20th. [Illustration] _Akbal._ It is suggested that this has a near

resemblance to _akab_, meaning in Maya, "night."

MONTH SIGNS

1st. [Illustration] _Pep._ Brinton says means "mat."

2nd. [Illustration] _No._ Suggested as meaning a "prickly pear" or frog.

3rd. [Illustration] _Zip._

4th. [Illustration] _Zodz._ Brinton says means "bat," and Seler has

later connected it with Maya "Bat God."

5th. [Illustration] _Tec_ or _Tzec_.

6th. [Illustration] _Xul._

7th. [Illustration] _Yaxkin._ In Maya means "new moon or high sun."

8th. [Illustration] _Mol._ Probably derived the same as day name

_Muluc_.

9th. [Illustration] _Chen._ Means "spring or well."

10th. [Illustration] _Yax._ Known as the "feather sign."

11th. [Illustration] _Zac._ Meaning "white."

12th. [Illustration] _Ceh._ Meaning in Maya, "deer."

13th. [Illustration] _Mac._ The first character is supposed to represent

the lid of a jar known as _mac_ among the Mayas. The second character is

much like the day sign _Kan_, with a "comb"-shaped design underneath.

14th. [Illustration] _Kan kin._ This month name is supposed to mean "the

yellow sun." The first is thought to show the sun sign _Kin_, while the

second sign has been suggested as a breast-bone, a shield, or a dog.

15th. [Illustration] _Moan._ This is thought to have been named after

the crested falcon known to the Mayas as the _Moan_ bird.

16th. [Illustration] _Pax._ Probably from the Maya word _pax-che_,

meaning "drum," which seems to form the first elements of this glyph.

17th. [Illustration] _Kay ab._ According to Landa's alphabet these were

the signs for _a_ or _ak_, but Schellhas thinks they are meant for the

turtle.

18th. [Illustration] _Cum ku._ Forstemann's explanation of this glyph is

that it represents "two flashes of lightning or the sun's rays striking

on a maize field," but we see nothing for this suggestion.

* * * * *

Knowing then that the Mayan year consisted of eighteen 20-day months,

the glyphs to represent these days and months have been looked for, and

it is believed they have been found. On the opposite page these glyphs

are illustrated, namely, the day and month signs. Further, the signs

representing the other time-counts have been looked for and declared

recognised. The first, the year or _ahau_ sign, is supposed to be

represented in a variety of forms, three of which are given on the

opposite page. It is thought to be the same with the _katun_ or 20-year

sign, and the cycle (20 _katuns_) and great cycle (13 cycles) signs,

three of each of which we give on the opposite page. The first three of

this group, namely, the great-cycle signs, if they have been correctly

read, would seem to denote an extraordinary date. According to Goodman's

chronological table, he would have us believe that at Copan, where these

glyphs always head a series of characters on a tablet, they belong to

the 53rd, 54th, and 55th great cycles. From these dates various

subtractions are made into which we have no space to go in detail. In

any case, according to the present mode of reckoning, the glyphs at

Copan and Quirigua bear the highest numbers in the chronological

calendar, and thus those cities must be assumed to be the latest built,

a proposition which, as we pointed out in Chapter XVII., is untenable.

But whether or not this calendar system is really accurate (there are a

great many serious discrepancies) has yet to be proved. In the museums

of America and Germany scholars have striven hard to soundly base their

theories; while others have done yeoman service in the field, and

undergone great hardships in collecting material upon which these

learned men might work. In their enthusiasm the latter have, without

doubt, blundered into deductions which are unjustifiable. They have

detected similarities in glyphs which no other person can detect.

[Illustration: GREAT CYCLE SIGNS

1 2 3]

[Illustration: CYCLE SIGNS

4 5 6]

[Illustration: KATUN SIGNS

7 8 9]

[Illustration: AHAU SIGNS

10 11 12]

As an example of this we give an illustration from Professor E.

Forstemann's own work. In the _Bureau of American Ethnology Report_

(_Bulletin_ 28, p. 549), after speaking of the _ahau_ and _katun_

glyphs, he says: "Then follows, almost of necessity, B 3 = 144,000 days

[given in our figure 1], as the sign of similar form on the

superscription has led us to conjecture, and as we see it repeated in C

5, F 6, U 2, and V 12."

[Illustration: B 3]

[Illustration: V 12]

We agree with him that, as B 3 comes directly under the initial glyph

and above the signs representing the _ahau_ and _katun_, it is the

144,000 days or cycle sign--that is, of course, always allowing that his

premisses, to which we give no adherence, are correct; and we follow him

when he sees it "repeated" in C 5, F 6, and U 2. There is no doubt that

these three glyphs are variations of B 3; but V 12 is an entirely new

character bearing not the slightest resemblance except in Professor

Forstemann's own imagination. This is but one example of his detecting

likeness where none exists. The last-mentioned sign has its counterpart

or its variants in many portions of the inscription of the Tablet of the

Cross at Palenque with which Professor Forstemann is dealing, and if he

had looked he would, with his superior knowledge of the Maya glyphs,

have found them quite easily.

But what of the other glyphs? Are they simply all calendar signs

interlaced with a few other glyphs appertaining to deities; or are they

records of Mayan history? D. G. Brinton, in his book _A Primer of Mayan

Hieroglyphics_ (Chicago, 1898), says: "We need not search for the facts

of history, the names of the mighty kings or the dates of conquests. We

shall not find them. Chronometry we shall find, but not chronicles;

astronomy with astrological aims; ritual, but no records. Pre-Columbian

history will not be constructed from them. This will be a disappointment

to many, but it is the conclusion towards which tend all the soundest

investigations of recent years."

Is Dr. Brinton right? Are we to find no records of this mysterious

civilisation? Are we to be for ever denied written proof whence the

Mayans came and how they attained their civilisation? It is to be hoped

that his presumption is incorrect, and that these undeciphered glyphs

and those which cannot as yet be regarded as satisfactorily accounted

for as mere chronological data will prove to be the key to this problem

of the New World. Of the glyphs that are alleged to be calendar signs we

have already spoken; their importance can only be shown when their

neighbours have been deciphered, and until that day comes the wise will

withhold their acceptance of the present calendar or astronomical

reading. Searches have been made, searches are being made, but the

students who have worked and who are working have received little

support in their enterprise.

It has been suggested and in some cases proved that many of the glyphs

apart from the calendar signs are astronomical and animal ideographs of

deities. Amongst those which are repeatedly made use of is the chief

beneficent god of the Mayans, _Itzamna_, who was to them what

Quetzalcoatl was to the Mexicans. Tradition relates, according to D. G.

Brinton, that "he came in his magic skiff from the East, across the

waters, and therefore he presided over that quarter of the world

assigned to him." His name meant "the dew or moisture of the morning."

To him all the arts are due. He was the god of their culture, their

arts, their writings on stone monuments and books. His sign is found

throughout the codices, in paintings, and among the glyphs. The tapir

was his principal symbol, and to what does this fact point? Is it not

possible to see in him a culture-god coming from the East? The Buddhists

came from the East; they were the culture-heroes of Central America;

they were the men who taught the building arts and who possibly

introduced the tapir as a deity instead of the elephant of their native

country. Thus may Itzamna have risen the personification of their arts

and crafts after they had died, the elephant cult of Asia being

represented by the tapir.

The other deities were but minor ones compared with Itzamna. They were

_Cuculcan_, _Kin-ich_, the God of the North Star, the Bee-God, the

Bat-God, and _Ghanan_, the God of Earth, growth and fertility; _Ah-Pach_

(God of Death), always depicted in battle scenes with his torch or spear

and flint knife; _Ek Ahau_, the Black God, suggested to have been the

god of the much-cultivated cocoa plant, although his attitude of war

with appendages of shield and spear does not quite harmonise with this

suggestion that he was a god of agriculture. In addition to these

anthropomorphic deities we find animal life represented by the serpent,

the dog, the jaguar, the macaw, deer, armadillo, turtle, monkey, quail,

frog, scorpion, zopilote, pelican, blackbird, and what D. G. Brinton has

called his "fish and oyster sign."

Again, many are reminiscent of domestic life, for example, of weaving,

the spinning whorl, the flint knife (always denoting death or sacrifice

and near the God of Death), and lastly there are those having reference

to sacrificial acts and the priests' devotion by the piercing of their

tongues. Astronomical ideas figure largely too. Primitive peoples always

held the heavens in awe. Their calendar was formed partly by the

lunations of the moon and by the celestial bodies, and naturally we find

their ideographs often portrayed. Landa mentions that the Mayas measured

their time by night, "_Regianse de noche, para conocer la hora, por el

lucero, i las cobrillas i los artilegros, de dia, por media dia._"

There is no doubt the Mayan knowledge of the stars was considerable. The

Pleiades and Orion were watched by them. They called the North Star

_Xaman Ek_ (_Xaman_ north: _Ek_ star). Their astronomers studied the

course of the Milky Way and the sun was figured in the glyphs in various

forms. The much-discussed _Benik_ sign (_Ben_, idea: _ik_, life) had

probably much to do with the sun; but D. G. Brinton believed it to more

particularly represent "strength and deific power," and says of Dr.

Seler, when referring to this glyph, "that he is apt to see gory human

heads everywhere," because Seler thought the glyph represented a head

carried in a sling as a sign of "conquered in war."

But the signs which have been most in dispute are those which D. G.

Brinton has called "Drum Signs." Professor Leon de Rosny thought these

variants of the _ahau_ sign; Professor Cyrus Thomas a heap of stones;

Dr. Phillip J. J. Valentini a censer or brazier; and Dr. Seler a

precious stone. They are always found on the "initial" or cycle glyphs

at Copan, Quirigua, and Palenque. D. G. Brinton is probably correct in

the christening of them; for they are exactly like the drums which the

Indians possessed at the coming of the Spaniards, according to Father

Duran's _Historia de los Indios_, and which are depicted in the ancient

codices. Thus it would seem that these are "Drum Signs" with a

symbolical meaning. Another sign which has been the subject of much

controversy is that which de Rosny and Professor Forstemann are

probably right in calling the "Phallus Sign"; but which Abbé Brasseur de

Bourbourg thought represented a gourd, D. G. Brinton the "_Yax_ or

Feather Ornament," and Seler a tree of some kind. Dr. Schellhas has gone

further and declared it to be the sign "zapote tree," the wood most used

by the Mayans in building.

But the time has not yet come when it is possible to say who is right or

wrong in the naming of these glyphs. Up to the present it is all more or

less surmise based upon the writings of the Spanish historians--such as

Bishop Landa. It is on his work that is based the assumption that the

signs on the monuments refer chiefly to the calendar. It is true they

seem to be mathematically correct, but this could not be otherwise when

the numberings of the dates have been assigned by those who have shown

them to be correct. The alphabet which Landa bequeathed us has been

proved beyond all question to be false. In fact it is obvious that no

alphabet can be formed upon the glyphs, for there are hundreds of signs,

some of which would appear to have many variants. If his key to the

actual writing through his alphabet is incorrect, there is good reason

to doubt his statements as to the calendar signs; and the student ought

not to allow himself to begin where others have finished in these

researches. He should first of all glance back over the ground which is

supposed to have been already covered, and see for himself whether or

not there is actual proof that the calendar signs have been correctly

interpreted.

* * * * *

Much might be said on the codices and books that have been left us by

the historians. They belong to two classes and two widely separate

dates. The Codices are the surviving ancient glyphic writings of

pre-Conquest times which escaped the Spanish bonfires, and are of native

paper about ten inches wide and of various lengths, inscribed on both

sides, and folded zigzag-fashion like the oldest Buddhist literature.

The others are the books written in Latin characters after the Conquest

in several towns and villages and known as the "Books of Chilan Balam."

Only four of the former remain, namely the _Codex Peresianus_ in Paris,

receiving its name from the fact that the name "Perez" was written on it

in Latin characters, probably the name of the Spaniard who saved it from

destruction at the Conquest; the _Codex Dresdensis_ in the Museum at

Dresden, from which it gets its name; and the _Codices Troanus_ and

_Cortesianus_ in the Madrid Museum, which are probably two parts of the

same book. It is generally supposed the _Codex Peresianus_ is of Tzental

origin written in Guatemala, the Tzentals being a Guatemalan tribe of

the Maya family. The _Codex Dresdensis_ is thought to have been written

at or near Palenque; the first copy of it to be made public was in Lord

Kingsborough's work on the antiquities of Mexico. The _Codices Troanus_

and _Cortesianus_ are supposed to have been written in Central Yucatan;

and, under the direction of the French Government, Abbé Brasseur de

Bourbourg made many copies in 1869. On them are depicted the same

hieroglyphical characters as one sees on the monuments, allowing of

course for the difference and discrepancies which would occur between

the work on stone and that on paper.

The "Books of the Chilan Balam" are of little value. They are

post-Conquest compilations based on the narrations of Indians of their

history, traditions, and beliefs. Each town or village at one time

probably had its Chilan Balam or record book in which all statements

relative to the village were entered. They were formed at the

instigation of the Spanish priests, who taught the Indians to write them

in Latin characters. The earliest was composed during the latter half of

the sixteenth century, but most were written long after the Conquest

during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and had become much

tainted with the Spanish prejudices. The best collection of these books

was that made by D. G. Brinton from various sources, and which he

describes in his book _The Maya Chronicles_. But, as we have said

before, if they make indifferently trustworthy sources of history, they

offer less help to the deciphering of the hieroglyphics.

* * * * *

Now let us turn to the Mayan paintings. The historians tell us--and

there is much reason to believe them--that the buildings of Yucatan were

often painted externally in different colours. Traces of paint can be

found to-day on many of the monuments. But it is not so much with the

painting of the outside of the buildings as the internal mural paintings

that we shall deal. From them much of the past history of the country

can be gathered. The mode of life, the shape of the houses, the dress,

the utensils in use and the food of the Indians are often depicted.

Nearly all the buildings in Yucatan have traces of once having been

adorned by paintings; but the best still in existence are those in the

House of Tigers at Chichen Itza. Although much faded, disfigured and

defaced by the vandalism of the conquerors, they show that the ancient

inhabitants of Yucatan had a good knowledge of pigments and mixed them

so well that to-day, where they exist at all, they are still bright and

well preserved. They have been copied by various people; but probably

the best reproduction of them is in possession of the American

Antiquarian Society of Worcester, Mass.

In them is shown the daily life of the Indians. In one scene we see a

woman seated on a _kanche_, a type of stool still in common use among

the natives to-day. Near by her is her basket of small round

biscuit-like objects which would seem to be tortillas. The _koben_ or

three-stone fireplace, typical of Mayan huts to-day, is just outside the

door, and on it a cooking-bowl is standing in which food is being

prepared. All the women are dressed in the chemise-like garment, the

_huipil_, which is worn to-day, and ear-ornaments adorn their ears;

whilst their long, straight, jet-black hair hangs down over their

shoulders, or in some cases is done up in a knot on the nape of the

neck. There are warriors, too, depicted in battle array in the act of

defending a village, while the women are anxiously watching the result

from the doors of their huts. The warriors are shown with their spears

raised and shields at the defence ready for the oncoming foe. The

figures are very realistic, but the one thing which strikes you above

all else is the lack of proportion. Men and women appear as tall as the

houses in which they live, and which look mere dolls'-houses. We have

spoken of the lack of proportion marking the paintings in the early

Buddhistic temples in an earlier chapter, but this is naturally common

in all countries during the early stages of development of art.

Considering the vandalism to which the paintings have been subject and

the climate, it is clear from the brightness of the paints that the

ancient Mayans had the secret of mixing pigments. Nor was their method

of placing them on the walls to be despised. This was the superimposing

of one colour on another. They would seem to have first of all painted

the entire wall with the colour which was to serve as the background for

the picture. On this the designs were painted, and in cases where more

than one colour was employed in any figure, as was often the case, we

found that it had been covered entirely with the most prevalent colour,

then overlaid with a new pigment until the desired effect had been

obtained. The colours used were yellow, blue, green, and a reddish

brown. If the background was green, the wall would first be entirely

covered with that colour. If a figure of a man or woman was to be

depicted it would be painted in reddish brown (the invariable

skin-colour in the paintings), and the colouring of the apparel would be

placed on the top of this; and in such cases as depicting ornamentation

on the garments, another coating of a different colour would be placed

on the top of that. Thus one commonly finds three or four coatings of

paint overlaid on the base colour.

It is from these paintings that one can trace the weapons used by the

Mayans in the war and chase. The spear or lance is much in evidence; the

short serrated sword of flint, examples of which have been unearthed

among the ruins, is often depicted. The heavy throwing-stones, which

wrought much havoc among the early Spanish adventurers when they

attacked and stormed the Mayan cities, and the short obsidian knife

associated with those sacrificial orgies that often took place after a

victory, are also portrayed. Again, we see shields carried on the

warriors' left arm, on which the colour-token of their chief is shown in

the same way as our knights of old had painted on their shields the arms

of their feudal lords. When in battle array they invariably wear the

thick, quilted cotton vest reaching from their necks to their thighs, so

closely woven as to be proof against the enemy's darts. When not in

battle this is discarded for the more easy-going _uit_ or loin-cloth.

Caciques and priests are dressed more elaborately. We see the heavy

beplumed headdress, the leg ornamentation and sandals far more

elaborate than the thick, plaited, deer-skin, two-thonged foot-covering

of their followers.

Last but perhaps not by any means least in importance among these

paintings is the much-discussed "red hand." We have spoken of its

probable origin on p. 265. We have seen it, as have others, on the ruins

of the mainland; but more, we have found it on the walls buried under

the débris of fallen roofs in the islands. The best examples of it were

found by us at Cozumel in ruins on which probably no other white man

has ever looked. On the ruins of the mainland it is rare, but one ruin

we discovered, described on p. 180, was literally covered with this form

of ornamentation, and here for the first time we realised that the human

hand was not always used. It was not always the impression of an actual

hand, as has been insisted by many, but of something of a roughly

similar shape.

[Illustration: FAÇADE OF BUILDING AT KABAH.]

The paintings in all the ruins are fast crumbling away, and to-day a

gentle tap upon the walls will show that the layers of paint are losing

those adhesive qualities which have held them in position for centuries.

How were such arts of writing and painting attained? The latter question

is easily answered. The knowledge of painting in elementary colours has

often been found among the most inartistic peoples; but as we have said

before, the mural paintings of the monuments of Central America are so

similar in design to those of the early Buddhist temples that if we are

to believe a migration to America took place in the early Middle Ages

the suggestion that the emigrants brought the art of painting into

Central America with them is almost irresistible. But it is not so easy

with the glyphs. The paper on which the early codices were written and

the way in which they are folded bear a striking resemblance to the

early manuscripts of the Malay Peninsula, but as yet no counterparts of

the characters which form the hieroglyphics on the monuments of Central

America have been found in any other part of the world.

Most writers would have us believe, as in the case of the architecture,

that it is indigenous to the American continent. It is possible that the

invention of this writing is the work of the indigenes, but we are

inclined to believe that the Mayan hieroglyphics, if they are ever

deciphered, will prove to be a combination writing--partly pictographic

and indigenous and partly of a foreign character. In Java and the

neighbouring islands have been discovered inscriptions in an ancient

form of Sunda writing. These have never been deciphered, and they are in

certain particulars reminiscent of some of the markings on the glyphs.

But it may be that for the foreign element, if there be one, students

would have to look even further east. Archæology is as yet but a new

science. There is much work to be done in the Malay Peninsula and the

Eastern Archipelago before the monuments of Cambodia and Indo-China have

been explained. Archæologically this region has been little touched.

The unsettled condition of the Independent Malay States, the indolence

of the natives, the unhealthiness of the _kampongs_ or villages, and the

hostility of the tribes of the interior as well as the difficulties of

transport have helped to keep the explorer away. But these difficulties

are gradually disappearing, and in the near future some enthusiast who

has the time and money will perhaps turn his attention to this field,

when his name may once and for all become immortal in the annals of

science as the discoverer of the cradle-land of the American Indian

calculiform writing, at the same time linking the Old World for ever

with the New.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Bishop Landa, first bishop of Yucatan, according to the

evidence of a Jesuit chronicler, had everything appertaining to the

Mayan religion, upon which he could lay his hands, destroyed. Five

thousand idols, 13 large and 22 smaller stone altars, 27 manuscripts on

deerskins, and 197 other manuscripts are catalogued as thus perishing.

[15] The word is said to be derived from _kat_, to ask, and

_tun_, stone: _i.e._ the stone which when asked gives account, in

allusion to the fact that at each katun a stone was set up to

memorialize the date.

CHAPTER XIX

SLAVERY ON THE HACIENDAS

"O coch--i--nos! Coch--i--n-o-o-s!"

You wake and turn in your hammock. Through the verandah doorway the

breath of morn comes chill to you. The stars twinkle still, and the

orange trees are blots of black shadow in the quiet garden. And then

there comes to you, again and again repeated, the haunting melody of

this cry, the reveille of the hacienda. The Indians are herding the

pigs; but if they called "O pigs! O pigs!" there would be none of the

romance that there is in this long-drawn weird cry "O Cochinos!"

Outside in the yard a hustling crowd of pigs worry round a heap of

pumpkin gourds. In the semi-darkness the bare-legged Indians with scarlet

blankets wrapped round them move to and fro; the boys chasing the pigs

and the fowls, and the men foddering the mules and horses in the corral.

Thus does every hacienda throughout Yucatan awake to its day's work.

While it is still dark the Indian families tumble out of their hammocks,

and the housewife builds a little wood fire in the blackened ring of

stones on the earth floor which serves for kitchen range. The coffee is

boiled, and, crouching round on their hams, the family drink it black

and munch the coarse tortillas of yesterday's baking. Then the boys herd

the "cochinos," and the men, if it is a ranch where cattle are kept,

straggle out into the woods and "round up" the cows, driving them into

the yard to be milked. But this is rare, for there is very little

milking done in Yucatan, partly because as a drink milk is not

appreciated by the Yucatecans, or indeed by the Indians; and partly

because such pasture as exists is of the coarsest kind and the cows are

nearly always dry.

When you have seen one hacienda you have seen them all, allowing of

course for the difference in size. A large rambling, one-storeyed

stuccoed house raised on a small terrace, with a wide arcaded stone

verandah in front, and standing in a huge yard bordered by grey stone

walls, its surface the natural earth and rock, its entrance usually a

pretentious archway, almost ecclesiastical in its pitch and size. Round

the yard cluster the huts of the Indians, the corral for the mules,

stables and what not. Most of these haciendas, at any rate those deep in

the country, have a very shabby and down-at-heel appearance. Between the

pompous gateway the iron gates have sagged off their hinges or are

missing altogether, their place being taken by two hurdles fastened

together by ropes or loops improvised out of lianas. But just around

Merida, where are the haciendas of the richest of the henequen lords,

much has been done of late to turn these farms into lordly

pleasure-houses. Money is no object to the Yucatecan landlord; and his

apathy or want of taste is all that can set limits to the beautifying of

his country seat. At the hacienda of Yaxche, eighteen miles out of the

capital, we saw a good proof of what money can do in the hands of an

intelligent land-owner. One of the greatest difficulties in Yucatan is

the lack of feed. Grass, as we know it, will not grow, and the best that

can be done for the cattle is to provide them with a coarse clover. At

Yaxche two large paddocks had been planted with this, and were watered

by a contrivance which had cost no less than £30,000. Into several large

round galvanised watertowers erected on iron trelliswork standards

thirty feet high, the water is pumped from the limestone wells by steam.

From these large tanks pipes lead out to feed smaller ones running in

parallel rows from one end of the field to the other at distances of

about six yards apart. Every twenty yards along these small pipes a

standard is erected about five feet high, on the top of which is a rose

like that on a gardener's watering-pot. When the water is turned on at

the tanks the pressure attained from its height forces it along the

pipes up through the standards, and a few seconds later the whole field

is being deluged with an artificial rainfall as if from a myriad

fountains. Three times a day the clover crop is thus watered.

By the time the sun is up, the cattle have been tended and the Indians

are off to the milpas or the henequen fields. The description of the

latter we leave to Chapter XXI., where we give an account of the whole

henequen industry. Apart from this comparatively artificial product,

maize is to-day what it has always been for the Peninsula, what it was

to the Mayans four centuries back, the be-all and end-all of Yucatecan

agriculture. The Indian is a poor farmer. He has not moved with the

times. It is true that in many localities he has not had the chance; but

it is also true that he would not take the chance if it offered. The

plough is unknown, and if a benevolent society was formed with the

object of presenting one to each Indian labourer, he would not be able

to use it because of the nature of the soil, which is for the most part

a very thin layer of earth on a rock bed, and also because he never

takes the trouble to properly clear the ground. An Indian-corn field

would give an Essex corn-grower a shock from which his constitution

would never rally.

There are two ways in which the farmer in Yucatan sets about making his

maize-patch. Each or at least every second year a new piece must be

claimed from the dense woodland, for the poorness of the soil does not

allow more than two crops to follow each other. The commonest method is

to first clear the patch by cutting down the trees one season for the

next. After this has been done, the timber is allowed to lie where it

falls and rot during the rainy months. When the dry season comes the

whole fallen timber is set on fire and all but the largest of the trees

are burnt, the charred remains of these lying in all directions year

after year. The second method, apparently the most ancient and that

still used by the present-day independent Indians, is to fire the forest

at the end of the dry season in May just as it stands, cutting down the

large trunks that escape the flames about a yard from their base, and

letting them lie where they fall. In this condition the Indian considers

that his patch is ready. To view it after having been used to English

fields is at once rather a strange and depressing experience. Charred

tree-trunks lie scattered in all directions. Trees-trunks that have been

cut off a yard or so from the ground stand up like the piles of a pier

at a watering place after a heavy gale in which the deck of the pier has

been carried away. Huge boulders and stones of all sizes are scattered

over the soil, making the use of machinery absolutely impossible. But to

the native of Yucatan it seems ready enough, and as soon as there comes

the first heavy rainfall at the opening of the wet season, the Indians

go out to the fields to plant the corn. This is all done by hand, being

dibbled in much the same way as is often seen in the Fen districts of

England, when a cottager has a patch too small to get a corndrill to

work. The rest is "on the lap of the gods," though the Indian has

little reason for anxiety. For the rain is sure to come, and then the

sun baking down on his sodden milpas will bring up, as if by magic, the

long green shoot presently to swell out into a golden yellow crown of

leaf shrouding the cob.

The Indian harvest is about our Christmas time, and the labourers troop

into the milpas, wicker baskets slung on their brown backs, and pick the

cobs, dropping them over their shoulders into the baskets. Milpas are

seldom of any great size, and the harvester usually carries his load

back to the hacienda when he returns thither for his first real meal of

the day, which he takes between ten and eleven. His menu is of the

simplest, monotonously the same from year end to year end; just that

fare upon which his lowlier ancestors toiled in the sun to build pyramid

and temple. Black beans, always black beans; sometimes crushed into a

purple-black pulp, sometimes frizzled in lard, sometimes with a thin

vegetable soup, the stock,--pork, peppers, garlic, and a slice or two of

pumpkin gourd. To this staple dish of frijoles there is very seldom

added any meat save when he has been able to bag a chachalaka on his

tramp to the milpas or a hacienda pig has been killed. Tortillas and

coffee, not always the latter, complete his meal. Before the hour of

noon he is back at his work till about five, when his day's labour is

over.

There is no hardship in all this. It is just the simple life his race

has always lived, and that which the average Mayan always would wish to

live. There would be no hardship if--and it is a large, large IF--the

patient toiler were a free man. The Yucatecans have a cruel proverb,

"_Los Indios no oigan sino por las nalgas_" ("The Indians can hear only

with their backs"). The Spanish half-breeds have taken a race once noble

enough and broken them on the wheel of a tyranny so brutal that the

heart of them is dead. The relations between the two peoples is

ostensibly that of master and servant; but Yucatan is rotten with a foul

slavery--the fouler and blacker because of its hypocrisy and pretence.

The peonage system of Spanish America, as specious and treacherous a

plan as was ever devised for race-degradation, is that by which a farm

labourer is legally bound to work for the land-owner, if in debt to him,

until that debt is paid. Nothing could sound fairer: nothing could lend

itself better to the blackest abuse. In Yucatan every Indian peon is in

debt to his Yucatecan master. Why? Because every Indian is a

spendthrift? Not at all; but because the master's interest is to get him

and keep him in debt. This is done in two ways. The plantation-slave

must buy the necessaries of his humble life at the plantation store,

where care is taken to charge such prices as are beyond his humble

earnings of sixpence a day. Thus he is always in debt to the farm; and

if an Indian is discovered to be scraping together the few dollars he

owes, the books of the hacienda are "cooked,"--yes, deliberately

"cooked,"--and when he presents himself before the magistrate to pay his

debt, say, of twenty dollars (£2) the haciendado can show scored against

him a debt of fifty dollars. The Indian pleads that he does not owe it.

The haciendado-court smiles. The word of an Indian cannot prevail

against the Señor's books, it murmurs sweetly, and back to his

slave-work the miserable peon must go, first to be cruelly flogged to

teach him that freedom is not for such as he, and that struggle as he

may he will never escape the cruel master who under law as at present

administered in Yucatan has as complete a disposal of his body as of one

of the pigs which root around in the hacienda yard.

It is only by a comparison of the law of debt in Yucatan for a white

man, as the Yucatecans love to call themselves, that one can realise how

wickedly unjust all this is, and how deliberate is the conspiracy to

keep the Indian in a bondage which spells fortune to his master. For the

Yucatecan debtor there appears to be no punishment and no means of

compelling him to pay. Here is a case in point. To a store in Merida

comes a Yucatecan who, falsely representing himself as employed by one

of the richest of Meridan merchant-houses, gets a typewriting machine

valued at two hundred and twenty-five dollars, on credit. He goes off

with it, and at once sells it. For thus obtaining money by false

pretences he is not punished, nor can the defrauded shopkeeper recover

his goods or their value except by tedious processes which will cost him

more than he has already lost, even if he wins the day. Now, had this

thief been an Indian, he could have been instantly arrested, his debt

sold by the shopman to any haciendado, and the fellow would have become

a slave for life. Thus is law meted out by the Yucatecan conspirators.

The Yucatecan millionaires are very sensitive on the question of

slavery, and well they may be: for their record is as black as Legree's

in _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. You have but to mention the word "slavery," and

they begin a lot of cringing apologetics as to the comforts of the

Indians' lives, the care taken of them, and the fatherly relations

existing between the haciendado and his slaves. Very _fatherly_ indeed,

as we shall shortly demonstrate! They take just so much care of the

Indians as reasonably prudent men always take of their live stock; so

much and no more.

We have spoken earlier of the recent visit paid to the country by

President Diaz. It was the first time during the whole of his long reign

that the great man had troubled himself about the limestone peninsula

which forms the furthermost eastern part of his dominions, and the

trembling Yucatecans looked to the bolts of the cupboard in which the

family skeleton was hidden, and they were not over-satisfied with those

bolts. They had new locks made and new and thicker doors fixed so that

august presidential ears should not be offended by the rattling of those

most unfortunate bones. With their teeth chattering, they hastened to

put their house in order and sweep and garnish it, for they knew quite

well that the eyes into which they had to throw dust were eyes which

could see further than most eyes. It was all the fault of a snobbish

governor. Many a henequen lord must have cursed the self-importance of

their parvenu chief which had induced in him such discontent with the

Spartan-like simplicity of his rule at Merida that he must needs wish to

entertain presidential guests and bask in the sunshine of the mighty

Diaz's approval. Diaz, they knew very well, cared little or nothing for

Indians _qua_ Indians. But Diaz cares immensely about the fair name of

Mexico, which they knew they had done for years all they could to

besmirch. Would he see the skeleton through the fatal door? If money and

bribery were of any avail, those slave-owners would see to it that their

terrible ruler should be fooled. But they had to calculate on more than

his natural perspicacity. There was much reason to believe that ugly

rumours had reached Mexico City of the slavery rife in Yucatan, and that

the President's visit was not unconnected with these. That skeleton must

be cemented into its cupboard with the cement of millions of dollars if

necessary.

Well, the President came. Never were there such junketings: night was

turned into day; roadways were garlanded; gargantuan feasts were served.

Lucullus never entertained Caesar with more gorgeous banquets than the

henequen lords of Merida spread before Diaz. Small fortunes were spent

on single meals. One luncheon party cost 50,000 dollars: a dinner cost

60,000, and so on. The official report of the reception reads like a

piece out of the _Arabian Nights_. In their eagerness to keep that

skeleton in its cupboard some of the haciendados actually mortgaged

their estates. One of the most notable of the entertainments provided

was that of a luncheon at a hacienda ninety miles south-east of the city

of Merida. At the station where the President alighted for the drive to

the farm, the roadway was strewn with flowers. Triumphal arches of

flowers and laurels, of henequen, and one built of oranges surmounted by

the national flag, spanned the route. The farm-workers lined the avenue

of nearly two miles to the house, waving flags and strewing the road

with flowers, while a _feu-de-joie_ of signal rockets was fired on his

alighting from his carriage. He then made a tour of the farm. Having

inspected the henequen machinery he (we quote from the official report)

"visited the hospital of the finca, and the large chapel where the

Catholic labourers worshipped; the gardens and the beautiful orchard of

fruit trees; and during his tour of inspection he honoured several

labourers by visiting their huts thatched with palm-leaf and standing in

their own grounds well cultivated by the occupants. More than two

hundred such houses constitute the beautiful village of this hacienda,

which breathes an atmosphere of general happiness. Without doubt a

beautiful spectacle is offered to the visitor to this lovely finca with

its straight roads, its pretty village clustering round the central

building surrounded by gardens of flower and fruit trees."

At the luncheon the President in the course of his speech said:--"Only

can a visitor here realise the energy and perseverance which, continued

through so many years, has resulted in all I have seen. Some writers who

do not know this country, who have not seen, as I have, the labourers,

have declared Yucatan to be disgraced with slavery. Their statements are

the grossest calumny, as is proved by the very faces of the labourers,

by their tranquil happiness. He who is a slave necessarily looks very

different from those labourers I have seen in Yucatan." The prolonged

cheers and measureless enthusiasm evoked by these words (one can

understand how the conspirators chuckled at the success of their efforts

at deception) were agreeably interrupted by the appearance of an old

Indian, who made a speech of welcome in his own language, presenting a

bouquet of wild flowers and a photographic album filled with views of

the hacienda. It is not necessary to quote the fulsome stuff which had

been placed in the mouth of the poor old man by his master. It is simply

a string of meaningless compliments which ends with these words: "We

kiss your hands; we hope that you may live many years for the good of

Mexico and her States, among which is proud to reckon itself the ancient

and indomitable [surely a pathetic adjective under the circumstances]

land of the Mayans." Well may the official report say that "it is only

justice to declare that the preparations of the feast and the

decorations of the finca showed that the proprietor had been anxious to

prepare everything with the most extraordinary magnificence."

This feast was a gigantic fraud, a colossally impertinent fake from

start to finish. Preparations indeed! That is the exact word to describe

the lavish entertainments of Mexico's ruler here and elsewhere in

Yucatan. Tens of thousands of dollars were lavished to guard the

haciendados' secrets. In this particular case the huts of the Indian

labourers which the President visited were "fake" huts. They had been,

every one of them, if not actually built for the occasion, cleaned,

whitewashed, and metamorphosed beyond recognition. They had been

furnished with American bentwood furniture. Every Indian matron had been

given a sewing-machine; every Indian lass had been trimmed out with

finery and in some cases, it is said, actually provided with European

hats. The model village round which the President was escorted was the

fraud of a day; no sooner was his back turned than to the shops of

Merida were returned sewing-machines, furniture, hats and everything,

and the Indians relapsed again into that simplicity of furnitureless

life which they probably cordially preferred.

We are not quoting the "faking" of this village as an example of

hardship dealt out to the Indians, but as a proof of the ludicrous

efforts made by those whose fortunes have been and are being built on

slave labour to hide the truth from General Diaz. As for the poor old

Mayan who addressed him, and as for the deputations of whip-drilled

Indians who were paraded before him to express their untold happiness

and loyalty, they very well knew that they had got to do exactly what

they were told to do. We are not exaggerating when we state that it

would have cost any Indian his life to have even attempted to make

General Diaz aware of the truth. No Indian throughout civilised Yucatan

could have been found to make the attempt. For nothing is sadder than

the lack of all manliness and spirit which characterises the average

Indian workman. It is the story of the Russian moujik over again. There

is no combination or loyalty to each other among the hacienda Indians;

and this is what makes possible what we are about to relate.

If the hardship of the Indians' lot was merely slavery, it might be

argued that there were slender grounds for our indictment. Slavery may

under certain circumstances be far from an evil, where the backward

condition of a race is such as to justify its temporary existence, and

where the slave-owner can be trusted. But the slave-owner can very

seldom be trusted, and he certainly cannot be in Yucatan. It is no

exaggeration to say that the enslavement of the Indians of Yucatan never

has had, never can have, justification. Conceived in an unholy alliance

between the Church and brute force, it has grown with the centuries into

a race-degradation which has as its only objects the increasing of the

millions of the slave-owners and the gratification of their foul lusts.

The social condition of Yucatan to-day represents as infamous a

conspiracy to exploit and prostitute a whole race as the history of the

world affords. Yucatan is governed by a group of millionaire monopolists

whose interests are identical, banded together to deny all justice to

the Indians, who, if need be, are treated in a way an Englishman would

blush to treat his dog. "The Indians hear only with their backs." Yes,

but the ill-treatment of the poor wretches often does not end with a

whipping: it ends in murder. We will give particulars of some cases.

Some years ago an Indian was thrashed to death on the estate of the

brother of a high official in Yucatan. The body was easily disposed of,

buried at night like a dog's. But some of his fellow-workmen talked, it

seems, and news of the crime found its way to the capital. There a young

lawyer, Perez Escofee, indignant at the report, took a solicitor down to

the hacienda and got from some of the Indians affidavits as to their

knowledge of the murder. Armed with these he published the facts in the

Merida newspaper, demanding an investigation. The haciendado concerned

sent his solicitor down and obtained from the very Indians sworn

contrary statements. On these Perez, his adviser, and the editor who had

had the courage to publish Escofee's first appeal, were arrested and

thrown into prison. That is three years and more ago, and Escofee and

his lawyer were still in Merida prison without trial at the time of our

visit, if our information be correct. The haciendado's family dares not

allow, and has so far proved powerful enough to prevent, a trial. The

third man was liberated owing to very influential friends who threatened

exposure if he were not released.

Another loathsome case was that of the beating to death of an Indian

girl of eleven by her old Yucatecan mistress. The poor child had been

guilty of some trifling disobedience, and the murderess, having plenty

of money, had no difficulty in getting an order for burial, the death

being announced as due to pneumonia. The truth would never have come out

but for the prattling of the granddaughter of this human beast who,

child-like, told some neighbours. Yucatecan mistresses beat their Indian

servants mercilessly for slight faults; but it will scarcely seem

credible to English readers that Yucatecans are so lost to all sense of

manliness that they, too, are often guilty of the basest cruelty towards

the women servants. We heard of one case where a Yucatecan, because the

Indian girl was a little late in bringing him his early breakfast of

milk and bread, threw in her face the jug of boiling milk, and beat her

over the head with the long stick of crusty roll till she was

unconscious. For such cowardly curs there is no punishment. In this case

the poor girl confessed to a friend that for days she had murder in her

heart, and this feeling of revenge worried her so that at last she went

to the priest for advice. That worthy told her she must be docile: that

she must submit herself in all things to her master. This is really the

worst feature of the conspiracy to degrade the Indians, the part the

Church plays. The priests back up the haciendados in everything because

it is from them they get their money.

Another outrageous case was that in which a very rich Yucatecan was

concerned. Because his Indian driver did not go quick enough to please

him, he thrashed him into unconsciousness in the street, and afterwards

had him put in prison on some trumped-up charge for six months. This

case, however, was so public, many passers witnessing the grossness of

the assault, that the family found it necessary to come to terms with

the injured man.

It would not be at all true to say that the Indians are often beaten to

death. Labour is far too scarce in Yucatan. A perfect network of

regulations and laws are in force on all the haciendas to keep the

Indians. The unfortunate wretches are absolutely essential to the

fortune-getting of the Yucatecans, and are far too precious to be

recklessly killed off. The haciendas are regarded as excellent breeding

grounds for new generations of slaves. Thus a rule is that no Indian of

either sex shall marry off the hacienda. The real truth is that the

Indians are nothing but cattle, and just as much the property of their

master as the heifers in a farmyard in England belong to the farmer. To

a friend of ours an Indian came, saying he owed his master one hundred

dollars, and begging that his debt might be paid and that he might come

to work for him. Well, our friend agreed to pay his debt. Then round

comes the master to say that the man really owed him three hundred and

forty dollars--which of course was a lie, to be supported, if need be,

by forged entries in the hacienda books. He further says he will not

accept payment, as he wishes to get the man back and whip him publicly

to make an example of him. The man said he would rather die than go

back; and it ended by the master, fearful lest the slave should kill

himself, selling him for his debt to another haciendado, who, in turn,

would get all the work he could out of the poor devil. Thus, though

there is no open slave market in Merida, these cowardly slave-owners

traffic in their slaves at their own free will, and there is literally

no escape for the Indians.

There are three reasons for the continuance of this cruel system. First,

the prostitution of the Church to the haciendados. Superstitious to a

degree remarkable even among the many semi-civilised peoples who have

been victimised by Catholicism, the Mayans look to their priests as

semi-divinities whose word is law; and a debauched priesthood, eager to

make friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness, and themselves

unscrupulous in self-indulgence, greedily support slavery.

Secondly, the lack of loyalty among the Indians to each other. This is

the natural effect of the centuries of oppression which they have

endured. All the manliness of the race, all the spirit and nobility of a

nature which wrung a tribute even from Spanish historians, have been

effectually crushed out of them. This is indeed the saddest side of it

all. The Yucatecan bullies have done their work so well that if the

Indians of all the haciendas could be asked whether they were contented,

a large majority, possibly almost all, would apathetically declare

themselves content. They are like prisoners who have been so long in the

gloom of a dungeon that they would be actually terrified of the

sunshine.

And thirdly, the water supply is an enormous auxiliary in the

maintaining of the present disgraceful state of affairs. As we have

said, there are no rivers in Yucatan, and the only water available is

that obtained from the cenotes or wells attached to the haciendas.

Practically you may say that the whole water supply of the country is in

the hands of the landlords. To leave one farm would only mean going to

another for the miserable serf. Each haciendado helps every other in

keeping the slaves on the places. Thus, turn where he may, the Indian

has no refuge but the woods, from which he would be hunted with dogs

just as Mrs. Beecher Stowe has told us was always done in the South.

He submits to his fate; but hard as we have shown that to be, there is

worse to be told. A slave, with a wage which is a mockery, a pittance,

given really to make more plausible the case of his master, he must see

his daughters submit to a systematic tyranny of lust which is really so

base that it is difficult to write of it in calm language. Here in

Yucatan every sexual horror which in the story of the South in the

'sixties horrified the world is reproduced, cloaked by the foulest

hypocrisy. The Indian from her childhood up is the prey of the

haciendado and his sons. From their foul clutches she cannot escape. If

her father had, poor devil, any scruples left, he must stifle them or be

prepared to risk his life by objecting. As a matter of fact, so immoral

and degraded have almost all the hacienda Indians become, that

objections to this _droit du Seigneur_, this _Jus Primae Noctis_, are

almost unheard of. We are not writing without weighing our words

carefully when we say that there are farms in plenty where the

slave-owner demands as part of his serfs' obligations the right to every

lass as soon as she enters on womanhood, sometimes much before. He

demands it, and he does what he will with these children, for they are

usually little else; and there is no remedy for the parents.

Inconceivable cynicism is the attitude of all Yucatecans towards sexual

excesses. The young sons of fourteen and upwards are not restrained

from, indeed they are often actually encouraged by fathers and even

mothers in, indulging their boyish passions at the expense of the little

Indian slave-girls. It is no answer to say, as some Yucatecans do, that

the girls are in very many cases more than willing victims of their

boy-lovers. Yucatecan lads are notably handsome, and even maids of the

cold North would find it hard to withstand their wooing. It remains the

fact that these youthful Don Juans in many cases do not woo at all. They

command; and the girl-child must go at night to the boy's room or be

cruelly beaten by him till she surrenders. If she plucked up courage to

complain to her mistress, she would be simply laughed at. She is but a

little slave-girl. What better fate could she ask for herself than to

have thus early attracted the notice of the lad who will some day be her

owner? And if a child results, why, it is but one more hacienda baby,

brought up with the rest. No one cares; and if it be a girl, why then in

the fullness of years it will most probably attract the notice of its

own father, who by that time will have inherited the estates. The girl

would not know, and dare not disobey if she did; and it is quite certain

the man by that time would have ruined so many Indian girls that he

would be past any sensitiveness where his self-gratifications were

concerned. It is possible that the reader will by this time be willing

to acquit us of any unfairness of which we may have seemed guilty in

Chapter IV., when we divided the population of so-called civilised

Yucatan into "Savages" and "Slaves."

As a rule it may be said that the Yucatecan is a benevolent master. It

pays him better to be so, and every Yucatecan's one rule in life is to

do what pays him. Indeed there is really no reason for him to be harsh.

The average Indian is as submissive as a well-whipped hound, creeping up

after a thrashing to kiss his master's hand. This Stephens actually

witnessed, and the miserable slaves are always made to do it.[16] He

seldom disobeys: he works uncomplainingly all his life for no pay; and

he breeds pretty daughters for his lord's gratification. The Yucatecan

would indeed be hard to please if he quarrelled with such an exemplary

beast of burden. And the habit of submission learnt through centuries of

tyranny has affected the Mayan women. They exhibit a complacency towards

their Yucatecan lovers which suggests, what alas! cannot be denied, that

chastity means little to them to-day. Visiting a large place, a little

incident struck us as very significant. The haciendado was showing us

his kitchens. Many Indian women were busied at trays and tables

preparing meal and so forth. One beautiful girl, about eighteen perhaps,

was bending over her task, and as our host passed her he grasped her

plump brown neck, squeezing it as one would pet a dog. If we lived a

century we should not forget the way that girl looked up at him. It was

a mixture of animal submission and feminine coquetry which there was no

mistaking. There was in the girl's eyes something which told volumes,

and they were not very pleasant reading for any men who have learnt that

the love of women is a prize which should be earned.

In truth, Mayan morality is very, very lax, and the blame lies on the

"Christians" who came four centuries back to Yucatan to civilise and

preach the love of God to the Indians. They cannot wriggle out of that

blame: they cannot shirk it. Even if doubt could be entertained as to

the ancient Mayan laws we have quoted in Chapter XIV. showing the

sanctity attached by them to chastity, there can be no ground for

disbelieving the Spanish historians. They bear united testimony to the

evils which resulted from the Conquest. They state that the Mayan women

dearly prized their chastity, but that all high ideals were lost on the

arrival of the Spaniards. Yes, the "Christians" have changed all that.

Who will be the thrower of the first stone at the humble Indian lassie

who prefers the kisses of a lover to the whip and starvation? It is all

very sad, but so natural. They have learnt their lesson. Their masters,

their priests even, have taught them not to value chastity. What avails

it for them to struggle, even if they had the wit to do so?

From our balcony at Tizimin we watched one morning played that comedy of

life which so often turns to tragedy. An Indian girl, a beautiful young

creature of about twelve, her soft white huipil clinging round the

dainty brown calves, her basket of fruit balanced on her small black

head, pattered down the dusty road. There met her a Yucatecan, young,

tall, with big black moustache and fine eyes: just the face to win her

simple heart. A look, a glance, a giggle. They stopped to speak. By the

pretty toss of her head you knew he was pressing her to see him, and she

was refusing. But she would, of course. Her heart, simple as a bird's,

would be a-flutter till she had given her handsome lover all, till she

had run eager to meet Life and its secrets half-way. For him it was the

merest incident. A month or two and she would be forgotten. What did it

matter? She's only an Indian!

[Illustration: TYPES OF MAYAN WOMEN AND MEN.]

Perhaps he is right: perhaps it does not really matter. Perhaps, as she

clasps closer to her brown breast the baby clinging with greedy lips to

her nipple, she, too, will think it does not matter: perhaps she will

not think at all. She is a mother: it matters little by whom. She has

done her duty to God Who willed her maker of men. She has done her duty

to her master who bids her make him slaves. Perhaps in the black head,

bending, crooning, over the morsel of brown flesh, there will be no

feeling, more or less, than the apathetic mother-love of the cow as it

licks with loving tongue each spot on its new born calf. Perhaps,

perhaps not. He would be bold indeed who would dare to say that man has

a right to command that apathy.

And so, after centuries of oppression, the race is dead, a chattel, body

and soul, of a corrupt and degraded people. When the task of revivifying

these poor Mayans with the elixir of freedom is undertaken, if it ever

is (and pray God it be), by the United States of America, it will be as

difficult as nursing back to convalescence a patient sick unto death. No

beings will at first understand freedom so ill. They are like prisoners

who have been for weary years in the darkness of unlighted dungeons. The

glare of the sunlight of freedom will be too dazzling for their poor

atrophied eyes. They will shade them and cringe back into the gloom.

Well, on p. 324 we left our Indians returning from their day's work as

the sun is sinking. There is little more for them to do. The cattle to

tend, their humble meal to eat; and then from the little stucco chapel

rings out the bell for vespers. The blue of the heavens has changed to a

steel, fading on the western horizon into the palest lemon. Over the

baked earth steals the cool breath of night: the silence is broken only

by the hum of some night-moth, the cry of an owl in the distant woods,

the lowing of the cattle in the corral. It is very wonderful, this first

half-hour of the tropic night. In the stillness, sitting on the broad

stone verandah, we presently all silently stand when the vesper bell's

monotonous tinkle stops, and, like a funeral toll, nine solemn notes

sound for the Nine Mysteries. As the echo of the ninth dies away, the

hacienda day is done. In the darkness the white-clothed, brown-legged

figures glide up, hat in hand, and greet the haciendado and his guests

with "Buenas noches!" ("Good-night!").

Ah! dear gentle brown-skinned folk, your night has indeed come; but it

is scarcely good. Your heritage is another's. You are his--bodies and

souls! Your strength and muscle are given you to enrich him: your backs

are his to wheal: your sons and daughters are his: all that you have is

his to give or to take away. Truly has the night come! "Blessed are the

meek, for they shall inherit the earth." You are meek, but you are

disinherited. Verily! there is nothing sacred to man; not even the

Beatitudes.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] We saw the Indian women go down on one knee and kiss the

hand of the haciendado whose farm we were viewing.

CHAPTER XX

YUCATAN AS IT IS TO-DAY AND THE YUCATECANS

The Yucatecans are a race of parvenus. They have been unfortunate both

by inheritance and fate. The Spanish have never been successful

colonisers. History teaches that they have always suffered from "wind in

the head," both socially and religiously. They are bigots, and they are

naturally bullies. To these racial failings Fate has added for the

Yucatecans the last and most fatal of gifts, sudden wealth. There is no

doubt about the wealth of the Yucatecans. Many of them are rich beyond

the dreams of even their avarice, and that is saying much. But when to

mushroom millionaires is given the governance of an enslaved race, it

would be nothing short of a miracle if the very finest and largest breed

of parvenus was not produced. If you think of all the bad qualities, the

pettinesses and meannesses of all the parvenus you have ever met or

heard of, you will have some sort of mental picture of a Yucatecan. If

there are any unpleasant characteristics of the parvenu you have

forgotten, the typical Yucatecan has got those too.

Avarice is their besetting sin. Money is their god. There is a saying

that "Jews cannot live in Yucatan." The sharpest Hebrew would come off

second-best in a business deal with a Yucatecan. This is the

characteristic of all ages and all ranks. The Yucatecan is always "on

the make." It matters not if he is a multi-millionaire. The richest man

in the city of Merida would not be in the least offended if you offered

to buy the flowers from his patio or garden. He himself would cut what

you wanted and drive a hard bargain with you. In a rich quarter of the

capital a wealthy family make a practice every dry season of selling

water at ten centavos a pail! A foreign resident, accustomed to buy eggs

from the servants of one of the great land-owning families of Merida,

called one day and found the housekeeper out. The little daughter of the

house, ten years old, and entitled, on coming of age, to a million

dollars in her own right, overheard the caller speaking to one of the

maids, and came out to offer for six centavos one egg which her pet hen

had laid. Three centavos is the price of an egg all the year through in

Yucatan!

There are no poor Yucatecans. Small wonder: for not only do they lose no

opportunity of raking in the shekels, but they openly boast that they

never entertain or show hospitality, unless it pays them to do so. We

can bear eloquent witness to this, for from end to end of our tour never

once was so much as a cup of coffee offered us by a Yucatecan, with the

single exception of the semi-official breakfast we earlier described. At

the town of Tizimin, where we spent Christmas, though the Jefe and all

the authorities of the town knew we were inhabiting a hovel destitute of

everything except pegs in the walls on which to swing our hammocks, not

a soul in that town of several hundreds of well-to-do people was found

to come forward with the offer of a chair or a table, a basin to wash

in, or the loan of a little kitchen crockery. No, if we needed such

things we must buy them; and if we did not wish to do that, why then we

must go without. We had gone to Yucatan intent on roughing it, and we

did not mind dining with one of our baggage boxes for table, squatting

Turk-fashion on the stone floor. We only mention it as typical of

Yucatecan inhospitality, which really passes all understanding.

But rich as the richest Yucatecans are, it is curious to see how little

they know how to spend their money. A dozen shoddy rocking-chairs, a

roll-top desk, a few Oriental rugs or mats, some painfully modern china,

and the walls adorned (!) with a half-dozen hideous oleographs: there

you have the typical room of the typical rich Yucatecan. They feel this

lack of intelligence in using their enormous wealth, and it leads them

into all kinds of bizarre extravagances. They can spend money when they

like and when it adds, or they think it adds, to their comfort. One

henequen lord went a few years ago to the St. Louis Exhibition. He hired

a special steamship, and, on reaching New Orleans, ordered a special

train, making the condition that it was to travel never quicker than

fifteen miles an hour, and must stop at sunset, no matter how

inconvenient this proved to the railway officials. This precious train

cost him six hundred pounds; and his whole trip of thirty days cost

sixty thousand dollars, or six thousand pounds.

As a people the Yucatecans are illiterate to a degree which is almost

inconceivable. With wealth untold, they care nothing for books or

learning. A man worth three millions sterling confessed to us that there

was not a book in his house, and that he never read a paper. And he was

certainly one of the most intelligent men in the country, and a man,

too, who had travelled extensively in Europe. But if the men are

supremely ignorant of everything except money-making, and uninterested

in aught but the gross sensuality which is the be-all and the end-all of

their worthless lives, the women are worse. It is really not their

fault; for they are little better, if at all, than odalisques, leading

in youth the lives of toys; in age spending their days in over-eating

and over-sleeping. Of their colossal ignorance of facts within the

knowledge of every National School child, the following is an amusing

example. A young Yucatecan lady, daughter of one of the richest of the

families in the State, was sent to New York for a trip for her health,

and she was to go on to England. She suffered so much from seasickness

on the voyage out that the doctors in America said that she must not

undertake the longer voyage to England, but must return at once to

Yucatan. Her married sister in Merida, talking of her return, said she

would come back by land. The family are so enormously rich that it was

quite possible for them to contemplate the great cost of the overland

trip; but it was pointed out to the señora that the invalid would have

many weeks of travel, and would have to make a very wide detour south,

to avoid the swamps of Chiapas. "Oh no" sweetly replied the

millionairess, "she is to come by diligence via Havana!"

The illiteracy of the wealthier classes is reproduced in a grosser form

among the ordinary Yucatecans. They have no thoughts beyond their food,

their women, and their drinks. But there is much to be said for the

_dolce far niente_ view of life, and one could easily forgive this race

of sybarites if they were otherwise agreeable. Really it sounds like an

exaggeration, but the Yucatecans seemed to us the most disagreeable folk

in the world. They are avaricious to the degree of dishonesty. They will

not actually steal, but they will cheat you every time and chortle over

it. Quite a big man, a Jefe, who also kept a shop in one town we

visited, again and again tried to cheat us out of odd centavos over some

trifling purchase. It was incredible, but it was deliberate. They are

entirely untrustworthy in business: they will give their word and break

it without scruple if it suits their interests. A practical example of

this came to our notice in the islands, where there is a good deal of

trade with American ports such as Key West. An American skipper told us

that he had, at the moment of speaking, no less than one hundred and

sixty pairs of women's shoes on his hands, through the impertinent

shuffling of his customers. They would ask him to bring them shoes from

the States, give the number, and then if the shoes did not quite look

what they thought they wanted, they said "_No quiero_" ("I do not

want"), and the poor trader, having paid cash for the footgear, was

"landed."

No Yucatecan will pay a debt unless you dun him _ad nauseam_. It is

always "_mañana_" (to-morrow), and, as the stranger in Yucatan learns to

know only too well, mañana never comes. If a Yucatecan owes you five

dollars, he will pay you three. For themselves, they are the most

remorseless dunners. If you have the misfortune to owe a few dollars,

for, say, the hire of a volan, you will have the wretch literally before

dawn at your door, beating at it and demanding the money, though he well

knows you are stopping some days. It is not so much the demanding of the

money, which is, after all, their right, as it is the grossly uncivil

way they do it. We found this to be the experience of all foreigners

resident in the country, so we were forced to acquit ourselves of having

any especially dishonest look. An American told us that, owing a

trifling sum to a wealthy woman, the latter came to the hotel and

demanded the money with an insolence which was almost intolerable.

Our friend the American skipper, who had traded with the islands for

more than ten years, told us that the insolence of the people in matters

of trade was extreme. Knowing him to have boots or shirts to sell, they

would call from their doors, "_Capitan, yo quiero_" ("I want"), whatever

it was. "Damn 'em," said the little man, "let 'em come up to my store

and choose. No, they want me to fag things to their doors, literally put

the boots on their feet." Another peculiarity of the people is that they

do not recognise a difference of goods. They think the cheapest shoe or

cloth should be the standard for all goods.

The Yucatecan women are, there is no denying it, very often extremely

lovely. It is just that beauty which one instinctively associates with a

people who have brought sexual relations to a fine art of absolute

self-indulgence. By one of the only three Englishmen in the country we

were told that the state of morality among the Yucatecans themselves,

quite apart from the very sad side of the slavery question to which we

have referred in the last chapter, beggars description. We can well

believe it.

Marriages are contracted at very early ages, sometimes the bride's and

groom's years totalling a good deal under thirty. Among the wealthier

Yucatecans marriages are nearly always _de convenance_, and are arranged

by the two families: the boy seldom, the girl never, having a say in the

matter. Thereafter the child-wife passes into a quasi-seraglio type of

life. There are never any men visitors to the house, and such things as

wholesome exercise are rigorously taboo to all upper-class Yucatecan

matrons. If the doctor orders exercise, the miserable little animated

toy of the Yucatecan Croesus drives some miles out of the city, and then

stops her carriage and solemnly walks up and down the dusty roadway for

the allotted time. No Yucatecan woman of position must ever walk in

public: that would be a social _faux pas_ far more serious than to have

a child before marriage. The exalted women of Merida very rarely leave

their homes till dark, when they drive round the plaza. Occasionally

they go shopping, when they remain in their carriages, and the goods are

brought out to them by obsequious shopmen. The life they lead is of the

most empty and vapid nature. Surrounded by dozens of Indian servants,

they loll all the day in their hammocks, listening to such gossip as

their women friends or their servants can tell them. A curious result of

this harem life they lead is the roaring trade done by Turkish pedlars

who travel all over Yucatan. Hours are spent by the rich women examining

their rolls of cloths and finery. Once a year the Paris milliners and

modistes visit Merida and take the orders of the richer wives.

The women accept their lot in life very philosophically. It cannot be

said of them, as Canning said of the Dutch traders, and as might only

too truly be said of many English and American women, that "in matters

of commerce the fault of the Dutch is giving too little and asking too

much." They ask very little but the amorous attentions of their lords

and masters, as long as their looks last; when they see themselves

replaced with really complete apathy in those special functions. Not

that even in their bridal years they have not already been well

broken-in by a running fire of infidelities on the part of their

menfolk. But they have long been used to that, when as children they

have seen the fate of their little Indian girl playmates. Of the

Yucatecan woman one might say only too truly, quoting the reported

saying of the Empress Eugenie when her rather erratic Emperor brought up

to introduce a countess, who was notorious as a royal mistress, and who

on this particular evening appeared as "Queen of Hearts" with a large

gold heart swinging some way below her corsage, "_Madame, vous portez

votre cœur très bas_." She does, but she really is not to blame. She

has been taught nothing better.

The Suffragette question has not yet invaded Yucatan, and lovely woman

is content with the life of a lapdog. As well ask the Dudus and Haidees

of a Turkish pasha's harem to rebel as these charming señoras, swinging

in their hammocks and puffing at their cigarettes. As for housekeeping,

they are contemptible in their uselessness. An American lady very kindly

volunteered one day to show a Yucatecan lady how to make a cake to which

she had taken a great fancy. While our friend was busy mixing the

ingredients, she quite naturally said, "While I'm doing this, you beat

up the eggs." A look of absolute horror came over the woman's face.

"Beat up eggs! Oh! I could not possibly do that. One of my Indian girls

can do that for you." But as we have said, they fill the rôle of pretty

toys to perfection; and they later prove excellent mothers. They are

great breeders, these Yucatecans, and family life is of the closest, the

big mansions of Merida often housing four generations. Curiously enough,

despite the tropical climate, the Yucatecan woman retains her looks

quite late into life very often. Our hostess at the breakfast was the

mother of seven children, the eldest a girl of eleven, as tall as

herself, and yet she certainly did not look more than twenty-two or

three, and so girlish that it was difficult to believe she was a mother

at all. But a far more remarkable case was that of a woman who was but

forty-six and had had twenty-four sons! We did not see this latter-day

Hecuba, but we were told that she was still quite comely.

There is very little rebellion among Yucatecan women at their fate, and

we certainly heard nothing at all of divorce. We do not think it exists

as an institution, though it is possible that in this, as in all else,

the men have their own way and, if they want to, can get rid of their

wives. Among the less wealthy families, the marriages are less formal in

their makings and the wives do more work: that is really the only

difference. Re-marriage among the men is the rule. Most of the elder men

appear to have been married at least three times, which rather suggests

that the average life for males is longer than for females. This is

possibly so. The Yucatecans certainly look a healthy people, though the

superfluous fat which is noticeable even in the boys and girls scarcely

suggests real constitutional strength. What surprised us greatly was the

terrible prevalence of leprosy among the richest classes. It is not an

exaggeration to say that you could scarcely find a wealthy family

without this ghastly taint; and some of the greatest land-owners and

their children are eaten up with it. No steps appear to be taken to

isolate the cases, and just before our arrival in the country a young

leper, enormously rich, had contracted a marriage with a lovely girl,

though he was then in a moribund condition. He had died a few months

after his wedding, and while we were in Merida the bride died of the

loathsome disease. It is said to have been brought from Spain in the

earliest days of the Conquest, and it has remained curiously restricted

to the richer classes. You see little or nothing of it among the lowlier

Yucatecans, and it appears unknown among the Indians, who, as a rule,

are wonderfully free of all skin troubles. The lepers or those

threatened with the terrible curse were some of them men of advanced

years, and their general health did not appear in any way affected. One

old fellow had but just lost two brothers from it, but he himself had so

far escaped, though his children certainly looked tainted. Like

insanity, it often skips a generation. It was curious to see these

sybaritical plutocrats, eager of life's "ecstasy's utmost to clutch at

the core," living their apolaustic days out, haunted by this terrible

shadow.

The Church! What can we say about the Church in Yucatan? Does the reader

remember those spittoons in Merida Cathedral which we mentioned in an

earlier chapter? Well, those ugly etceteras of an ugly habit are a

fitting commentary upon the Church. It was in 1867 that President Benito

Juarez disestablished the Church throughout the whole of the Republic of

Mexico. The effect has been simply disastrous as far as Yucatan is

concerned. Her Church is so discreditable that the Pope would be really

only consulting the best interests of Catholicism if he abolished the

priests altogether. As there is no State provision, the padres must

"hold their private dripping-pans to catch the public grease"; and

right skilfully they do this. A set of dirty unwashed rogues, men whose

faces are enough to hang them, men whom no father would trust with his

girl or boy the other side of a glass door, they are most of them

"carpet-baggers," wastrels from Spain, many expelled for very excellent

reasons from their colleges, who come into Yucatan to find a living.

Even the amiable Stephens, who looked at everything Yucatecan, except

the garrapatas, through rose-tinted glasses, is obliged to confess that

their morals were loose. But that was a long time ago. They are much

looser now. The last incumbent of Tizimin was drunk every day, and kept

twelve Indian girls in the parsonage. Even the Tiziminites rebelled at

last, and this clerical Brigham Young had to go.

His place had been taken at the time of our arrival by a priest who had,

it was said, means of his own, and had come from Spain especially to

feed the "hungry sheep" of the poky little Yucatecan town. He was a

little ratty man with a face suggestive of previous incarnations as a

ferret and a money-lender. A blood-sucking, lecherous little thief: that

is what the man looked, and we have good reason to believe we have done

him no great injustice in this description. He was the hero of the

"corner in candles" to which we referred in the chapter dealing with

Tizimin. We had called in at the tienda to buy a candle by the light of

which to eat our humble supper, but the storekeeper told us he had not

got a candle left. To our astonishment he said that the padre had bought

up every candle in the place: that, as it was fiesta week, all the

Indians would buy candles to burn before the images of the Virgin and

the saints; and that the wily curer of souls had, in short, made a

corner in dips. The shopkeeper jubilantly announced that he himself had

made a profit out of the deal of one hundred dollars, but that the

priest would make at least three thousand dollars or three hundred

pounds, enough for him to live on very comfortably for the rest of the

year. There is evidently a great deal in candles in Yucatan.

The tienda-keeper assured us that the padre was a good man; but we had

our doubts on this point. This cunning vicegerent of God had a young

priest to help him in the duties, to whom he paid the handsome salary of

a shilling a day, of course providing him with food and lodging. We saw

the lad daily sitting at the window of the rectory, and it would be

difficult to imagine a more saturnine, sensual face. The relations of

these men to the girls and women are those of privileged lovers. They

are in truth licensed libertines, whose "benefit of clergy" covers a

multitude of sins venial and otherwise. It did not need great acumen to

guess at some of these latter. Six priests were recently deported from

Merida on the gravest charges: no prosecution being contemplated because

one of the boys was the son of a very prominent official.

The priests, who are not allowed to wear clerical attire in the streets,

are on the best terms with the haciendados, and do their utmost, by

trading on the superstition of the unfortunate Indians, to keep slavery

in being. There is no appeal for the hacienda slave from the action of

master backed up by a priest. Friendly with the local slave-owner, the

padre can, and does, seduce what girls he pleases. It is most unlikely

that the bishop would hear of it. The priests must look for monetary

support from the land-owners, so they are cheek by jowl with them all

the time. In the train one day we saw a band of young haciendados

elaborately mocking the intoning of the Mass, while a priest who was

with them was holding his sides with delighted laughter. All the

Yucatecans will gladly join in a jest at the expense of Mother Church.

One night at a show in Merida where some very questionable cinematograph

views were delighting the worthy townfolk and their children, the

loudest guffaws and shrieks of joy were evoked by a view of a church in

the course of repainting and cleaning. You first saw the worthy padre

directing the workmen. Then the painter leaves a pot of black paint on

the pedestal of a statue of the Virgin. Enter on the scene two ladies.

They approach the image, reverently cross themselves, and, mistaking the

paint for a piscina, dip their fingers in what they think holy water,

crossing their foreheads and then their faces. The fun comes in when

they catch sight of each other. This mockery simply enchanted the

Catholic audience.

Talking of piscinas, at the south door of the Tizimin church was one. In

it was a chipped enamel bowl, half full of water with a suspicious

sediment. We just touched the edge of the cup, and the sediment began to

move about "on its own." The water was alive with myriads of small worms

and magotty creatures! The man who had faith enough to believe that the

touching of his forehead with that stinking compound was a short cut to

salvation deserves his faith. There was another of these tadpole basins

in the church at Izamal; and judging from reports that reached us, holy

water with some "body" in it seemed quite the fashion in the Yucatecan

churches. _Agua Sagrada_ indeed! _Agua podrida_ would certainly be a

better name.

The spittoons in the cathedral at Merida had replicas, we found, in most

of the churches. But the palm must surely be awarded to a "Don't Spit"

notice which we saw on an altar in one church. That the notice was there

was no mere accident either, for we saw it in December, and when we

returned through the town in the spring it was still there. Evidently

that was the permanent position of this offensive decoration.

But at least the clergy can plead a very real necessity for the

spittoons and such notices. It is not a pleasant subject, but any one

who wrote of the Yucatecans without mentioning the absolutely universal

habit would be a faulty chronicler. At all times, everywhere, everybody,

young and old, of both sexes, expectorate. They have not the excuse of

smoking, for the children and young girls are as guilty of this horrible

and unhealthy habit as their elders. The prevalence of the practice was

so marked that we asked several Yucatecans to explain what seemed both

climatically and physically inexplicable. They pleaded guilty to what

really amounted to a racial custom, but they could not explain it. While

we were being taken round the Museum of Merida, the eleven-year-old son

of the curator spat the whole time on the floor. One day in the islands

a baker-boy of about twelve came to our hut to sell us cakes. While we

were looking in his basket, he spat on the floor by our hammock-side. He

seemed absolutely amazed when we reproved him for it. Quite a

gentlemanly ranchero who walked some miles with us one gloriously sunny

day in Cozumel hawked and spat, not once or twice, but literally every

half-minute till we wondered how his poor rasped throat stood the strain

hour after hour. The queer thing was that the habit was not prevalent

among the Indians. It seemed to be essentially a Yucatecan vice: it

really amounted to that.

But to return to the Church. At the risk of appearing prejudiced, we

must say that the Catholicism of the country is so decadent that its

disgraceful services would be best done without. The drunken priest at

Campeachy, with an unlighted cigarette in his hand, seated in a chair at

the altar, his legs stuck up on the chancel rails, trying to take part

in the intoning of Mass is not the exception he should be. Good padres

there must be, men who would still deserve the high encomiums that

Stephens found it possible to write of the Yucatecan clergy of his day.

We saw nothing of them. We saw the prostitution of a great

ecclesiastical institution, which, with all its terribly bloody history,

its soul-choking bigotry, has yet numbered among its servants some of

the noblest men who have ever lived. We saw Catholicism at its worst,

and its worst is very bad indeed. Nobody, not the veriest

Non-conformist, could surely speak without reverence and admiration of

the noble old man who to-day rules over the Church of Rome. He,

assuredly, would be the first to grieve over the decadence of his creed

in this far-off corner of the Catholic world, as there can be no doubt

he sorrows at the bloody past of a religion which has ever lived, and

must ever live, on the ignorance--invincible in the case of the better

educated--of its followers.

If graver charges lacked against Catholicism, there would always be the

indelible blot on its teachings that they tend inevitably to encourage

indifference and callousness, if not actually cruelty, towards the

animal world. Everybody who has had the misfortune to visit the market

of a French town, such as Dieppe or Havre, or has driven behind a

Neapolitan cabman, knows more than he or she wishes of Latin cruelty. It

is not really that they desire to inflict pain for the mere delight of

inflicting it, though there are some fiends enough for that. No, their

creed and whole upbringing rob them of that lively sympathy with God's

creatures which He, but surely not for tyranny, has placed in our power.

This Catholic characteristic is very marked in Yucatan. The pleasantest

Yucatecan families we met on our wanderings were living happily amid the

victims of such cruelty as would keep an Englishman, if he were capable

of it, awake at nights. These were the dogs. Every Yucatecan keeps--it

is really absolutely euphemistic to use the word--not one or two, but a

whole pack of assorted terriers and hunting dogs; but he never bothers

to feed them. It is really a heartbreaking sight for a lover of animals

to go into one of the huts or ranches and see the poor things. They hang

round the doorways, sometimes so thin and weak that they cannot stand

up. Some poor, halfbreed collie will raise its weary head to your

knee-level and stare piteously up at you with eyes which are really

hollow from starvation. In one ranch we counted a dozen of all sizes and

ages and every one of them was a disgrace to their owner, who, as it

happened, was quite a good fellow in other ways. No, he could not see

why he should feed the dogs. They went out hunting with him, those at

least that were not too weak, and then they got a square meal of

peccary-guts or other offal. But the man could not see that the gaunt

staring-eyed creatures, their ribs almost seeming to be on the point of

piercing through their coats, their bellies one sorry flap of fur, were

a real disgrace to him and his children. Wherever you go in Yucatan you

see these spectres of dogs: they are really nothing else. As a witty

fellow-traveller put it, they have to lean against a fence to bark and

have to stand a long while to make a shadow.

This indifference towards animals is general among Yucatecans. There is

no one to raise a protest against the barbarously cruel practice they

have of plucking live fowls. The miserable birds, with their skins still

bleeding, are hawked round the streets, carried always by their legs. It

is enough to make any one sick. Brought up amid such callousness, it is

not at all surprising that the children are usually brutal to every

creature they have no reason to fear. On one of the islands we saw a

very characteristic incident. We were on a pier, waiting for a boat.

Three boys were fishing, the eldest perhaps thirteen. One of the smaller

boys caught a fish. The eldest seized it from him, and, producing a

knife, stuck the blade through the gills, thus pinning the struggling

fish to the boards of the jetty. Two or three times he stabbed the fish,

each time exclaiming "_More, more, more_" ("Die, die, die"). When the

poor little creature had ceased to flutter its tail, the lad

deliberately wiped the bloodstained knife on the bare brown calf of his

smaller boy companion, who was lying on his stomach with his head over

the jetty side. It was not so much the killing of the fish which struck

us, though that was cruel enough, as the extraordinary exclamation. An

English or American boy could have killed the fish just as cruelly; but

neither of them would have been capable of that ferocious exhortation.

Nothing could have exceeded the savage joy in the power to kill which

was expressed in the tone of the lad's voice as he uttered those three

words.

Inquiring at a hut one day for a fowl, we were taken by a positive

fairy of a little girl, perhaps nine, to the yard where, "regardless of

their fate," the poultry were picking about. Our golden-haired guide

(she was a beautiful specimen of the fair Latin) seized a dainty white

hen and, swinging her by the legs, invited us to kill her there and

then. It was really too much for our sensitiveness, and we bolted, only,

half-way down the village, to hear some one running after us. Our

fairy's do-a-deal-at-any-cost Yucatecan blood was up, and, thinking our

sudden exit was due to a dissatisfaction with the price asked, she had

brought after us another bird which she said could be sold cheaper. It

was a perky little cockerel, and as it sat in what should have been

those tender child's arms, and looked up at us with its bright beady

eyes, we really felt so ashamed that we could not look it in the face.

To have ordered its death would have been an impossibility, however

ravenous we had been. We stroked its head and begged its untender little

mistress to let it live a while longer.

But all this is due to a lack of sympathy with the animal world.

Unfortunately deliberate cruelty is also very common. A people who could

find fun in watching pain deserve the name of savages. In Merida you can

see a brute throw a poisoned crust of bread to a stray dog, and then be

joined by a crowd of folks who form a laughing circle round the dying

animal to gloat over its agonised writhings.

This terrible cruelty is a sad heritage of all Yucatecans. The Spaniard

is naturally cruel, and there is no kind of doubt that the Mayans, like

all the Indian races of the Americas, are so too. Thus the Yucatecans

inherit this detestable trait from both their parents. One has to be

very sharp with one's Indian servants to prevent cruelty. Stephens

relates how his men found an iguana in one of the ruins in a crevice.

They pulled until the tail came off. "They then untied the ropes of

their sandals," writes Stephens, "and fastening them above the hind

legs, and pulling till the long body seemed parting like the tail, they

at length pulled him out. They secured him by a gripe under the fore

part of the body, cracked his spine, and broke the bones of his legs so

that he could not run; prised his jaws open, fastening them apart with a

sharp stick so that he could not bite, and then put him away in the

shade. This refined cruelty was to avoid the necessity of killing him

immediately, for if killed, in that hot climate he would soon be unfit

for food; but mutilated and mangled as he was, he could be kept alive

till night." The distinguished American does not tell us how it was

that he was content to witness "this refined cruelty" without apparently

making an attempt to stop such hellish torturing. The Indians will do

the same to-day: once or twice our men caught these poor reptiles, which

they regard as a great delicacy; but we always insisted on their being

killed outright.

Every village has its tienda or store where you buy the eternal black

beans, peppers, rice, tortillas, and where usually an assortment of

tinned American meats and fruits can be purchased by those tired of

life. But there is nowhere such a thing as a butcher's shop. The cattle

range the woods at will, only to be brought in occasionally to be

freshly branded with the owner's mark. When one is to be killed it is

"rounded up" and driven in to the pueblo. The method of slaughter is

stabbing in the region of the heart, just above the left foreleg. In a

large village fresh meat will be procurable perhaps thrice, but not more

than once, a week in the hamlets. The richer villagers take it in turns

to kill, and thus become butcher for the day only, usually flying a flag

as a sign that fresh meat is to be bought. Nothing could be queerer than

the effect of this co-operative butchering. The Jefe of a town will

invite you into his drawing-room or the Yucatecan equivalent, and there

you will find joints of blood-boltered pork and beef hanging from a

clothes-line, with palm-leaves beneath to catch the gore. He is butcher

for the day, that's all. Meat is never jointed, but cut into strips and

carried home fastened to a string; cut just as it is wanted by the kilo,

about two pounds. Joints such as we have are literally unknown in

Yucatan, and for the very excellent reason that there are no means of

cooking them.

Their culinary methods are typical of that indolence which is the chief

characteristic of all Yucatecans. Their staple dishes are stews, boiled

greasily: the sloven cook's way of throwing meat into a pot. When your

host has put before you a great messy stew of fowl, onion, and potato

swimming in fat, he gives you a cup of black coffee and the meal is

over. Puddings and sweets are things for which he has no taste, and

vegetables are never served, as with us, separately, or indeed many of

them at all. This is not due to any lack of fruit or vegetable, because

it was the case even where both abounded. Nothing short of a culinary

earthquake would alter the prehistoric kitchen methods of the average

Yucatecan family. Every day of the year, morning and evening, the

housewife is at the _metate_ or stone tray crushing the maize for the

tortillas; and this despite the fact that American flour is coming into

the country in ever-increasing quantity. Obstinate or conservative--you

can call it which you like--they will take no advantage of an import

which would mean that they could bake twice a week and get it over.

The average Yucatecan housewife is always at the _metate_ in season and

out of season. For most Yucatecan families it is a hand-to-mouth

existence, though they live in a land which, were they industrious,

might be made to "smile with plenty." The Yucatecan is an easy-going

creature, fond of drink, women, dancing, and his cigarette. He has no

love of work, and will spend the few dollars he has earned in a reckless

spirit, as if he had millions: afterwards living on his tortillas till

luck comes his way again. In all this he is but a replica of his kinsmen

in Mexico. This natural indolence is encouraged by the weakness of even

Diaz's rule. He is just as much afraid of the people to-day as when

first made President: he is afraid to tax rum or other spirits. He has

to get his revenues out of the foreigners. People in Yucatan complain

because labour is scarce. If machinery was imported to thresh corn, to

take but one example, they would be able to sell the staple food of the

land cheaper and pay higher wages. As it is, perfectly prohibitive

duties are levied on all the machinery coming into all the Mexican

ports. Thus throughout the whole Republic agriculture is practically

where it was in the time of Moctezuma. The anomaly of all this is very

patent in Yucatan, where the henequen lords have found an Eldorado in

the cactus and are each year improving their "plant," while too stupid

to see that if the same progressive methods were applied to the general

cultivation of their country, they would soon be able to view without

terror the abolition of that detestable slavery which is to-day

essential to their fortune-building.

Fortunes are waiting to be picked like blackberries by the foreign

"devil" who will teach the Yucatecan to use what bountiful Nature has

given. Where is there better food than orange marmalade? Every garden

almost in Yucatan swarms with the bitter-orange tree, and the fruit rots

and falls, no one thinking it worth while, although sugar-cane grows

almost wild, to bring the two together and make the delicious preserve.

In Merida we had to pay two shillings for a half-pound glass jar of

French marmalade. Year after year the Yucatecan is content to pay

seventy-five centavos (eighteen pence) for a tin of American preserved

fruit, when he could get the same from Cozumel for five. It is the same

with everything. They pay seventy-five for a kilo (two pounds) of salt

or dried fish, when they could buy their own fish for twelve centavos a

kilo and salt it themselves: or catch the fish themselves. This trade is

entirely in the hands of the Cuban sailors. The Yucatecans, for the

matter of that all Mexicans, hate foreign intrusion, but they will do

nothing themselves. Fancy a country, the chief omnipresent difficulty of

which is the density of its forests, importing timber! Yet that is what

Yucatan is doing to-day. She buys American lumber; she allows her

markets to be glutted with American fruits and meat when she could

supply her own wants at an extraordinarily small cost of labour; and if

there were deficiencies, Mexico possesses some of the finest

cattle-raising land and fruit-soils as rich as California.

With the only pots and pans German-made and so heavily taxed that you

have to give five shillings for a saucepan which in London would cost

you a shilling or at most eighteen pence, it is no wonder that the

culinary arrangements of Yucatan are as antediluvian as they are. If

they do not stew, they grill over the burning wood. Time and time again

birds we had shot were reduced to such a dried and mummified condition

as to be quite uneatable. The simplicity of their cooking methods is

only matched by the simplicity of their service. None but wealthy folk

use knives or forks. The tortilla, doubled up, serves as spoon and fork,

and a knife is not needed as the meat is cut up before it is cooked.

There is no such thing as a saltspoon in Yucatan. You are expected to

shake the salt out or take it out with your fingers. Indeed the

saltspoon seems unknown in Mexico too. There may be one, but we never

saw it. Tables are rare, and most families squat round their food in

true Indian fashion. As a rule women do not eat with the men; but they

and the children have what is left after their husbands and brothers

have finished. We found this often very embarrassing; but our protests

were greeted with as much ingratitude by the ladies as astonishment by

the men.

We met and lived with all grades of Yucatecans; but perhaps it was on

the coasting vessels that you saw most of general Yucatecan manners.

These are often curiously contradictory. They will tear ungainly pieces

of meat to pieces with their fingers; but they religiously wash those

fingers after each meal. They will use the edge of their white shifts

as a handkerchief; but even the common sailors will clean their teeth

after a meal. They will convert the gunwale of the boat into a _sedes

stercoraria_, engaging you in "animated conversation" the while; yet

nothing would induce them to undress before you and bathe. They will

spit on the floor of your room; but they will not move an inch in your

presence without a "_con permiso_." They are a frugal race, and you were

expected to throw the broken remains of your tortillas into a pail

provided for the purpose, though they do not appear again. Perhaps the

women eat them.

We have written something earlier about Yucatecan music when describing

the dance at Holboch. Nothing could well be more distressing than it is.

Every town of any size aspires to have a band. The worst German band

which ever disgraced itself and murdered melody for filthy lucre in

London's streets is a combination of the orchestras of Strauss and Sousa

compared with a Yucatecan band. As one lies in one's hammock at night,

forced to listen to the musical hell it creates, one wonders why

indignant citizens do not leap from their hammocks and make butchery in

the plaza of its unscrupulous members. But the Yucatecans like it. The

more noise the merrier for them. A most popular custom is what they call

_la serenata_. At about two or three in the morning half a dozen young

men make "rough music" (it is very rough) with drums and concertinas

outside the home of some village belle. In the stillness of the darkness

it is not without its weird charm, if it lasted a few minutes. But it

often lasts an hour or more till you become suicidal. Their discordant

music is matched by their singing voices. No Yucatecan knows the first

principles of voice-production. A tiny, squeaky chant is the most they

achieve. Indeed there is something very queer about the Yucatecan voice,

even in talking: a curious whiny sing-song, beginning low and ending in

an almost indescribable treble note.

The true Irish wake is a dearly prized institution among the Yucatecans.

Every occasion is seized on for an indulgence in the habanero they so

much love; and death itself cannot rob the liquid refreshment of its

charm. The corpse is toasted till the mourners are incoherent; singing,

dancing, and merrymaking going on often in the very room where the body

lies. Burial follows within twenty-four hours owing to the climate, and

in those many places which are only periodically visited by a priest

there is no religious ceremony in the cemetery; its place being taken by

the chief mourner "standing" a bottle of habanero, which is literally

broached at the graveside and drunk instanter. By the richer folks a

grave is bought but no grave is dug; the coffin rests on the level of

the earth as a rule, owing to the rocky nature of the soil. At the head

is placed a big stone, at the foot another. Then over the coffin is

built a dome of cement. In some cemeteries bodies are buried in walls,

the coffin on its end. Where a family is only rich enough to buy ground

enough for one grave, on a second death the headstone is removed and the

coffin is drawn out and the bones placed in the new coffin, the old one

being burnt. In cases of the very poor the body is buried as far down as

the nature of the soil permits, and at the end of a year the bones are

dug up by the relatives and burnt there and then in the cemetery. The

most prominent outward and visible sign of mourning is a long streamer

of crape or black cloth, which is fastened to the door of the house and

left there till it rots off. On the first anniversary, when the soul of

the deceased is believed to revisit its old haunts, there is a second

wake and much drinking.

Yucatan is a happy hunting ground for "Jacks in Office." The pomposity

of this race of parvenus would be amusing if it were not that they have

the power to wreck your plans. We have described our delightful

encounter with the Jefe of Isla de Mujeres. We suffered many other

annoyances from jumped-up officials who took a childish pleasure in

exhibiting their authority. A delicious example of what the Mexican

official is capable of when he puts his mind to it was afforded to us at

Vera Cruz on our return. The British armoured cruiser "Euryalus" came

over from Jamaica flying the flag of Rear-Admiral Inglefield. President

Diaz seized the chance, the first since the King gave him the G.C.B., of

paying a pretty compliment to England by sending down an invitation to

the admiral and his officers to visit the capital. The "Euryalus,"

fearing to come into the harbour, which, even despite the splendid work

of Sir Weetman Pearson, is still risky for vessels of such draught as a

British man-of-war, anchored just outside the breakwater. To her, after

the admiral had landed, went out the port pilot, for whom she had _not_

signalled, as she was not coming in. He asked the captain to move a

little as, so he said, they were in the fairway. It was probably merely

an excuse to show an authority which he had thought flouted. The

British, with the utmost courtesy, at once got steam up and moved a few

cables' lengths. Later in the day, to the natural astonishment of the

commander, a bill for pilotage arrived--nineteen dollars! The British

officers in charge refused to pay this absurd demand, and then the port

authorities actually had the impudence to summon them to appear to show

cause why they should not pay. This latter demand was ignored. But the

beauty of the situation lay, of course, in the fact that while these

Vera-Cruzian jackanapeses were dunning the huge battleship, Diaz and

Mexico City were banqueting and cheering the admiral and his staff as

guests of the nation. When we left Vera Cruz the truth about this

heavenly incident had not leaked out. The port authorities must have had

a very bad quarter of an hour indeed, if the relentless Diaz ever heard

of it.

That is the Mexican all over; and the Yucatecan is, as is natural, worse

because his authority is still pettier. The American traders with the

islands feel the full force of it. A captain sailing from such a port as

Key West to Cozumel must go to Ascension Bay, some eighty miles south of

his destination, because none but a national boat can retail the goods

to the islands. When he gets to Ascension Bay, he must, with his own

labour (the Yucatecans will not supply men), unload and place his cargo

on the beach. Then, when it has been tallied with the "manifest," the

unfortunate trader has to reload, again at his own cost, in a native

vessel: afterwards sailing his boat empty behind the other. Arrived at

Cozumel he has to unload, again at his own cost, and then, and then

only, is he entitled to meet his customers.

The tyranny of the Custom House officials is the tyranny of men who are

intent on filling their own pockets. Here is an example. An American

captain shipped a cargo of tomatoes, upon which no import duty is

payable. At Ascension Bay it was found that he had on board one more

barrel than was declared in his "manifest." This was quite an accident.

A barrel more or less on his final takings would not have amounted to

more than a few coppers, and in any case the cargo was not dutiable. No

matter: the officials fined him ten dollars on every barrel of tomatoes

he had on board--fifty--making a fine of £50. Could greater injustice be

conceived? He refused to pay, and his cargo was impounded. He appealed

to Mexico City and the fine was immediately remitted. The blackguards at

Ascension Bay knew it was not the law. They were simply going to pocket

the fine. Another man's cargo of potatoes, because he had a sack or two

_too little_, was left to rot on the beach because he refused to pay a

ludicrous fine.

Of amusements the Yucatecans have none that could be called really

national. They are happiest when they are loafing and drinking. They are

all fond of gambling, and play the ordinary card games. All forms of

lotteries are popular, and a State lottery is run from which the profit

netted by a high official is said to be as much as twenty thousand

dollars a month.

Matters theatrical in Merida were in rather a spring-cleaning condition

when we were there, for the old theatre was dismantled and a really fine

one was being built at a great cost. Meanwhile the bull-ring had been

requisitioned and turned into a theatre. There we went one evening and

witnessed a very second-rate play. The chief thing which struck us was

the fact that between the acts the women all stood up in the stalls and

gazed round at the people. It was so singularly un-European.

Bull-fights are still immensely popular throughout Yucatan; but a

praiseworthy effort is being made by those in authority to

discountenance them, though without much effect. At Merida there are

several yearly, but it is a very decadent form of the Spanish sport.

Around the ring are small shelters into which the toreador can dodge

when the bull charges. Thus there is little or no real courage demanded

of the fighters. Nothing draws the people as a bull-fight will, and to

those two or three towns where fights are annual fixtures thousands

flock in from miles around. Tizimin is such a place. At the fiesta held

while we were there no less than thirty thousand people collected. It is

the love of blood which really attracts, and a fight is successful or

not according to the number of animals slain. In the seven days at

Tizimin fifty bulls died. It is really mere clumsy brutal slaughter, for

the creatures are undersized steers as a rule, with about as much fight

in them as an English cow. The young bloods of Yucatan are fond of

improvising these bullock baitings; and one showed us with pride a scar

on his wrist, a memento of a fight two or three days earlier. It was

just such a scratch as a child would get while out blackberrying.

[Illustration: HACIENDA CHILDREN.]

[Illustration: INDEPENDENT INDIANS.]

As we wrote in an earlier chapter, so complete is the isolation of the

two sexes publicly, that the casual visitor would conclude that the

Yucatecans were a most moral race. You never see youths and girls

walking together. Such a sight as Hyde Park, for instance, presents on a

summer evening, a couple, sometimes two, on each seat, carrying on a

passionate courtship, regardless of the passers, you would never see in

Yucatan if you lived there fifty years. More than that: you never see a

husband out with a wife. An American who had known the country for ten

years told us that he had never seen a young fellow and girl walking

together in the evening. Of course, the richest girls never walk at all;

and their lovers are found for them. The poorer maidens find their own

at a precociously early age. If trouble results, the lover can adopt one

of three courses. He can marry the girl; pay a fine of five hundred

dollars to her father; or go to prison for five years. These Draconian

rules obviate our degrading system of affiliation summonses. The utmost

cynicism prevails in all sex questions, and it would probably be hard to

find a Yucatecan father who would not be ready to sell his daughters, so

long as the price was high enough. And it is really sale, not merely the

worldly method of England and America of getting a rich suitor and a fat

settlement for a girl. The fathers pocket the money.

Courtship is a formal affair conducted always before one or both

parents. If a youth fancies a maid, he calls at her house and, scarcely

noticing her, talks to her father about anything in the world but his

errand. This must go on for many nights till he is allowed by etiquette

to mention his desires. If he is an eligible parti, he is then admitted

to the family circle as son-in-law elect. There are two stages in the

wedding; first a publication of it, somewhat equivalent to our banns,

which constitutes the formal betrothal; and then the ceremony, at which

there are no bridesmaids or groomsmen. By law the civil ceremony alone

is legally binding, but in practice the religious service is also often

held. How loosely this all works in practice can scarcely be realised

till it is known that money unlocks every door in this venal land. Men

can do just what they like in Yucatan _if_ they can pay. On one of the

islands a young American trading on the coasts, with the full approval

of her parents who slept in the next room, spent every night with an

unmarried girl, though they all knew that he was himself married. These

temporary alliances are easily arranged, if you satisfy the father's

demands, which are by no means exorbitant from all accounts.

In Merida this venality has reached such a pitch as to be really hardly

credible. There is one old ogre, whose name we must naturally suppress,

who has a charming wife; and keeps five mistresses formally, not

counting those informal ones represented by the dozens of slave-girls on

his ranches. But all this is not enough. He buys young girls from their

parents, most of them well-to-do folk, and when he has ruined and tired

of them, he assigns them as wives to one of his countless dependents

with a small dowry. Quite scientific, is it not? And that man is

regarded with veneration by every Yucatecan. They would all like to be

as rich as he and do likewise. Meanwhile, at least they have daughters

to sell, black-eyed, black-haired, plump-limbed Hebes, fresh enough and

dainty enough to whet the appetite of even the most jaded ogre, the most

glutted of purse-proud Yucatecan Joves.

All this is really no one's business, and to the stranger does not

matter a pin. We are not Hot Gospellers intent on preaching morality.

Yucatecan vices affect Yucatecans alone. The ogres are pleased, the

avaricious fathers are pleased, and the girls are doubtless willing

victims of this combination of greed and lust. All this is no one's

affair if--and it is a very large IF--all this very agreeable

self-indulgence was only at the expense of freemen and equals. But when

a whole race is forcibly prostituted to the avarice and lasciviousness

of an upstart people, trespassers in the land; when womanhood, as pure

and sweet as any which the Almighty God has created for the world's

honour, is trampled under swinish feet; when a barbarous serfdom stops

not at murder in its unrestrained tyranny, then of a truth it is time

for some one to raise his voice against such race exploitation. We do so

here, and on our return to London we addressed to the President of

Mexico a letter telling him the truth. To this letter His Excellency

made no reply. It is more than likely it never reached him, was

suppressed by an official. Be that as it may, we now consider ourselves

at liberty to publish it, and we do so here as the fitting close to this

review of social Yucatan.

_To His Excellency

Señor General Diaz, Mexico_

MOST EXCELLENT SIR AND GENERAL,

We travelled out to Mexico with the purpose of exploring

North-Eastern Yucatan and studying the wonderful ruined cities

there.

We held a letter of introduction to Your Excellency explaining who

we were and what we hoped to do, but on arrival in Mexico City we

were dissuaded from presenting it and were referred to your

Minister of Public Instruction.

We had much desire to see Your Excellency and present our respects

in person, for in recent years there has been a growing interest

taken by the English in Mexico owing to the publication of two

books by an English lady, Mrs. Alec Tweedie, _Mexico As I Saw It_

and Your Excellency's own biography, which books have made much

stir. Being, however, strangers in a strange land, we yielded to

advice and saw Señor Justo Sierra. He was courteous and gave us

letters to Señor Olegario Molina, then Governor of Yucatan, to

General Bravo, and passports satisfactory, but scarcely generous.