Caxton's Book: A Collection of Essays, Poems, Tales, and Sketches Part 12

Overmastering my excitement, I whispered:

"Beautiful spirit, that once met me on the ramparts where Lord Nelson fought and conquered, art thou here?"

An affirmative reply.

"Will you appear and redeem your promise?"

Suddenly, the branches of the neighboring trees waved and nodded; the cold marbles about me seemed animated with life, and crashed and struck each other with great violence; the old pyramid trembled to its centre, as if shaken by an earthquake; and the forest around moaned as though a tempest was sweeping by. At the same instant, full in the bright moonlight, and standing within three paces of my feet, appeared the Aztec Princess, whose waving _panache_, flowing garments and benignant countenance had bewildered me many months before, on the moss-grown parapet of _Castillo Viejo_.

CHAPTER IV.

"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep."

--PARADISE LOST.

Was I dreaming, or was the vision real, that my eyes beheld? This was the first calm thought that coursed through my brain, after the terror and amazement had subsided. Awe-struck I certainly was, when the beautiful phantom first rose upon my sight, at Castillo; awe-struck once more, when she again appeared, amid the gray old rains of _Casa Grande_.

I have listened very often to the surmises of others, as they detailed what _they_ would do, were a supernatural being to rise up suddenly before them. Some have said, they would gaze deliberately into the face of the phantom, scan its every feature, and coolly note down, for the benefit of others, how long it "walked," and in what manner it faded from the sight. The nerves of these very men trembled while they spoke, and had an apparition burst at that instant into full view, these heroes in imagination would have crouched and hid their faces, their teeth chattering with terror, and their hearts beating their swelling sides, as audibly as the convict hears his own when the hangman draws the black cap over his unrepentant head.

I blame no man for yielding to the dictates of Nature. He is but a fool who feels no fear, and hears not a warning in the wind, observes not a sign in the heavens, and perceives no admonition in the air, when hurricanes are brooding, clouds are gathering, or earthquakes muttering in his ears. The sane mind listens, and thwarts danger by its apprehensions.

The true hero is not the man who knows no fear--for that were idiotic--but he who sees it, and escapes it, or meets it bravely. Was it courage in the elder Pliny to venture so closely to the crater of Vesuvius, whilst in eruption, that he lost his life? How can man make war with the elements, or battle with his G.o.d?

There is, in the secret chambers of every human heart, one dark weird cell, over whose portal is inscribed--MYSTERY. There Superst.i.tion sits upon her throne; there Idolatry shapes her monsters, and there Religion reveals her glories. Within that cell, the soul communes with itself most intimately, confesses its midnight cowardice, and in low whispers mutters its dread of the supernatural.

All races, all nations, and all times have felt its influences, oozing like imperceptible dews from the mouth of that dark cavern.

Vishnu heard its deep mutterings in the morning of our race, and they still sound hollow but indistinct, like clods upon a coffin-lid, along the wave of each generation, as it rises and rolls into the past. Plato and Numa and Cicero and Brutus listened to its prophetic cadences, as they fell upon their ears. Mohammed heard them in his cave, Samuel Johnson in his bed. Poets have caught them in the

"Shivering whisper of startled leaves,"

martyrs in the crackling f.a.ggots, heroes amid the din of battle.

If you ask, what means this voice? I reply,

"A solemn murmur in the soul _Tells of the world to be_, As travelers hear the billows roll Before they reach the sea."

Let no man, therefore, boast that he has no dread of the supernatural.

When mortal can look spirit in the face, without blanching, man will be immortal.

# # # # #

To convince myself that I did not dream, I rose upon my elbow, and reclined for a moment in that att.i.tude. Gradually I gained my feet, and then stood confronting the Aztec maiden. The midnight breeze of the tropics had set in, and by the clear moonlight I distinctly saw the _panache_ of feathers that she wore upon her head swaying gracefully upon the air.

Convinced now, beyond all doubt, that the scene was real, the ruling desire of my life came back in full force upon me, and I spoke, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, the following words:

"Here lies a buried realm; I would be its historian!"

The apparition, without any reply in words, glided toward me, and approached so close that I could easily have touched her had I dared.

But a sense of propriety subdued all unhallowed curiosity, and I determined to submit pa.s.sively to all that my new friend should do. This state of mind seemed at once known to her, for she smiled approvingly, and came still nearer to where I stood.

Elevating her beautiful arm, she pa.s.sed it gently over my face, her hand just touching my features, and imparting a cool sensation to my skin. I distinctly remember that the hand felt damp. No sooner was this done than my nervous system seemed to be restored to its usual tone, and every sensation of alarm vanished.

My brain began to feel light and swimmy, and my whole frame appeared to be losing its weight. This peculiar sensation gradually increased in intensity until full conviction flashed upon me that I could, by an effort of will, rise into the air, and fly with all the ease and rapidity of an eagle.

The idea was no sooner fully conceived, than I noticed a wavy, unsteady motion in the figure of the Aztec Princess, and almost immediately afterwards, I perceived that she was gradually rising from the broken pavement upon which she had been standing, and pa.s.sing slowly upwards through the branches of the overshadowing trees. What was most remarkable, the relative distance between us did not seem to increase, and my amazement was inconceivable, when on casting my eyes toward my feet, I perceived that I was elevated more than twenty yards from the pavement where I had slept.

My ascent had been so gradual, that I was entirely unaware of moving, and now that I became sensible of it, the motion itself was still imperceptible. Upward, still upward, I was carried, until the tallest limbs of the loftiest trees had been left far below me. Still the ascent continued. A wide and beautiful panorama now opened before me. Above, all was flashing moonlight and starry radiance. The beams of the full moon grew more brilliant as we cleared the vapory atmosphere contiguous to the earth, until they shone with half the splendor of morn, and glanced upon the features of my companion with a mellow sheen, that heightened a thousandfold her supermundane beauty. Below, the gray old relics of a once populous capital glimmered spectrally in the distance, looking like tombs, shrouded by a weeping forest; whilst one by one, the mourners lost their individuality, and ere long presented but a dark ma.s.s of living green. After having risen several hundred feet perpendicularly, I was enabled to form an estimate of the extent of the forest, in the bosom of which sleep and moulder the monuments of the aboriginal Americans. There is no such forest existing elsewhere on the surface of this great globe. It has no parallel in nature. The Black Forest of Germany, the Thuringian Forest of Saxony, the Cross Timbers of Texas, the dense and inaccessible woods cloaking the headwaters of the Amazon and the La Plata, are mere parks in comparison. For miles and miles, leagues and leagues, it stretched out--north, south, east and west. It covers an area larger than the island of Great Britain; and throughout this immense extent of country there is but one mountain chain, and but one river. The summits of this range have been but seldom seen by white men, and have never been scaled. The river drains the whole territory, but loses itself in a terrific marsh before its tide reaches the Mexican gulf, toward which it runs. The current is exceedingly rapid; and, after pa.s.sing for hundreds of miles under the land and under the sea, it unites its submarine torrent near the west end of Cuba, with that of the Orinoco and the Amazon, and thus forms that great oceanic river called the Gulf Stream. Professor Maury was right in his philosophic conjecture as to the origin of that mighty and resistless tide.

Having attained a great height perpendicularly above the spot of our departure, we suddenly dashed off with the speed of an express locomotive, toward the northeast.

Whither we were hastening, I knew not; nor did I trouble my mind with any useless conjectures. I felt secure in the power of my companion, and sure of her protection. I knew that by some unaccountable process she had neutralized the gravitating force of a material body, had elevated me hundreds, perhaps thousands, of feet in the atmosphere, and by some mysterious charm was attracting me toward a distant bourne. Years before, whilst a medical student at the University of Louisiana, the professor of _materia medica_ had opened his course of lectures with an inquiry into the origin and essence of gravitation, and I had listened respectfully, but at that time doubtingly, to the theory he propounded.

He stated that it was not unphilosophical to believe that the time would arrive when the gravitating power of dense bodies would be overcome, and balloons constructed to navigate the air with the same unerring certainty that ships traversed the ocean.

He declared that gravitation itself was not a _cause_ but an _effect_; that it might be produced by the rotation of the earth upon its axis, or by some undiscovered current of electricity, or by some recondite and hitherto undetected agent or force in nature. Magnetism he thought a species of electricity, and subsequent investigations have convinced me that _sympathy_ or _animal magnetism_ was akin to the same parent power.

By means of this latter agent I had seen the human body rendered so light that two persons could raise it with a single finger properly applied. More than this, I had but recently witnessed at Castillo, dead matter clothed with life and motion, and elevated several feet into the air without the aid of any human agency. This age I knew well to be an age of wonders. Nature was yielding up her secrets on every hand; the boundary between the natural and the spiritual had been broken down; new worlds were flashing upon the eyes of the followers of Galileo almost nightly from the ocean depths of s.p.a.ce. Incalculable treasures had been discovered in the most distant ends of the earth, and I, unlettered hind that I was, did not presume to limit the power of the great Creator, and because an act seemed impossible to my narrow vision, and within my limited experience, to cry aloud, _imposture_, or to mutter sneeringly, _insanity_.

Before proceeding farther with the thread of this narrative, the attention of the reader is solicited to the careful perusal of the following extracts from Stephens's _Travels in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan_, published at New York in 1841.

But the Padre told us more; something that increased our excitement to the highest pitch. On the other side of the great traversing range of Cordilleras lies the district of Vera Paz, once called Tierra de Guerra, or land of war, from the warlike character of its aboriginal inhabitants. Three times the Spaniards were driven back in their attempt to conquer it.[A-133]

The rest of the Tierra de Guerra never was conquered; and at this day the northeastern section bounded by the range of the Cordilleras and the State of Chiapa is occupied by Cadones, or unbaptized Indians, who live as their fathers did, acknowledging no submission to the Spaniards, and the government of Central America does not pretend to exercise any control over them. But the thing that roused us was the a.s.sertion by the Padre that four days on the road to Mexico, on the other side of the Great Sierra, was a LIVING CITY, large and populous, occupied by Indians, precisely in the same state as before the discovery of America. He had heard of it many years before, at the village of Chajal, and was told by the villagers that from the topmost ridge of the Sierra this city was distinctly visible. He was then young, and with much labor climbed to the naked summit of the Sierra, from which, at a height of ten or twelve thousand feet, he looked over an immense plain extending to Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico, and saw at a great distance a large city, spread over a great s.p.a.ce, and with turrets white and glittering in the sun.

The traditionary account of the Indians of Chajal is, that no white man has ever reached the city; that the inhabitants speak the Maya language; are aware that a race of strangers has conquered the whole country around, and murder any white man who attempts to enter their territory. They have no coin or other circulating medium; no horses, cattle, mules, or other domestic animals, except fowls, and the c.o.c.ks they keep under ground to prevent their crowing being heard.[B-134]

[Footnote A-133: Page 193, Vol. 2.]

[Footnote B-134: Ibid. Page 195.]

Mr. Stephens then adds:

One look at that city is worth ten years of an every-day life. If he is right, a place is left where Indians and an Indian city exist as Cortez and Alvarado found them. There are living men who can solve the mystery that hangs over the ruined cities of America; perhaps, who can go to Copan and Palenque and read the inscriptions on their monuments.

* * * * *

The moon, long past the meridian, was sinking slowly to her western goal, whilst the east was already beginning to blush and redden with the dawn. Before us rose high and clear three distinct mountain peaks, covered with a mantle of snow. I began to tremble with cold. But our pace did not slacken, nor our alt.i.tude diminish. On the contrary, we began to rise gradually, until we found ourselves nearly upon a level with the three peaks. Selecting an opening or gap betwixt the two westernmost, we glided through like the wind. I shivered and my teeth chattered as we skimmed along those everlasting snows. Here, thought I, the condor builds his nest in summer, and the avalanches find a home.

The eagle's wing has not strength enough to battle with this thin and freezing atmosphere, and no living thing but "the proud bird, the condor of the Andes," ever scaled these h.o.a.ry summits. But our descent had already commenced. Gradually, as the morning broke, the region of ice and snow was left behind us, and just as the first ray of the rising sun shot over the peaks we had but a moment before surmounted, I beheld, glittering in the dim and shadowy distance, the white walls of a magnificent city. An exclamation of surprise and pleasure involuntarily escaped my lips; but one glance at my companion checked all further utterance. She raised her rounded forefinger to her lip, and made a gesture, whose purport I well understood.

We swept over forests and cornfields and vineyards, the city growing upon the vision every moment, and rising like the Mexican capital, when first beheld by Europeans from the bosom of a magnificent lake. Finally, we found ourselves immediately above it, and almost at the same moment, began to descend. In a few seconds I stood alone, in a large open s.p.a.ce, surrounded upon all sides by lofty stone edifices, erected upon huge pyramidal structures, that resembled the forest-covered mounds at Palenque. The day had fully dawned, but I observed no inhabitants.

Presently a single individual appeared upon one of the towers near me, and gave a loud, shrill whistle, such as we sometimes hear in crowded theatres. In an instant it was echoed and re-echoed a thousand times, upon every side, and immediately the immense city seemed to be awake, as if by magic. They poured by thousands into the open square, where I stood petrified with astonishment. Before me, like a vision of midnight, marched by, in almost countless throngs, battalion on battalion of a race of men deemed and recorded extinct by the wisest historians.

They presented the most picturesque appearance imaginable, dressed apparently in holiday attire, and keeping step to a low air, performed on instruments emitting a dull, confused sound, that seldom rose so as to be heard at any great distance.

They continued promenading the square, until the first level ray of sunshine fell upon the great Teocallis--as it was designated by the Spaniards--then with unanimous action they fell upon their faces, striking their foreheads three times upon the mosaic pavement. Just as they rose to their feet, I observed four persons, most gorgeously dressed, descending the steps of the Temple, bearing a palanquin, in which sat a single individual. My attention was at once arrested by her appearance, for she was a woman. She was arrayed in a _panache_, or head-dress, made entirely of the plumage of the _Quezale_, the royal bird of Quiche. It was by far the most tasteful and becoming ornament to the head I ever beheld, besides being the most magnificent. It is impossible to describe the graceful movement of those waving plumes, as they were stirred by the slightest inclination of the head, or the softest aspiration of the breeze. But the effect was greatly heightened by the constant change of color which they underwent. Blue and crimson, and orange and gold, were so blended that the eye was equally dazzled and delighted. But the utmost astonishment pervaded me, when, upon closely scrutinizing her features, I thought I recognized the beautiful face of the Aztec Princess. Little leisure, however, was afforded me for this purpose, for no sooner had her subjects, the a.s.sembled thousands, bowed with deferential respect to their sovereign, than a company of drilled guards marched up to where I stood, and unresistingly made me prisoner.

It is useless to attempt a full description of the imposing ceremony I had witnessed, or to portray the appearance of those who took the most prominent parts. Their costume corresponded precisely with that of the figures in _bas-relief_ on the sculptured monuments at Palenque. Each wore a gorgeous head-dress, generally of feathers, carried an instrument decorated with ribbons, feathers and skins, which appeared to be a war-club, and wore huge sashes of yellow, green, or crimson cotton cloth, knotted before and behind, and falling in graceful folds almost to the ground.

Hitherto not a word had been spoken. The ceremony I had witnessed was a religious one, and was at once interpreted by me to be the worship of the sun. I remembered well that the ancient Peruvians were heliolaters, and my imagination had been dazzled when but a child by the gorgeous description given by the historian Robertson, of the great Temple of the Sun at Cuzco. There the Incas had worshiped the G.o.d of Day from the period when Manco Capac came from the distant Island of Oello, and taught the native Indians the rudiments of civilization, until the life of the last scion of royal blood was sacrificed to the perfidy of the Spanish invaders. These historical facts had long been familiar to my mind; but I did not recollect any facts going to show that the ancient Aztecs were likewise heliolaters; but further doubt was now impossible.

In perfect silence I was hurried up the stone steps of the great Teocallis, toward the palace erected upon its summit, into whose broad and lofty corridors we soon entered. These we traversed in several directions, leaving the more outward and gradually approaching the heart or central apartments.