DON EDUARDO’S FIRST VIEW OF THE CITY OF THE SACRED WELL
Don Eduardo has described to me his first trip to Chi-chen Itza, and
his impressions, which are somewhat as follows if my notes and memory
do not err:
“I had traveled all of a hot and dusty day, on horseback, through the
jungle and over animal trails. In many places my Indian guide, who went
afoot, had to lead my horse over or around the huge stones that blocked
our path. After the first few miles I was painfully aware that running
blithely from my city into Mérida, for forgotten trifles or even for
sorely needed supplies, was another of my pleasant fancies thoroughly
punctured.
“Darkness overtook us ere we reached our journey’s end, and the ensuing
coolness was delightfully refreshing even though the dark slowed our
already snail-like progress. Just when I had abandoned all hope of
making further headway, the moon sailed majestically into view—a
gorgeous full moon in a perfect Yucatan night, lighting every object
softly, gently, with a caressing touch so lacking in the masculine
directness of Old Sol. A more lovely silver and black-velvet night
I have never seen. Truly, the moon magic of Yucatan is no less than
divine stage-craft which subtly wafts one completely away from the Land
of Things as They Are and into the Realm of Enchantment. I should
not have been surprised to meet the March Hare, Lancelot, Gulliver,
Scheherezade, or Helen of Troy. In fact, I was prepared to stop and
chat with any of them and offer a bite from the one remaining cake of
chocolate in my pocket.
“Sometime, and most reluctantly, I suppose I must go the way of all
flesh. If so, then by all means let it be in the full glory of a
Yucatan moon and the going will not be unpleasant.
“For days I had been traveling, first by train, then by _volan_,—that
satanic contrivance which leaves one bruised and bumped from head
to foot,—and finally in the saddle, dozing over the head of a
somnambulant horse.
“Even the witchery of the moonlight could not long hold alert my
fatigued body and mind. On and on we plodded, hour after hour.
Midnight passed and how many more hours I do not know, when I heard
an exclamation in the vernacular, from my guide. Startled out of a
half-conscious dream I came erect in the saddle.
“My Indian was earnestly pointing up and ahead. I raised my eyes and
became electrically, tinglingly awake. There, high up, wraith-like in
the waning moonlight, loomed what seemed a Grecian temple of colossal
proportions, atop a great steep hill. So massive did it seem in the
half-light of the approaching morning that I could think of it only as
an impregnable fortress high above the sea, on some rocky, wave-dashed
promontory. As this mass took clearer shape before me with each
succeeding hoof-beat of my weary steed, it grew more and more huge. I
felt an actual physical pain, as if my heart skipped a few beats and
then raced to make up the loss.
“Thus for the first time I viewed the Great Pyramid of Kukul Can, now
called El Castillo—the Castle. And I shall always be glad that I
had the good fortune to get my first glimpse of it in this fashion.
Times without number I have since passed and repassed this grand old
structure, yet never have I walked in its shadow without a quickening
of the pulse or without recalling undimmed the vision of that moonlit
night. And, as I look back through my years of intimate companionship
with my City of the Sacred Well, it seems to me that moonlit nights
are linked inextricably with nearly all the important events that have
there befallen me—or, at least, with those which are pleasant in
retrospect.
“By the time I had dismounted and unsaddled my horse my Indian was
already curled up and fast asleep. The poor horse was, I think, in
sound slumber the minute his feet came to a halt. But for me, weary as
I was, sleep was out of the question. I must see more of this magic
city. Reaching the foot of the steep ascent, I crawled painfully up
what had obviously once been a tremendous stairway, now overgrown with
small trees and shrubs. At the end of a breathless climb I reached a
narrow, level stone ledge eighty feet above the ground and faced the
north door of the temple—the temple of the great god Kukul Can. This
sheer pile of perfectly joined masonry pierced by a forty-foot doorway
within whose sides I could dimly discern intricate and fantastically
carved bas-reliefs; this time-grayed temple of a forgotten faith,
viewed there in the silence and solitude of eerie moonlight—is it
to be wondered at if my knees shook just a little and if I glanced
apprehensively over my shoulder awaiting the terrible, majestic wrath
of the god whose temple was profaned by the eyes of an unbeliever?
“On my eminence I turned slowly and gazed out over the dead city. Here
and there, some near by and some at a distance, were a dozen other
pyramids surmounted by buildings. A few seemed well preserved, others
were in picturesque ruins, all ghostly white in the moonlight, except
where a doorway or a shadow stood out in inky blackness. I could see
the long shadow of that old temple we call the ‘Nunnery.’ The stillness
was broken only by the monotonous hum of hidden cicadas; or was it the
distant beat of phantom _tunkuls_, or sacred drums, warning that the
ancient God of the Feathered Serpent did but sleep and might at any
moment awake?
“And then my eyes were caught and held by a broad raised roadway
leading straight away from the temple toward a vast black pool
overgrown with trees. Breathless, frozen to the spot, I could only look
and look, for in a blinding flash I realized that I was gazing at the
Sacred Way, and at its end the Sacred Well in whose murky depths even
then might lie the pitiful bones of many once lovely maidens sacrificed
to appease a grim god. What untold treasures this grisly well might
hide! What tragedies had been enacted at its brink!
“I descended and as I walked along the Sacred Way I thought of the
thousands, millions perhaps, of times this worn thoroughfare had been
trodden in bygone ages where all was now desolate. Here was I, a grain
of dust moving where kings and nobles of countless centuries before had
trod, and where, for all I know, kings and nobles may again tread long
years after I am still a grain of dust but moveless.
“At the brink of the well I peered into the blackness and continued to
gaze into its depths, picturing in my mind’s eye the awesome ceremonies
it had witnessed. The chant of death begins, swelling softly over the
slow pulsing of the drums. The solemn procession leaves the holy temple
of Kukul Can and the funeral cortège advances along the broad raised
avenue of the Sacred Way, toward the Sacred Well, the dwelling-place of
Noh-och Yum Chac, the terrible Rain God who must be placated by human
sacrifice. The corn in the fields is withering, crying for rain. If
the anger of Yum Chac be not appeased famine will follow and the dread
Lord of Death, Ah Puch—he of the grinning, sightless skull—will walk
abroad in the land.
“Slowly, slowly the cortège draws near. At its head is the high priest,
clad in ceremonial vestments and elaborate feathered head-dress,
as befits the pontiff of the Feathered Serpent. And what is this
embroidered bower borne so reverently by sturdy, sun-browned lesser
priests? Is it a bier, a stately catafalque? Is the pitiful victim
already dead? Ah, no! she moves, beautiful, flawless—the most lovely
maiden to be found in the land. Through every city and village and
country-side, for weeks and weeks, a thousand priests have sought her,
this fairest flower of Maya maidenhood. Her face is pale. She knows the
supreme honor that is hers—she who is to become so soon the bride of
the Rain God. But there is terror in those lovely eyes, a benumbing,
cold fear of the Unknown.
“And behind them, filling the whole of the Sacred Way, come the king,
the nobles, the great warriors and many priests. Already on the far
side of the Sacred Well is gathered a silent, grave-faced multitude,
the whole populace of the city and pilgrims from afar.
“The high priest enters the little temple at the brink of the well. The
dirge ceases, the drums are stilled. He performs his devotions to the
Rain God. He lights the sacred incense-burners and the fragrant blue
vapor floats, curling, upward. Again the slowly chanted dirge starts,
to the muted beating of the drums. He lights a basket of sweet-smelling
copal incense, holds it aloft, and casts it into the well. The chant
grows louder, the drums beat faster.
“Two powerful _nacons_, or lesser priests, lift the maiden from her
couch, their muscular brown arms forming a sling in which she lies as
lightly as a leaf on the bosom of a stream. They advance with her to
the edge of the well. The pitiless sun glares down into her upturned
fear-stricken eyes and she throws one slender arm over her face. Her
gauzy garments reveal the tender flesh and adolescent contours of a
girl in her early teens.
“Slowly the _nacons_ swing the feather-light body backward and forward
to the beat of the drums and the rhythm of the dirge; forward and
backward in an ever wider sweep, while the drums and chant swell to a
roar. At a sign from the high priest the drums are suddenly stilled;
the chant ends in a high-pitched wail. A last forward swing and the
bride of Yum Chac hurtles far out over the well. Turning slowly in the
air, the lithesome body falls faster and faster till it strikes the
dark water seventy feet below.
“An echoing splash and all is still. Only the widening ripples are
left. The child bride has found favor in the eyes of her lord, the
great god Noh-och Yum Chac.
“Thus I imagined the sacrifice at the Sacred Well—a sacrifice enacted
not once but hundreds of times through many centuries. Thus has it been
handed down in a dozen Maya legends and I wondered whether this grim
old well really held at its far murky bottom the relics of the ancient
rites or, after all, the sacrifices were mere myths founded on some
trivial event, which grew and grew with each telling.
“Granting that such sacrifices had been, every vestige of evidence
might well have disintegrated into nothingness a thousand years before
my time. Assuming even that at the bottom of this watery pit was
all I sought, what a mad venture it was for one lone man with but a
little money and no great mechanical skill to attempt to recover these
evidences!
“And yet my faith was strong. I felt that my quest was not to be in
vain and that somehow I would make the well yield up its treasures. At
least I must attempt the feat or continue to be haunted by the idea all
the rest of my life.
“My wearied brain could no longer sustain these speculations. My whole
tired body knew but one desire—sleep. Yet I did not wish to sleep in
this gruesome place. Half a mile farther on I should find the Casa
Real, the old manor-house that was to be my home. Wearily I strove
toward it in the failing moonlight.
“At last I approached the main arched gateway of the corral, built
more than two hundred years ago. It was boldly outlined in the pale
moonlight, while here and there were long jet shadows cast by some
broken portion of a wall or by some partially burned but upright trunk
of a great tree. All was desolation, as in the case of the ancient
temples, but a newer desolation, for this manor had been built less
than seventy years before. As I pushed my way over broken stones a
cloud came over the moon and I stumbled full upon what seemed at first
the vertebræ of a huge fish. The cloud passed as I halted and an
involuntary shudder gripped me as I looked down on the whitened bones
of a human skeleton. A little to one side on a slight elevation lay the
severed skull; and just beyond was still another and yet another. Ah,
yes! I knew the tragic story, but had not expected to be met with so
brutal a reminder of it.
“The former inhabitants of this once beautiful hacienda had all been
massacred, many years before, by the Sublevados, the untamed tribes of
Maya Indians living some miles to the south. These savages had slain
every living creature on the estate and had left the several buildings
in smoldering ruins. Even at the present time the Sublevados are still
untamed and I have often been warned of the menace of a similar fate.
“I turned and gazed at the old gateway under which I had so recently
passed—a gateway, so the records say, built in June, 1721. Under it
also had passed long lines of weeping captives, and there are men
living who remember the event. These poor captives were laden with the
booty taken from the villages of Tunkas and Dzitas as they were urged
on by their Sublevado captors in their terrible journey to Chan Santa
Cruz, the distant Sublevado stronghold. And only the vigorous men with
trades and the young women were spared for the journey, while the
other prisoners were ruthlessly murdered. Of the prisoners left alive
for the journey those who fell by the wayside were despatched with a
stroke of the machete and left where they fell. I later found many of
their pitiful skeletons.
“Poor boys and girls! What heart-pangs they must have felt; what
scalding tears must have fallen on the stone flags as they passed
beneath this old arch! Their pangs were soon stilled and the tears
they spilled quickly dried, for they all soon came to that tranquil
rest which is for eternity. Their lives were like the meteor that
flashes for a moment in the sky and is then forever snuffed out. ‘Cigar
stubs that the God of Night tosses away’ is the native vernacular for
meteors. The souls of these wretched youths and maidens seem to have
been no less carelessly tossed away by the God of the Night.
“I sank down upon the corridor of my new-old home, too utterly fatigued
in mind and body to care what army of horrid phantoms might there
abide. Let graveyards yawn and specters dance, let witches ride; loose
Beelzebub and all his imps, but let me sleep!
“And so I did until awakened by a torrid sun burning down upon me
through what once had been a roof.”