroom had

been utilised for decoration. Hour after hour gallop into the dusty

plaza _caballeros_ from the local plantations--fine young dandies these!

who fancy themselves, intent on conquests among some of those black-eyed

girls who stare from the shaded doorways as they clatter past. The

three-muled waggon, too, huge-wheeled, shaded with green canvas, rolls

its lumbering way into the town, bringing some family from Espita or

Valladolid; and the tired mules, released from their rope and leather

trappings, look about for the dustiest spot in the plaza and roll and

roll and roll, backwards and forwards, in an ecstasy of freedom, to

presently regain their feet, shake themselves like a dog from the water,

and look about for the much desired drink.

The people come in to enjoy themselves, and perhaps they do. But there

seems little or no real gaiety in the crowd. The drunken Indian is at

best a maudlin creature, often quarrelsome and never merry and

boisterous, and his women and children are the most silent of beings;

while over the whole scene hangs the mephitic atmosphere engendered by

that mischievous superstition, mainstay of a sickeningly hypocritical

ecclesiasticism--that web of priest-cunning which Catholicism has woven,

spider-like, round the race she has enmeshed and degraded. And so you

see the poor bewildered, stumbling Indian drunkard wasting his last few

centavos on a dirty melting tallow dip which, with many genuflexions, he

places before a plaster St. Andrew or St. Peter. Yes! the Church is

there, and makes high holiday. It is the padre's great harvesting (later

we will describe an amusing "corner" made in candles by the Tizimin

"curer of souls"), and hour after hour the Yucatecan sacristan climbs to

the belfry to summon the faithful. But the Indian faithful are made, the

wise padres know, the more faithful by a little liquor; and so outside

the church doors are little drinking-shops, and the devils of

superstition and drink, hand in hand, work their evil will on the

weltering crowd. All the burning day the people sit huddled in the dust

of the plaza, and when the chill black night settles down, the light

streams from the gaping doorways of the church, where the whining

sing-song of the priest and the treble voices of the boy choristers make

one long inharmonious chant, punctuated with the metallic ring of

cymbals, while beneath the ink-black shade of the church walls the

Indian families squat, shivering in their blankets, around small fires.

Our final preparations for the journey to the coast took some days, and

the fiesta was in full swing before we were ready to leave. Owing to the

swamps, we thought it well to cut our baggage down to vanishing point.

Having thus almost attained "that consummation devoutly to be wished" by

all good travellers,--the toothbrush and blanket state,--we rode out

from Tizimin late in December. Contrario had gone back to Valladolid,

and we had hired an Indian boy. Our route lay for nine miles over a fair

road to Sucopo. Thence a narrower path led to Zonotake, whence after

eighteen miles through the jungle we reached the old Indian settlement

of Occeh. Here we made a day or two's stay at the hacienda, and

discovered a series of sepulchral mounds, each crowned with the ruins of

a building. Below one mound we found, hidden by the tangled

thorn-bushes, what appeared to be the mouth of a cave. It was little

more than two feet wide, and looked uninviting. But hoping it would

prove a passage to the centre of the mound, and first taking the

precautionary measure of throwing in a stone to disturb any snake which

might be sheltering, we wriggled in. It was only a cave of fair size; at

the back a mass of limestone had lately fallen, blocking up any

passage-way, if indeed any existed. In Mayan burial mounds the corpse

was nearly always deposited in a well sunk from the top, and often

extraordinarily deep.

Between Occeh and the sea lay forty miles of forest. As we approached

the coast the land became low and boggy till the whole country seemed a

swampy wood. The animals were often floundering up to their bellies in

water and black mud. In places a stretch of water looking like a river

formed the path ahead of us. When night came and the moon rose, the

forests seemed a piece of water fairyland. The mule-track we followed

lay between woodland so thick that it seemed like an ebon wall on either

side save where the moon, glinting through the overgrowth, speckled the

path with silver light. A great silence reigned, broken only by the cry

of some night bird or the whispering rustle of the palm-leaves. Here

and there the trees parted a little, as we reached some clearing where

the moon was reflected in the pools and struck upon the sapota trees,

making them, with their smooth grey barks, look like granite pillars.

Now and again the animals waded through shallow swamps around which a

thousand fireflies flitted, and from the edges of which white ibises

splashed and fluttered up, a ghostly flock, at our approach. On reaching

the coast a kindly welcome was accorded us at El Cuyo, a tiny port, by

the Cuban superintendent of a wood-cutting company which has its

headquarters there.

CHAPTER VIII

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF CORTES

On the coast from El Cuyo to Cape Catoche and round as far east as

Contoy Island are mounds, sometimes many miles apart, averaging about 50

or 60 feet in height. We examined some of these. They are obviously

artificial, quite roughly built of earth and unhewn stones, and, there

can be little doubt, were erected during the later years of the

fifteenth and the early years of the sixteenth centuries as "look-outs"

to warn the tribes of the interior of the approach of the Spaniards.

Around them are no traces of buildings. From them smoke-signals by day

and fire by night doubtless served as a perfect means of collecting the

tribes at any threatened point.

From El Cuyo, recrossing the salt lakes which for twenty-four miles

fringe the swampy forest coast lands at this part, we took a directly

east course for sixty miles. Profitless as this part of our tour proved

archæologically, it was geographically of interest. We have been enabled

to prepare a map of this north-eastern corner of Yucatan, which attains

an accuracy no map heretofore published has attained. This district is a

dead level of primeval forest, untrodden, unknown, stretching for forty

miles inland and fringed by swamps which are anything from five to ten

miles wide. Here and there we discovered traces of Indian towns, in no

case suggesting much size, the settlements of those sub-tribes which

ranged this woodland and probably looked Chichen-wards for their supreme

chief. This belt of forest land forms the gigantic concession of a

Yucatecan trading concern, "La Compañía Agricola," founded in 1902; but

a really infinitesimal part comparatively has been brought by them under

cultivation, working with imported labour, chiefly from Cuba and Mexico.

From the officials--all Cubans--we received the most perfect courtesy

and the most generous assistance in forwarding our progress along the

coast, and we shall directly describe a pleasant stay we made on their

chief sugar plantation.

The days in the forest were monotonous enough. We followed a mule-track

used by the woodcutters. Mile after mile the scenery was the same. There

is nothing majestic in the Yucatecan forests. You see no giant trees, no

mighty fathers of the woodland towering up. The highest is the sapota,

from which the gummy sap _chicle_--basis of all American

chewing-gums--is obtained. The characteristic of the forest is its

deadly stillness. Thanks to the riverless nature of Yucatan there is

little animal life. The swamps afford a haunt for the black duck, for

wild geese, spoonbills, ibis and flamingo; and now and again you hear

the hoarse cry of a parakeet, or a wild pig bustles through the

undergrowth. But practically the forest is dead, flowerless, dark;

matted, tangled underfoot, matted, tangled overhead; the long snake-like

lianas hanging like fairy ropes from the highest, or weaving a network,

like the web of some monster spider, between the shorter, trees.

On the site of the ancient Indian village of Labcah La Compañía Agricola

has built itself a settlement which it has rechristened Solferino. On

our arrival there we had the kindest welcome possible from the Cuban

superintendent, who entertained us at a hastily improvised lunch what

time he insisted on sending on in advance of us a message to the

officials at the sugar plantation some ten miles off to prepare them for

our visit. The company is one of the richest in Yucatan, chiefly owing

to the great saline lagoons over which we had passed, from which is

extracted rough salt, for the sale of which they practically have a

monopoly throughout Northern and Western Yucatan, exporting large

quantities as well to Vera Cruz and other ports on the Mexican gulf.

They have also undertaken chicle-cutting, and at Solferino are opening

up many acres of woodland for plantations of cocoa, cotton, and banana.

This latter settlement showed every sign of their growing prosperity,

being quite the model village, with trim huts fronting on to large

corrals filled with cattle and mules. Thence late in the afternoon we

started for their sugar farm, which is the industry latest initiated,

but in which, as we afterwards learnt, there is not so much profit as

their enterprise deserves, because of the cheap American sugars which

are rapidly becoming a vast import throughout Yucatan.

Heading northward again, we were soon once more among the swamps, the

forests thinning off and giving place to a low-lying country, just the

steaming hot, miasmic soil for sugar. A few miles further and we entered

the first plantations, each side of us stretching acres of the

rusty-green rush-like plants topping the purple yellowy canes, each

plantation marked with a board bearing the date of planting and the

number of _mecates_[4] in the patch. Ahead of us we soon saw the tall

brick chimney of the sugar mill, and then, as far as the eye could see,

sugar-cane stretched on either side of the track till we entered the

settlement. First a street of wooden huts, each built up on a platform

two feet from the ground, and reached by a few wood steps like those of

a bathing-machine, and then a wide clearing; on one side the sugar mill,

a huge shed-like erection, on the other the large one-storeyed bungalow,

built of Mexican cedar, the administrative building of the plantation.

Here we were greeted by the chief administrator of the Company with such

courteous kindness as made us feel deeply the disadvantage we laboured

under in being such poor Spanish scholars. Señor Sanchez was but fifty,

though he looked an old man. The stooping shoulders, the thin wasted

figure, the hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, the dried yellow skin, told

only too sadly their tale of bitter battle waged with the fever fiend.

For here where sugar grows men wither, and the little cemetery, lying a

mile seaward behind the mill and established but a few years, could

already boast a larger census than the settlement.

We were invited within to a room which was roomy enough, but not

room-like in that it had no furniture, save half a dozen rocking-chairs.

The walls were bare, and the boarded floor was innocent of carpet or

matting and unseemly with a myriad expectorations. Here we were

introduced to the staff, a group of Cubans, rough, bearded men in

flannel shirts and leather-belted linen trousers grimy with coal dust

and engine grease. These were the engineers; most of them men who had

worked on plantations in Cuba before the Spanish-American War but had

found their occupation gone owing to the dislocation of plantation work

there, and so had come across to Yucatan. They were rough enough, but a

real relief after the hypocritically civil Yucatecans, who had so far

done their best to ruin our tour. After a general conversation, if

indeed it deserves that adjective, seeing that we had to shoot the

Spanish conversational rabbit as it dodged from rocking-chair to

rocking-chair, a move was made to view the engines. The chief director

of the Company is a henequen millionaire and shipowner, and no money had

been spared to make the plant perfect. A powerful American type of

vertical engine of the very latest make worked the huge crusher and the

centrifugal machine which separates the sugar from the molasses. It was

Saturday afternoon and the mill was not working, but the "hands" were

loafing round, and we were struck with the number of Koreans. The

administrator told us that he had quite a village of these. They are

good workmen, easily satisfied, and stand the climate well. Another

figure that attracted our attention was a huge bewhiskered nigger, who

on seeing us was all smiles. He proved to be from Belize, British

Honduras, and of course spoke good English. He was almost childishly

proud of his rights as a British subject, and told us that he had served

in one of the West Indian regiments. He said he liked the English

soldier, and that the officers were always kind and treated the black

man well. As we shook his hand in parting, we were glad to learn that he

was happy, liked his work, and was fairly treated. The bulk of the men

employed are Mexicans. As the administrator explained, the great

difficulty of the Company is the dearth of labour: "_Poca gente_, _poca

gente_," he kept on repeating ("There are very few people"); for the

Indians around, who have been terribly thinned off by Mexican massacres,

will not work. These Mexican labourers are a good-for-nothing,

discontented, idle lot, and the _calabozo_, or prison-hut, close to the

engine house, usually contained one or more of these recalcitrants.

Drink is the great evil among them, and the most severe restrictions are

in force limiting the amount of liquor they can obtain from the

Company's store during the day. At sunset dinner was served in an inner

room opening out upon the filthiest yard imaginable. There pigs, dogs,

cats, turkeys, ducks, and chickens ran riot and trespassed into the

dining-room to see what good things the Señores had for dinner. Nothing

is stranger than the Spaniard's disregard for those comforts of

cleanliness which can fill even the humblest home with "sweetness and

light." Here was our host,--a Spanish Cuban of good birth, with the

manners of a prince, courteous, kindly, cultured,--content to dine off a

tablecloth so stained and filthy and thick with grime that a Pickford's

van boy would resent such a cover for his humble board at Café Lockhart

or Pearce-and-Plenty. It was nothing to him and his genial, intelligent

subordinates that the mustard-pot was dark with dead flies, and that

ugly grease spots decorated the cloth, which was ringed with the stains

of myriad wineglasses. They were all living like pigs and indeed with

them, for the porkers came in and rooted under the table for the crumbs

that fell from the rich men. And we were rich as far as food was

concerned, for they gave us an excellent dinner of chicken and rice,

beef, pork, omelette, boiled plantains and sweet potatoes, with

pineapple as desert, the waiters being two Mexican boys who wore their

straw hats and blankets all through their dinner-duties.

The next morning we took our coffee with the administrator, sitting

round the same fly-marked cloth. It was a lesson in Spanish dignity and

how a man may tower above his surroundings to hear this grim

fever-stricken Spanish gentleman talk history and politics in an almost

stately old-world fashion amid such squalor. He insisted that we should

stay to take breakfast with him at eleven, and we were glad we did, for

we witnessed a curious scene well worth seeing. The previous evening the

men had received their week's wages. As we had sipped our coffee we had

heard the young Cuban clerk eternally calling "Antonio Rodriguez,"

"Lucio Perez," and such names; and then the chink of Mexican silver as

the money, hard enough earned in those steaming hell-hot sugar swamps,

was paid through the little iron-barred pigeon-hole. But there was one

of these fellows who had gone away discontented. Each man is paid

according to the amount of cane he cuts. This fellow, who had only been

employed a fortnight, had cut none because he declared he had been

engaged as an overseer, not a hand labourer. But during the two weeks he

had had food and drink supplied him on credit, and now he had come up

for pay. The clerk told him, naturally enough, that he would be paid

when he did some work, and not before. So shortly after breakfast the

man appeared before the pay-office to once more air his wrongs. The

clerk referred the case to the administrator, who was talking with us,

and the latter crossed over to the office. A minute later we heard angry

voices, and then, to our amazement, the administrator dashed out of his

office through the room where we sat and simply rushed at the grumbler.

The latter backed off as Señor Sanchez made for him, apparently to kick

or strike him.

Calling out threats, he disappeared, and we thought the scene was over;

but it was obviously only a dress rehearsal, for he presently reappeared

brandishing his machete. It was really quite exciting: the man was

evidently going to run amuck. He was a sturdy fellow too, bullet-headed,

bulldog-jawed, evil-eyed: just the man for mischief. There was quite a

panic in the office. One old clerk picked up a long pole, the

administrator seized a workmanlike walking-stick; but the coolest of the

lot was a young Cuban who, with hands in his trouser pockets, went

forward to parley with the man. It seemed that the outburst of the

administrator had been due to the man's personal insolence, and that he

had then ordered him to surrender his machete. This he was now

brandishing, and it certainly looked like murder; but it was soon

obvious that there was more cheap melodrama than business about the

fellow. He went down on one knee and appealed to heaven to witness that

he would rather give up his life than his machete; and then, as the

young unarmed Cuban approached him, he got up and retreated a few steps

further. But in such matters he who retires is lost, and slowly but

surely round him were extending, like the horns of a Zulu impi, a

semicircle of officials, in the centre the administrator, his

fever-yellowed face grey now, but with anger, not fear, his whole

emaciated figure expressive of an almost demoniacal rage. So the fellow

made a bolt for it to his hut; and when, some half an hour later, we

started for the coast, we saw him, as we looked back, disarmed and being

led in by the plantation police to cool his heels for forty-eight hours

in the calabozo.

The few miles which separated the sugar plantation from the sea were a

kind of tropical saltings, mud and sparse grass alive with small

land-crabs which galloped in hundreds to gain the shelter of boulder or

fallen tree-trunk as we approached. With the utmost courtesy Señor

Sanchez had insisted upon providing us with a boat for our journey to

Holboch, lying four miles from the little rickety wooden quay which

constitutes the Company's port of Chiquila. Holboch--sixteen miles long,

low-lying, narrow--is quite the island of one's tropical dreams, a

harmony of sparkling sand, blue sea, and palm-trees. An avenue of palms

leads to the fisher-settlement, a square of wood huts, painted bright

blue and white, built round a plaza of sand. We had the bad luck to

arrive at the moment when the fisher folk were about to launch

themselves upon a sea of dissipation in celebration of the New Year.

Thus there were few who wished to launch on the other sea. But

Yucatecans will do anything for money, and we soon found a boat, a dory

of three tons, "La Esperanza," and a captain. Short, stout, bow-legged,

with rolling rollicking walk and eyes twinkling under shaggy eyebrows, a

big flap hat worn rakishly over one eye, he was such a ludicrous mixture

of the truculent and the comic that we christened him "the amiable

smuggler." But no Yucatecan can keep his word, and our new friend's

amiability was not proof against this racial failing. Thus, having

settled the terms overnight for the boat which was to take us round Cape

Catoche, we were astonished to find him at our hut-door the next morning

declaring he must have another four dollars a day. It was all the fault

of the New Year festivities. The poor fellow wanted to get drunk, and he

felt that if this could not be, he must receive heavy compensation. We

compromised the matter by adding one dollar to the daily pay and

agreeing to postpone our sailing till the New Year was in. We very

foolishly advanced him and the two other Yucatecans who were to form our

crew thirty dollars, and paid for our mistake by being obliged to spend

the rest of the day watching the dipsomaniacal trio to check their

Gadarenic descent into senselessness.

The Holbochians were not quite replicas of those proverbial South Sea

Islanders who gained a precarious living by taking in each other's

washing; but their relations were, if anything, even more intimate; for

everybody appeared to be everybody else's brother, sister, cousin or

aunt. We were told that the whole village--some three

hundred--represented the ramifications of practically only two families,

and the sickly pallor of some of the boys and girls suggested that this

inbreeding was already making its evil influence felt. There was not an

Indian in the place. It was a community of Yucatecan fishermen, as

indeed are most of the inhabited islands as far south as Ascension Bay.

They lead an easy-going, loiter life; swinging the sunny hours away in

their hammocks, and loafing the evenings away drinking in the tiny

spirit-stores presided over by a huge, bloated Dutch immigrant and his

equally fat frau, or love-making among the thorn-bushes on the beach.

Occasionally they fish or take a job as one of the hands of the small

trading schooners which ply from Progreso to Cozumel; but life is cheap,

and they do as little honest work as they reasonably can.

This indeed is the average Yucatecan; an easy-going creature, fond of

women, fonder of drink, and fondest of dancing. If there is anything

which awakens the Yucatecan soul, it is the charms of _la baile_ (the

ball). The Holbochians took it rather hardly that we had descended upon

them at such an intempestive moment. They would have so much liked to

have given themselves wholeheartedly to the congenial task of dogging

the footsteps of "los Americanos," as they insisted upon calling us, and

jeering us at intervals; but they really had scarcely time to spare, for

the whole village was agog over the New Year's Eve Ball. Most Yucatecan

villages have dancing halls; Holboch had. It was a large

palm-leaf-thatched open shed at the corner of the plaza, wood-floored.

Round it were ranged wood benches; from the centre roof-pole hung two or

three oil lamps, and the decorations were flags. Dancing began at about

eight.

The American traveller Stephens was loud in his praises of Yucatecan

dancing. Perhaps it has altered in the last sixty years. It certainly

seemed to us the dullest performance we had ever witnessed. Those

mechanical toys, metal trays upon which are fixed several couples of tin

figures which, when wound up, go slowly round and round in a melancholy

way on the same spot, give about the best idea of a Yucatecan dance.

There is no life, no spirited movement, no gaiety in the entertainment.

Perhaps this is really the fault of the orchestra. It is difficult even

to speak of Yucatecan music without a shudder. It is curious that a

people so devoted to dancing, even if it is only of the humming-top

type, should have no music in them. They seem to be ignorant of air,

tune, or time. Their dance music is one long droning chant, flat, stale,

and unprofitable, absolutely maddening in its reiteration, reminiscent

of childhood's jest about "the tune the cow died to." The band at

Holboch consisted of a kettledrum and a concertina. There was no fixed

orchestra; anybody who was handy beat the drum, and everybody in turn

had a go at the concertina; each performer adding his little best to the

musicless horror of the noise. There appeared to be no fixed step; some

couples hopped round, some went round with a sliding slither, and others

seemed to be walking round rapidly. As long as the music lasted the

men's faces bore a look of concentrated earnestness, the girls' that of

submissive boredom. When the music stopped, the girls were placed on the

benches, and the men walked out into the plaza and stood staring at

them. We were much interested in one performer, a young fellow of about

twenty. We had seen him earlier in the day engaged in bathing in a pail,

a method of ablution requiring much persistence. And now, in the most

spotless of linen breeches and coloured cotton vest, he had thrown

himself heart and soul into the evening's enjoyment. He danced as long

as the drum beat, and then he put his partner upon the shelf, and came

out into the plaza and mopped his forehead till the drum began again.

We bore with the scene for some hours, because we held a "watching

brief" in the interests of the cruise of the "Esperanza"; for our

"amiable smuggler" was very drunk, and we hoped, by keeping an eye on

him, to prevent him from becoming drunker and passing into a comatose

condition. He delivered himself into our hands, for he came up and

invited us to dance with him, and as we were due to start soon after

midnight we made this outrageous proposal an excuse for putting him in

charge of the Jefe, who promised to see him into his hammock for a few

hours' sleep before we wanted him. The second man was so far gone that

there was no reasoning with him. We had to let him lie where he was in

the plaza and trust to the night air to bring him round by the time we

sailed. With the third sailor, who was sober, we took the boat round to

where the deeper water allowed of her being ballasted and loaded.

By the time the boat was ready it was fast approaching midnight. The

dance was over; the girls had left their shelves and gone home to their

hammocks; the lamps were out; and a few belated revellers were

straggling about or lying senseless on the sand, which glistened

snow-white in the moonlight. We found our skipper in his hut. He had

pulled himself together, and he came with us to find the first mate. The

latter was in his hammock in a drunken sleep, and refused to answer to

our repeated knockings. We were for starting without him; but the

amiable smuggler said he had advanced him ten dollars and he had got to

come. He evidently knew his man, for he called out some opprobrious

words in Spanish. We did not catch what they were; but a well-trained

ferret never made a rabbit bolt from his hole as quick as those choice

epithets brought the toper from his hammock. The hut door burst open,

and before the captain could realise he had overdone it, the fuddled

Nicolas rushed at him and hit him full in the face. In a moment all was

disorder. The wives of the combatants rushed out to act as seconds, and

half a dozen neighbours tumbled from their hammocks and rushed over to

see the battle. But a Yucatecan prize-fight under Queensberry rules did

not form part of our programme, and we successfully intervened, seizing

the struggling men, and held on to them till they had spluttered out the

worst of their rage, when the storm ceased as suddenly as it had begun

and they fell upon each other's necks, calling each other "_bueno

amigo_" (good friend). Escorting them down to the boat and leaving them

to get the sail up, we returned to our hut, shouldered our baggage, and

carried it to the beach. As the New Year came in, we were thigh-deep in

the tepid water, a pale eau-de-Nil in the moonlight, wading backwards

and forwards to the "Esperanza." It was nearly two, however, before we

got under way, and the dawn of the New Year's Day found us but some ten

miles down the coast.

The shores we now explored were historic indeed. We were retracing the

course of Cortes as he cruised round from the island of Cozumel, whither

we were bound. But if they were historic, they were singularly

uninteresting. The woods come down to within a few feet of the beach,

woods which never deserve the title of forests and yet are so

impenetrable that no one who has not tried to cut his way through would

believe it. About midday we made a landing near to where it was said

ruins existed, and cut our way through two miles of bush. Ruins we

found, but they were of no moment, and if they were Indian they were

certainly post-Conquest. It was a broiling hot day, and our eyes

suffered from the sand-glare. On reaching the beach again, we were

tempted to have a bathe, though this is risky work at any part of the

coast of Yucatan, for there are more sharks to the square mile than

there are probably in any other part of the world. But it was far too

hot for us to be very prudent, and we had a delicious plunge, coming out

none too soon though, for while we were putting on our shirts we saw

Master Shark showing his fins a yard or two from where we had been

revelling in the green water.

We made many landings, but they were quite disappointing in their

results. Cape Catoche itself is a low spit of sand separated from the

mainland by a shallow channel about a quarter of a mile wide. Here a

light has been recently installed. The whole region for miles round is

desolation. Just beyond the cape the coastline breaks into a large bay,

an immense wooded oval of shallow water, guarded seaward by a natural

breakwater of sand and entered by two narrow waterways, east and west.

This great inlet, framed in thick woods, its sunlit, gently rippling

surface dotted with beds of reeds and straggling water-flowers, is the

haunt of the sea birds. As we stole into their solitude, vast flocks of

ibis, of gulls, black duck, sandpipers, and the hideous brown pelicans

rose and made off; while, fairest of all sights in the brilliant light,

was a flight of flamingoes, a pink cloud passing overhead.

There can be little doubt that this bay was the scene of that first

landing of Cortes on the American mainland which was destined so largely

to shape the future of Central America. It was curious to land and

wander in the desolate woods, the battle-ground of four centuries past,

picturing to oneself the romance of it all. Further eastward we put in

to examine some ruins which showed above the trees. They proved to be

those of a Catholic church and monastery, probably eighteenth-century

work. The church was full of bats, which fluttered down from the

mildewed walls frightened at the unwonted intrusion. Here and there

along the coast southward from the cape we found signs of ancient Indian

settlements. The ruins were in no way majestic, but were probably relics

of outlying fisher settlements, and only interesting because significant

of the building zeal of the pre-Conquest Indians. This great sweep of

coastline must have ever been what it is to-day--swampy and impassable;

in no way inviting to the establishment of large cities such as Chichen

and Uxmal, but used rather as a vast hunting ground by the tribes of the

interior.

Even in typical tropic weather there is much discomfort in life in a

three-ton boat. So far the weather had been perfect; and once round the

cape, we got the full benefit of the trade-winds which blow here all the

year round. As Dryden in his _Annus Mirabilis_ writes:

"But now, the Cape once doubled, fear no more;

A constant trade wind will securely blow

And gently lay us on the spicy shore."

Our "spicy shore" was the fruitful island of Cozumel, of the fertile

beauty of which we had heard such glowing accounts; but once round the

cape, our troubles proved by no means over. After a few days the weather

broke. The night was perfect. A full moon bathed the quiet sea and the

wooded coasts in a wonderful silver light, and as we stared up into the

sky from our bed of sand-ballast sacks in the bottom of the boat, it

seemed as if the stars had never shone so brightly. But with the dawn we

ran into the fringe of what is known in the Gulf of Mexico as a

"norther"; and the weather ahead looked so dirty that we took refuge in

a tiny islet called Isla Arena (Sand Island). It was an ideally lonely

Robinson Crusoey spot. A few deserted huts marked it as the occasional

home of passing fishermen. We swung our hammocks in that which had the

most water-tight thatch, and then walked round the island with the guns

in search of duck. In the centre was a touching little cemetery; a

square of sand humbly marked off with sea-shells; the graves--six of

them--each with a rudely fashioned wooden cross; and black

spirit-bottles, which had once served as flower vases, stood around. It

is a wild life these Yucatecan fishermen often lead, and as we stood

bare-headed by this "Garden of Sleep," those haunting lines on

Stevenson's Samoan tomb came to our minds:

"Here he lies where he longed to be.

Home is the fisherman, home from the sea;

The hunter home from the hill."

Here they rested, lulled by the eternal sigh of the ocean so long their

home.

The weather had scarcely improved when towards dawn we made a start for

Isla de Mujeres. Had we known what was ahead of us, we should have made

Sand Island our home for yet another day, till the sea had had time to

quiet down. In the deep gloom which heralded the approach of another day

we tacked round Cayo Sucio (Dirty Point) and passed Rat and Pelican

Keys, two miniature isles. The sea was rough and choppy, and a mile or

so out a nasty squall came up and we hove to, taking in all sail, the

little boat pitching and tossing like a walnut shell, while we crouched

under mackintosh sheets to keep as dry as was possible. Thence, when the

sky cleared, we had a straight run down the coast. The amiable smuggler

had ominously talked of a _via angusta_ (narrow way); but our Spanish

was so limited that his explanations were lost on us, and his

uneasiness, as he stared weatherwards, we took for the nervousness all

Yucatecans show in any risk.

It was about an hour after dawn that away to our left--so far that it

sounded like the last thunder-mutterings of a storm long past--we heard

a low murmuring. We looked seaward, and the captain pointed to the

horizon with the words "_las rocas_." Across the dreary waste of water,

its night-grey yielding to a sickly green in the chill morning glare, it

was at first hard to see anything. Then, as we stared, we saw at first a

long, thin, black line, white-topped, starting leftwards some five miles

off and running in till its end was lost in the rollers ahead. Evenly

marked it seemed, like the black and white painting on a giant ship's

hull. And then, in the minutes as we neared, the white became broken

into cloudlets, showing up quick in succession like smoke of an engine

above the edge of a railway cutting. And quickly the murmuring turned

into a booming, like the hum of a great city's traffic heard from afar;

and the booming into a low intense thunder. And as we passed into the

tumbling waters, the even lines were gone and we saw an endless belt of

black coral rock closing our whole horizon. The "Esperanza" was heading

for the reef at seven knots. We ran to within half a mile; and the

thunder of the Atlantic, as it broke upon the demon-shaped jags of

coral, bursting in clouds of spray forty feet high, was like the dry

roaring of wild beasts. The tiller went round, and we veered a point or

two more into the wind; and then straight ahead we saw why the amiable

smuggler had steered up so close. To our right a smaller line of reef,

some two hundred yards long, bent out from the shore to meet the

three-mile leftward curve. Between the shore and the coral was no safe

way even for boats of three feet draught such as ours. Ahead lay the

only way--between the deadly corals.

It was _la via angusta_, and to us landlubbers it looked like the gate

of a water-hell; an ocean fiend's cauldron of bubbling, leaping grey

water. As the two lines of rock closed in on us, the sea rolled down

from the seaward reefs in great slate-coloured foamless rollers. From

the level of the little boat they looked like moving hills. The wind was

blowing fresh on the quarter, and the skipper had put the boat towards

the bigger reef lest we should be blown clean on the smaller. There was

not a dog's chance for us if we capsized, and an inchtwist wrong of the

helm and we must. One second we sank low between rollers, looking down a

lead-grey alley-way of water. The next we were flung up, light as an

egg-shell, on the crest of a wave, balancing there long enough to

measure with straining eyes the distance between us and the hell of

coral. The next half-hour seemed the longest we had ever lived. It

looked as if nothing but a miracle of seamanship could save the boat. We

heard the captain mutter a prayer to the Virgin, and the sailors, their

yellow faces now ashen-grey, crouched for'ad clinging to the shrouds,

the spray soaking their thin cottons. When we ran once more into the

open Atlantic, we cared not for the fiercer waves which charged us,

breaking over the bows and drenching us, for we had faced what was worse

than open sea. These reefs, the "graveyard of the Yucatan Channel," are

the terror of the locality; and when, wet and numbed, we reached the

picturesque little pueblo of Dolores in Isla de Mujeres three miles

further on, the Yucatecan fishermen collected, amazed, on the beach to

hear how an open boat had lived through the deadly passage on such a

morning.

We had risked much to visit the island; but archæologically it was not

worth it. Here it was that the Spaniards in 1517 got their very first

sight of those stone buildings of Central America which were as much a

marvel to them as they are to us to-day. The historians of the Conquest

describe a temple of stone, surrounded by fruit trees and sweet-scented

shrubs, and approached by well-laid steps. Within, the air was heavy

with the smell of incense which burnt in stone and earthenware vessels

before female idols clothed in cotton petticoats with the bosoms

"decently covered." Before these images were well-ordered files of

women-ministrants, who served in the temple. Hence Cordoba called the

island Isla de Mujeres--Isle of Women. But all this old-time glory has

disappeared. The only village edges with its whitewashed huts, their

doors painted a light blue or green, the shallow semicircle of sand

which forms the islet's only anchorage; behind this row of cottages the

tiny cross-streets are almost knee-deep in its pale yellow glitter. Away

southward stretches a barren waste, six miles long and never much more

than a mile wide, of rock and sand, over which clambers a coarse-leafed

sea-vine, a coarser thistly plant, with here and there a clump of

fan-palms. Only at the extreme southern end on a rocky bluff stands a

relic of the dead people. It is a solid-built structure about 18 feet

square on the outside, and containing two rooms 14 feet by 6 each. There

is no ornamentation or hieroglyphics on it, but outside, facing east,

are two stone ledges, like plinths for statues, upon which, local rumour

has it, once stood two gigantic statues of women. Near at hand is a

small Spanish watch-tower, all to pieces, a contrast to the

well-preserved Indian stone-work.

We intended making the island a base for further exploration of the east

coast, and hired a hut which stood at the end of the village on a steep

rock. The reefs had so completely shattered the nerves of our crew that

they declared it impossible to proceed to Cozumel in the "Esperanza."

Our belief in the proverbial halcyon calm of tropic seas had also been

much shaken by our morning's experiences, and we were inclined to agree

with the frightened sailors. So, paying them up to the next morning, we

discharged them, determining to hire a larger boat for the rest of our

cruise. But this was not the dénouement which the amiable smuggler hoped

or wished, and he insolently declared that we must pay him for so many

more days as it took him to return to the island of Holboch. When we

refused, he muttered something about reporting us to the Jefe and

disappeared. We thought no more about it, and busied ourselves in

settling in to our new quarters. About half an hour later we were

sitting in our hammocks polishing our top boots with soft soap, when a

long scraggy-looking man arrived who declared himself to be a policeman.

He certainly did not look like one, but he brought a message from the

Jefe Politico that "_los otros hombres_" (the other men) were to appear

before that functionary at two o'clock. This was altogether too much for

our British blood. We had so far throughout our tour borne the Yucatecan

fool as gladly as we could, but now our cup was running over. In an

outburst of Spanish, utterly ungrammatical, but very much to the point,

we consigned him and all Jefes to an even warmer place than Isla de

Mujeres, and bade him return with all speed to his chief and tell that

gentleman that we were not "the other men," but British subjects,

bearing passports from the Federal Government; that nothing would induce

us to appear at two or at any other hour, and that if the Jefe wanted to

see us he would have to come to us, not we go to him. We were very

angry, and the miserable Yucatecan creature backed out of our hut

abashed.

We considered the incident closed, and continued polishing our boots.

But about half an hour later, noticing a commotion at our hut door we

looked out and, to our amazement, found a dense crowd assembled led by a

fat Yucatecan, wearing a pith helmet. This was Señor El Jefe, and behind

him, ranged in the order of their rank, were all the officials of the

island. In the background stood the scraggy policeman, who certainly

thought that we were now about to meet the due reward of our temerity in

flouting the thunderbolts of this Caribbean island-Jove and to be

hanged, drawn and quartered to "make a Yucatecan holiday." We invited

the Jefe into the hut, and in a few sentences explained that we intended

no personal affront to him, seeing that until that moment we had never

had the pleasure of clapping eyes on him. But that the insolence of the

message was such as, in Dogberry's words, was "most tolerable and not to

be endured"; and that we therefore could not apologise for our refusal

to obey it. The Jefe, as we afterwards learnt, was a thorough old rogue,

but he had a fund of common sense. In a few minutes we had explained to

him that the amiable smuggler had already been paid his full wages and

we were shaking hands all round, the Jefe assuring us that the message

had been misdelivered: that he had used the word _supplica_

(supplicates), not _manda_ (demands), in citing us to his court. It was

delightful to watch the evident chagrin of the policeman and the

barefooted crowd who had hoped to see "los Ingleses" haul down their

colours.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] _Mecate_--a Mexican square measure equal to about one-tenth

of an acre.

CHAPTER IX

EL MECO TO PUERTO MORELOS

Across the shallow blue harbour of Isla de Mujeres and a four-mile

stretch of the Yucatan Channel, clear as crystal, its small rippling

waves flecked to foam by the trade winds, lies the eastern mainland of

Yucatan. Here on the low wooded shore, in direct line with the southern

point of the island, are the ruins of El Meco. Our new boat was some two

or three tons heavier than the "Esperanza." Our captain and its owner

was a Yucatecan fisherman, Lucio Sanchez, who some years before, to

avoid service in the National Guard, had migrated to Key West and become

an American citizen. He had now returned to his native island, had taken

unto himself a Yucatecan wife, and was the happy father of four

children. In all our dealings with him, which extended over several

weeks, we found him scrupulously honest, and in all ways a marked

contrast to his detestable fellow-countrymen. If this were the result of

two years' residence at Key West, it is surely a happy augury of the

improvement which is likely to take place in the Yucatecan people when

they form, as they inevitably will, a portion, however unworthy, of the

Land of the Stars and Stripes.

Besides Lucio our crew consisted of his half-brother, a handsome

black-eyed lad of sixteen, who looked far older and rejoiced in the

girlish name of Dolores, and a middle-aged Yucatecan sailor whose name

was Pedro Paz. With a new stock of provisions, and with a welcome

addition of elbow-room compared with the "cabined, cribbed confinement"

of the tiny "Esperanza," we made our start in the highest spirits. The

run across took less than an hour, and opposite a sandy bay a mile north

of the ruins we anchored. The coast for the most part here is shelving

coral rock, and even small sailing-boats dare not go right in; landing

always being a matter of wading. We could see the main ruin, a pyramid,

showing above the woods some little way inland, and as there are no

paths hereabouts, and we knew we should have to cut our way, we were all

armed with machetes. We stopped under a clump of cocoa palms on the

beach--one of our sailors shinning up for the green fruit--and had a

delightful drink of the water; and then tramped down the rocky shore

till we came opposite the ruins.

But we had no sooner plunged into the woods than we discovered we had

not got them to ourselves. They were thickly populated, and the natives

were the most savage and inhospitable we had yet met. The air was simply

filled with mosquitoes, which evidently regarded our arrival as the

occasion for a "_dia de fiesta_," and started stinging our faces, hands,

and arms till their pestilent persistence nearly maddened us. If there

is anything to urge you to work in such a spot where the least movement

causes the sweat to run down you in rivulets, it is mosquitoes. While

your machete is at work and the bush tops and branches fall around you,

the midget fiends keep off a bit. Thus goaded into frenzied activity, we

were not long in reaching El Meco.

It is a pyramid faced with stone, but, unlike that at Chichen, it is

built in perpendicular terraces, each smaller than the one below, giving

its sides the appearance of a gigantic stairway, save that the ledges

are not of equal height or width. On the east side there had been a

staircase, now ruined. We scrambled up, clinging on to the gnarled roots

and branches of trees growing from it, and once on the top a refreshing

sea breeze greeted us, for the time driving our persecutors away. To

make anything like accurate measurements the dense overgrowth had to be

first cut away, and we stripped off our coats and revolver belts and set

to with a will. The building, which our energetic assault on the

vegetation disclosed, was now roofless. It had consisted of two

rectangular rooms running north and south. At the top of the stairs on

the east, forming the doorway of the first chamber, stood two pillars 18

inches in diameter. The inner room had two stone platforms about 4 feet

high, probably altars: for there is no doubt that all the strictly

pyramidal buildings of Central America were religious in character. We

say "strictly pyramidal" to differentiate these temples from the other

buildings of Yucatan which are, almost without exception, erected on

mounds. While making our measurements one of us, tape in hand, nearly

touched a snake which was hiding in a crevice in the wall. He was quite

small, of a ringed black and brown colour, but Lucio declared him one of

the deadliest of all snakes. He called it _calom_. We tickled the

reptile's tail with a machete, and he squirmed deeper into the wall and

disappeared.

[Illustration: RUINS OF EL MECO, EASTERN YUCATAN.]

A queerer occupant of this ancient temple was a huge hermit crab, which

by a miracle of persistence had climbed the pyramid and was hidden under

a tree-root. These uncanny creatures are everywhere on the islands and

along the coast of Yucatan. They live in large whelk-shells, moving from

one to another as their growth demands a larger tenement. All you can

see of them is a great red hairy claw, which is used to close the

entrance of the shell. When disturbed they make a shrill noise like the

faint chirping of a bird--by rubbing, it is said, the ridged surface of

the last joint of the right great claw against the sharp edge of the

second joint. The woodlands of the islands were full of them, and of

course they were frequent on the beaches; but it did seem curious to

find this big fellow so much up in the world. His family removals,

necessitating a descent of the pyramid and a journey of at least half a

mile through the bush to the beach, where he would have a choice of

whelk-shells, must have been undertakings before which all but the

stoutest crab hearts would have quailed.

Climbing out on to the face of the ruin, we found its height to be 48

feet. Descending, we discovered on the south side of the pyramid on the

ground-level a tiny chamber 5 feet high and 8 feet long, the door about

3 feet high and 2-1/2 wide. Remains of such a room existed on the left.

In other ruins we were struck again and again with the smallness of the

doorways and the lowness of the roofs. There are so many buildings of

the kind in Yucatan that a ludicrous belief is current among the natives

that the builders of the ruins were dwarfs. There is of course nothing

in such a theory. These tiny rooms at El Meco were probably

sleeping-chambers for the guardian priests. In the woods around we found

three other buildings much ruined, the pillars formed of rounded

monoliths each some 6 feet high. Our investigations had taken some time,

and it would be quite unsafe to estimate how many times we had been

bitten. Some idea may be gained of the number of mosquitoes "engaged" by

the fact that we counted over three dozen on one coat-sleeve. We were

right glad to reach the shore and get on board, though with smarting

faces and itching hands.

A run of an hour down the coast brought us to the northern end of Cancun

Island. Seaward, owing to surf and coral, it is difficult to land, but

it is separated from the mainland by a series of narrow channels opening

into several broad bays, almost land-locked sea lakes. At the entrance

are sandspits running out from island and shore, forming the narrowest

of channels, perhaps six feet wide. It is such difficulties of

navigation and the discomforts of small-boat life which have kept other

travellers away and permitted us the privilege of being the first to

thoroughly explore these islands. Once past the sandspits you enter a

truly tropic creek. The water is a beech-leaf green and clear as glass;

the laurel-hued mangrove trees grow far into the stream, their brown

snake-like roots showing feet above the water. Perched upon these weird

trees are wild-fowl and fishing-birds, while, where the mud has silted up

between the roots and formed a ledge, lie alligators blinking their

evil-looking eyes in the blazing light. Below you in the green crystal

depths you see turtle floating, and the giant picuda, with pike-like

jaws, chasing the little fishes.

This picuda, full-grown specimens of which weigh their fifteen or twenty

pounds, makes exciting fishing. There is no science about it, for he is

a regular sea glutton, and with a fresh fish (the picuda insists on

this: he is no refuse-eater) as bait on a string quite ropelike in its

thickness you are almost certain to hook one just about here. The

monster comes on board with a regular hullabaloo, flapping and leaping

like a veritable tarpon and inflicting ugly bites if you give him the

chance. The sailors kill him by hitting him over the head with a wooden

mallet; but this weapon proved ineffective in the hands of the lad

Dolores, who, apparently in the hope of hastening the fish's escape from

his sufferings, pressed his two brown fingers into the creature's

eye-sockets. We were ashamed of the cruelty of the action, and motioned

to him to stop. But Yucatecans have no humanity, and the boy, his

handsome face lit up with a bewitching smile, went on gouging out the

fish's eyes.

We had a shot or two at an alligator and bagged a few birds as we sailed

out of this creek into a wide stretch of water, its thickly wooded

shores making it look like an English lake. Towards evening we ran into

another channel, and there at an inlet, tree-shrouded, we ran the boat

into the boggy bank. The only inhabitant of the island is an old Indian,

a regular Mayan Robinson Crusoe, nearly blind through a splinter of wood

flying up into his face while he was chopping. We were greeted by the

barking of some half a dozen dogs which came bounding down from the hut,

followed by their master who could only just distinguish night from day,

and yet made his way to the water edge with extraordinary confidence. He

welcomed us with true Mayan hospitality, and in a little time we were

dining like princes off roasted picuda, biscuit and rice, washed down

with Cadbury's cocoa. There was one drawback to our new quarters: the

mosquitoes were in possession.

Cancun is a sixteen-mile stretch, mostly dense bush; at the northern end

one of the artificial mounds, examples of which we examined higher up

the coast by Cape Catoche. Our old Mayan host was called Patricio Pat,

quite probably a descendant of the cacique Naum Pat with whom, it will

be remembered, the Spaniards made such friends on their first visits to

Cozumel. He had two huts in a clearing near the water edge, surrounded

by a grove of cocoa palms for the fruit of which a dory came

periodically from the other islands. There was a certain distinction

about the old man's face as he crouched in front of the fire on the

earth floor of his hut and held his lean brown hands out to where he

could half see the red flame. He had queer stories to tell of haunted

ruins in the bush here; of how he had heard his name called several

times, and cocks crowing and all the other noises of a village; and how,

long ago, a Yucatecan fisherman, wantonly breaking up a stone that had

fallen from an Indian palace front, had been struck from behind by an

unseen foe, and after hours of unconsciousness had crawled to the sea

beach and for weeks had been on the point of death. It was all very

quaint, and the old man's droning voice and his clearcut, wizened,

hairless face in the glare of the fire made just such a figure as must

have crouched round the fires when Naum Pat was lord hereabouts and the

caravels of Spain had yet to be sighted from the wooded shores. We early

tumbled into our hammocks, but long after, in the flickering light of

the fire, Robinson Crusoe squatted in front of a small stool on which

stood an earthenware pot, into which he laboriously scraped and squeezed

with a broken fragment of cocoanut shell the meat of a pile of cocoanuts

from which he was thus extracting the oil.

We were up at dawn hoping to steal a march on the enemy; but even at

that early hour the insect curses of the tropics had taken down the

shutters and started business. While we breakfasted, Crusoe squatted on

his haunches in true Mayan fashion, meditatively rubbing his thin hands

and giving us the best directions he could for our coming hunt in the

bush. By seven, accompanied by Lucio and Pedro, we were off. As we dived

into the woodlands at the back of the hut, the old fellow, machete on

shoulder, in sack shift and patched striped cotton trousers, surrounded

by a pack of leaping, barking dogs, started for the eastern shore, where

he expected a dory to fetch a cargo of cocoanuts.

Our road led up a winding path, where the mosquitoes were "plentiful and

strong on the wing," to the crest of the island, which was divided into

the eastern side, all sand and low heather-like plant, sea-thistle and

stunted cactus; and the western, all jungly woods. For some miles we had

to keep to the eastward. The sand was soft and deep, and the roots of

the plants sprawling around gave one no foothold. In anticipation of the

difficulty of changing even small paper money in the island _pueblos_,

we had filled a money-belt with two hundred Mexican dollars (£20), each

in size nearly as big as an English five-shilling piece. This belt had

always, so far, been a bit of a white elephant; to-day it was a positive

cross. We realised for the first time what is described so eloquently as

"the burden of wealth"; and before we had staggered and floundered our

first mile in that relentlessly yielding sand we both, as our turn came

to carry it, cursed a civilisation which had created the necessity of

bullion and fervently wished we had not a copper in the world.

Following Crusoe's suggestion, we started cutting into the woods at a

point where some cocoa palms stood. Though we thus lost the sand we

found the mosquitoes; and nobody but the keenest of ruin-hunters would

have stood the earthly hell through which we passed for the next hour.

In a wood too high and thick to admit air, but too low to shade you from

the scorching sun; with every second bush bearing thorns an inch long;

your legs entangled in bines and creepers so stout that once caught no

struggles, however heroic, would free you; too hot to wear your flannel

shirt-sleeves down, and too pestilential with mosquitoes for you to dare

expose an inch more skin than was necessary; bathed in sweat, stumbling,

stooping, creeping, leaping, over, under, in and out; cutting your way

foot by foot,--you need the true explorer's zeal not to sit down and

give it up. But we had not come six thousand miles to give it up; and

after we had made two false detours we "struck" a ruin which well

rewarded us for our sufferings.

Deep in the thickest bush, the trees around shrouding them with a

curtain of speckled green, stood a group of buildings upon which we were

probably the first white men to look, as there is no record of a Spanish

landing in Cancun. At such a moment the most matter-of-fact being must

yield to a certain feeling of solemnity. You are gripped by the romance

of the quest after a vanished civilisation. But in Cancun at least there

are winged fiends who serve as a very practical reminder that you cannot

afford to day-dream but must get to work at once. While our men lit a

palm-leaf fire to keep the mosquitoes at bay, we cut through the bush to

see how many buildings there were and where to begin. There were four,

and the first we tackled was an oblong building, 26 feet by 10, erected

on a platform built up some 4 feet from the ground-level, making a

terrace all round varying in width from 12 to 16 feet. On the west were

two small doorways, and on the east three. These were so small that it

was necessary to crawl through. Digging down, however, we found under a

foot of earth the true flooring. This was a cement of lime and sand, and

was two and a half inches thick over the entire floor. The interior of

the building was in the same style as those of the mainland, having what

is known as the Mayan arch, running up almost to a point, the rough

corners of the stones standing out like steps inverted, a slab being

laid across the two walls, thus making a narrow ceiling. The outside

walls were built up to the same level as the pointed roof, and the space

between was filled with rubble, making a flat roof now entirely

overgrown with cactus and trees. Above the centre door was a gap where

the wall had fallen and where once stood what must have been more than a

life-sized figure. On the platform below we found the head and

shoulders, a fine piece of carving: legs, body and arms were smashed

almost past recognition, and the feathered headdress had entirely

disappeared. The head and bust was so heavy that it took the four of us

to carry it a few yards and set it against the pyramidal mound near by

where we could photograph it, and where it could be for the future out

of the line of fire of falling stone.

We next visited the pyramid. It was approached by steps, but the temple

which once crowned it had fallen and was a mass of stones, none of them

apparently carved. But the most extraordinary ruins were what had

evidently been two pillared halls standing about fifty yards apart. That

on the south was the largest, and stood on a stone platform 90 feet long

and 33 feet wide. The building itself measured 60 feet by 17 feet, and

in two rows down the centre, ten in each row, were immense pillars, many

monolithic and some as much as 8-1/2 feet high. These had originally

supported the roof, now fallen and making a rooting place for trees and

undergrowth which covered the whole platform. Around the platform on the

ground-level was a paved walk, 16 feet wide, now buried under the fallen

walls. The building on the north was no better preserved. It was exactly

the same except that it had three rows of pillars running the length of

the building, in their broken state looking like grey-barked trees

severed by an axe. When newly erected these twin pillared halls must

have been really magnificent. The architecture of all the buildings was

rougher but more solid than that of those of the mainland. A noticeable

feature, which we remarked again in Cozumel, was the prevalence of the

monolithic pillar, which we found nowhere on the mainland among the

richly decorated ruins such as Chichen, Labna and Sayil, where the

pillar, almost always carved in relief, is square and built in sections

a foot or two high. Of mural ornamentation there was no sign; and the

general appearance of these Cancun ruins showed cruder workmanship than

the rich façade work and carvings of Chichen and Palenque.