The American Egypt Part 12

Before Stephens's investigations the wildest reports as to the extent of the ruins were current. These varied between sixty miles and twenty miles. Stephens once and for all gave the lie to these fairy tales, and showed that the ruins did not cover a square mile. But this fact does not weigh against the a.s.sumption, so soundly based upon the grandeur and artistic glories of the buildings, that Palenque was once a great and powerful city; for, as elsewhere, the hundreds of dwellings which cl.u.s.tered around its temples and palaces were houses of perishable materials which long ago rotted away in the forest. The largest ruin is the palace, which stands on an oblong mound 40 feet high, 310 feet long, and 260 feet wide. This gigantic mound was once faced entirely with stone. The building on it faces east, and has a frontage of 228 feet, a depth of 180, and a height of 25. There were fourteen doorways, each about 9 feet wide. It is of stone throughout, though the whole front was once stuccoed and painted. The s.p.a.ces between the doorways were carved with bas-reliefs. The chief doorway is approached by stone steps. Along the cornice outside, which projected about a foot, holes had been drilled through the stone, which suggests that by their means an immense sun-curtain was sometimes lowered to cover the fourteen doorways. Two parallel corridors run lengthwise on all four sides of the building, and it is upon the corridor to the east that all fourteen doors opened.

These corridors are about 9 feet wide. The floors are of cement; the walls 10 feet high and plastered. The inner walls are broken by apertures about a foot long, doubtless for the ventilation of the interior. Some of these window slits were cross-shaped, some T-shaped.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELLIPTICAL TABLET IN PALACE, PALENQUE.]

From the outer corridor there is but one door leading to the inner corridor, through which in turn thirty steps lead down to a rectangular courtyard 80 feet long by 70 feet broad. On each side of these steps are figures in bas-relief 9 feet odd high. On each side of this courtyard the palace is divided into apartments, the arrangement of which, intricate in the extreme, will be seen from the reproduction we make of Stephens's ground-plan. A second flight of stairs leads out westward through two corridors, and by more steps to a second courtyard 80 feet long and 30 wide. So far the arrangements of the palace are much those of other Mayan buildings, though on a grander scale. But the peculiar feature is a tower on the south side of the second court. At the base it is square, and has three storeys. Within it is a smaller tower, separate from the outer one and containing a staircase also of stone so narrow that only a small man could ascend. This staircase ends dead against a stone ceiling, from which the last step is only six or eight inches.

Such a deliberate cul-de-sac stair is so incomprehensible as to defeat one's efforts to even suggest an explanation. The Chichen Caracol stairs, which we explored, scarcely in our view offer the same difficulty, for they did appear to have once opened on to the platform of an observatory turret. But Mayan buildings are indeed full of features which are whimsical in the extreme, and suggest that either the builders were often demented caciques or that buildings such as the Palenque palace represent the architectural efforts of several generations of chiefs, and that the later ones by their additions rendered nugatory, perhaps deliberately, the designs of the first builders.

East of the tower is another building with two corridors, one ornamented with pictures in stucco, the centre of its wall bearing a curious elliptical tablet here reproduced from Stephens's picture. The faces of the figures are notable for the p.r.o.nounced profile which is found here, at Piedras Negras, and at Copan, but as far as we could see not at all at Chichen or at other of the ruins in Yucatan proper. This tablet is, Stephens says, the only stone carving in the palace except those already mentioned in the courtyard. Under it once stood a table. At the end of the corridor containing it an opening in the floor leads by steps to a series of subterranean apartments, with windows opening from them above the ground, thus forming a ground-floor below the level of the corridors. Here are several more stone tables.

At the extreme south-west corner of the palace, connected with it by a subterranean pa.s.sage, is a pyramidal structure, which once had stairways on all its faces. The sides are very steep and measure about 100 feet on the slope. The building is 76 feet long and 25 deep. It has five doors separated by six piers. The front is richly ornamented with stucco designs and hieroglyphics at each end, ninety-six glyphs in each tablet.

The centre four piers are carved with human figures, two on each side facing each other. These are very interesting, for they are, we believe, of a design elsewhere unknown in Central America--representing women with children in their arms. The front corridor is 7 feet wide and is divided from the inner corridor by a ma.s.sive wall having in it three doors. At each side of the centre door is a tablet of hieroglyphics, each 13 feet wide and 8 high, and divided into 240 glyphs. Each tablet projects three or four inches from the wall. In the rear corridor to which these three doors give admission is another tablet 4 feet 6 inches by 3 feet 6 inches covered with hieroglyphics. Stephens says that the building was called by the local Indians a school; but the padre of Palenque suggested that it was the court-house, and that these hieroglyphic tablets were the tables of the law. Who shall say?

To the east of this Court of Justice, if such indeed it was, is another pyramid 134 feet high, measured on the slope, with a building on top. It has a frontage of 50 feet, is 31 deep, and has three doorways. The whole front is of stucco ornamentation with hieroglyphics on the piers.

Divided into two corridors, this building is probably the most remarkable of all Mayan buildings, by reason of the altar tablet in the inner room. It was 10 feet 8 inches wide and 6 feet 4 inches high, and consisted of three separate stones. The middle one had been removed before Stephens's visit. He found it lying near the stream which runs through the group of ruins. The right-hand stone had been quite destroyed. Stephens conjectures, probably rightly, that it was covered with hieroglyphics like that on the left.

This is the famous "Table of the Cross," the most wonderful inscription so far discovered in the New World; and it is well to say at once that the t.i.tle is misleading. The so-called Cross, it is suggested, is a cosmogonical symbol of the Mayans representing the tree of life growing out of a cube-shaped world, having as its base a fantastic head. This may be so, though we venture to think it may have quite another origin, as we suggest later.

Close to this building are two more which are also obviously temples.

The three have been named Temple of the Cross, Temple of the Cross No. 2 (according to Mr. W. H. Holmes), or of the Foliated Cross (according to Mr. Maudslay), and the Temple of the Sun. In each is found the same alleged cosmic sign, the Tree of Life. Each was doubtless a temple. The second two buildings are almost identical in structure with No. 1. In the Temple of the Sun is an altar-slab quite as remarkable as that in the Temple of the Cross. It is 9 feet wide and 8 feet high, and it is composed of three separate stones.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BAS-RELIEF ON PIER OF TEMPLE, PALENQUE.]

A comparison of these extraordinary carvings shows great similarity in the pose and dress of the figures; but in that of the Temple of the Sun the figures stand on crouching fantastic forms, and between them is a rectangular table curiously adorned and resting on two more crouching figures. From this table project two crossed lances, the point of intersection being hidden by a grotesque face which Mayan students have agreed to regard as a symbol of the Sun. The main figures would seem to be priests, or perhaps a priest and his a.s.sistant. They hold in their hands what look like human figures for sacrifice. The key to these wonderful bas-reliefs lies in the glyphs. Professor Forstemann would have us believe that these are but a compilation of month and day signs, that, in fact, the tablets are much like those almanacks which a country grocer presents to his customers, an attractive picture in the middle, surrounded by the days of the month. We do not believe it, we never shall be able to believe it; and in the chapter on the glyphs we shall attempt to show that the Professor has been run away with by his own theories. It is far more likely that these wonderful calculiform letters enshrine a dedicatory prayer to the presiding deity of the temple, with perhaps a full description of the G.o.d and his attributes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BAS-RELIEF ON PIER OF TEMPLE, PALENQUE.]

On the piers at each side of the temple are stone tablets carved in bas-relief each with a figure, of which we reproduce Stephens's drawing.

They undoubtedly represent priests in full ceremonial dress. The drawings form their own commentary. Noteworthy in the second is the appearance of fishes in the headdress, which appears to be composed of a bird holding a fish. Some fifteen hundred feet to the south of these temples is yet another pyramid crowned by a building 20 feet long and 80 feet deep, which Stephens found in almost complete ruin. The most remarkable feature of it is a bas-relief which once represented a couch, formed of a two-headed jaguar, some portions of the figure once seated still remaining. Of this couch design we shall have more to say when we come to our arguments as to the origin of Mayan architecture.

Near the Temple of the Sun, Stephens found the only statue so far discovered at Palenque. It is 10 feet 6 inches high, 2 feet 6 inches of which is in the ground, and the sides are rounded while the back is of rough stone. Many have been the visitors to Palenque during the sixty-eight years which have elapsed since Stephens explored it, but little or nothing has been discovered which would justify a reversal of that famous archaeologist's finding, viz.: that the stories of the vast area of the ruins are mere fairy tales, and that in the buildings here briefly described we have the relics of the only important stone structures of a once great and powerful city. That it was desolate at the time of the Conquest is more than likely, for it is absolutely certain that Cortes in his march to Honduras pa.s.sed within less than thirty miles of its site; and had it then been in that full zenith of power which the splendour of its buildings irresistibly suggests it once enjoyed, it is incredible that the Conqueror of Mexico should not have met its cacique in a pitched battle.

Between seventy and eighty miles to the E.S.E. of the ruins of Palenque, on the south-western bank of the Usumacinta, are the ruins of Menche.

Some attempts have been made in recent years to identify this with that Phantom City of which the cura of Santa Cruz del Quiche gave Stephens in 1839 an entrancing account. He (the cura) when young "had with much labour 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." Apart from the fact that the excellent padre had probably allowed his imagination to run riot, there is really no ground for aggrandising Menche at the expense of the neighbouring Palenque, which was once undoubtedly the larger city. This portion of the Usumacinta lies within the tribal area of the Lacandone Indians, who still maintain their independence, and thus it is quite possible that the city which is to-day represented by the ruins, was inhabited to a much later date than the cities of Yucatan. M. Charnay visited the ruins in 1880, and endeavoured to saddle them with the name "Lorillard City,"

in complimentary allusion to Mr. Lorillard, the chocolate millionaire who had defrayed the chief cost of the French archaeologist's tour. The honour of their discovery really belongs to that earnest and unselfish archaeologist Mr. Maudslay.

The ruins consist of temples and palaces of a construction very similar to all those buildings which are found at Palenque and around; but Charnay says they are smaller and less richly decorated than those at Palenque. They seem for some reason to have suffered severely from weather-wear, for all trace of outer decoration is gone. The chief ruin is that of a palace built on a high pyramid in six blocks, forming a rectangle. Such is the account M. Charnay gives of it, but he states that though the outline can be traced, the whole of the building is now in complete ruin. About 150 yards from the river on a pyramid about 120 feet high is a building 68 feet long and about 20 feet deep, which has three doorways. Its interior is remarkable only for the fact that it contained a huge stone idol which is unique of its kind. M. Charnay describes it as "a figure sitting cross-legged, the hands resting on the knees. The att.i.tude is placid and dignified like a Buddha statue; the face, now mutilated, is crowned by an enormous headdress of peculiar style, presenting a fantastic head with a diadem and medallion topped by feathers ... the dress consists of a rich cape embroidered with pearls, a medallion on each shoulder and in front, recalling Roman decorations.

The same ornamentation is seen on the lower part of the body, having a much larger medallion and fringed maxtli. The arms are covered with heavy bracelets." Around the idol M. Charnay found clay incense-burners moulded into face forms such as have been unearthed again and again on the Usumacinta and in Guatemala and which have proved to be in actual daily use to-day in the temple of the Lacandone Indians. The walls of this temple M. Charnay describes as being blackened, doubtless from the smoke of offerings. Above the cornice of the buildings is a stone lattice-work 14 feet high almost identical in design with that which we have described in our account of the House of the Pigeons of Uxmal.

Close to this temple is a building 65 feet long by 52 deep. To the south-west of this on another pyramid is a second temple, noteworthy for the carved lintels. These represent scenes of sacrifice like those described at Palenque; but there is more animation in the figures of the second one, which represents a kneeling priest pa.s.sing a rope through his tongue, while over him stands another ecclesiastic, in his hands the crozier-like wand of office which again and again occurs in Mayan ceremonial carvings. These lintels, which were discovered by Mr.

Maudslay, were by him with infinite trouble carried to the coast and shipped to England, and are now in the British Museum among other exhibits of which he has been the generous donor.

This pa.s.sing of a rope through the tongue represents a form of worship of which Sahagun (_Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva Espana_) writes:--"They pierced a hole with a sharp itzli knife through the middle of the tongue and pa.s.sed a number of twigs, according to the degree of devotion of the performer. These twigs were sometimes fastened the one to the other and pulled through the tongue like a long cord."

Torquemada also speaks of these penances as occurring in Mexico: "The priests of Quetzalcoatl provided themselves with sticks two feet long and the size of their fist, and with them they repaired to the main temple, where they fasted five days. Then carpenters and tool-workers were brought, who were required to fast the same number of days, at the end of which time they were given food within the precincts of the temple. The former worked the sticks to the required size while the tool-makers made knives with which they cut the priests' tongues. More prayers followed, when all the priests prepared for the sacrifice, the elders giving the example by pa.s.sing through their tongues four or five hundred twigs, followed by such among the young who had sufficient courage to imitate them. But the pain was so sharp that few went through the whole number; for although the first twigs were thinned out, they became stouter each time, until they attained the size of a thumb, sometimes twice as much."

In the neighbourhood of Menche a further group of ruins, those of Piedras Negras, show abundant signs of the high level of culture which is a.s.sociated with Palenque and Menche, as will be seen by the photograph which we are able to reproduce through the courtesy of the accomplished and indefatigable field-worker and scholar, Herr Teobert Maler, to whom, we believe, belongs the honour of being the first to make known the extent and treasures of this group.

What is abundantly proved by his, Mr. Maudslay's, and other students'

researches in the Usumacinta district is that the whole country around is rich in ruins, and many more, besides those so far located, may possibly be discovered in the future. And here a further puzzle presents itself. Such evidence as exists in the Spanish records seems to point to the fact that all these cities were in a deserted, or at any rate a decadent, state on the arrival of the Spaniards. The evidence is not by any means conclusive, as little or no reliance can be placed on the Spanish chroniclers, who are silent upon so much else. But such as it is, it deserves weighing.

Granting for the moment, then, that Palenque and these other centres were ruins at the Conquest, why was this so? An explanation might be found in the supposition that the militant Aztecs had made extensive raids as far south as Honduras, and had proved themselves entirely superior to the Mayans, scattering and slaughtering them, and, possibly after a short occupation, had returned northward, leaving the conquered citizens too broken and fearful to attempt a restoration of their grand centres, dreading further raids. Dr. Gann, British Commissioner at Corosal, told us he found in Honduras wall paintings of undoubted Aztec origin; which discovery would seem to support this view. It certainly seems to us a more reasonable explanation than the one some students have adopted, viz. that the cities of the Usumacinta represent an age of culture between which and that of Northern and North-Eastern Yucatan stretches a gap of many centuries. Any Aztec raids Honduras-wards would certainly follow a route well south of Yucatan, and through the Usumacinta country.

Yet another explanation might be that the victories of Cortes had the result of driving large bodies of Aztecs southward; that these possessed themselves of many Mayan cities; and that later, on Cortes advancing south, they deserted them and took to the dense surrounding woods. It must also be remembered that even if the Spanish conqueror pa.s.sed within eight or ten leagues of such a city as Palenque, and did not hear of its existence, it might yet well be that it was still inhabited, as none of the Indians met on the line of march would be likely to volunteer any information to the hated whites.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ANCIENT MAYANS

There is no field of inquiry in which the imagination of students could roam further or more uselessly than in the reconstruction of the life of a vanished people from their ruined monuments. In attempting, as we shall in this chapter, to place before the reader a concise sketch of the political, religious, and social life of the Mayans at the time of the Spanish invasion of Yucatan, we cannot too strongly emphasise our conviction that the marvellous buildings which we have described in the preceding pages are not monuments of a vanished people. The Mayan toiler to-day in the milpas or the henequen fields is, we are convinced, the lineal descendant of the Mayan architect who was capable of creating a Chichen or a Sayil.

The history of Yucatan is the history of Egypt save for one fact. When Europe first interested itself in the architectural wonders of the Land of the Pharaohs centuries of darkness had overwhelmed the Copts and the Fellaheen and the arts of their ancestors were entirely lost to them.

But when the white man first set foot in Yucatan the civilisation of her people was an actual living civilisation, though the key to the origin of it has yet to be discovered. The half-century which elapsed between the first discovery of the Peninsula and the establishment of Spanish authority sufficed to render desolate the mighty cities which covered its surface, to scatter and decimate its vast populations, to extirpate and suppress the native religion, and by the subst.i.tution of a new creed, a new polity, and a new social organisation so completely to ring down the curtain upon the Mayan past that the Indian victims of Spanish brutality and bigotry seemed separated from their ancestors by a gulf which even the most remarkable archaeological ac.u.men would find it hard to bridge. But though much archaeological ac.u.men has been exercised and many writers have laboured to aggrandise the Ancient Mayans at the expense of their descendants, it has really been labour lost. The life which the Mayans were found by the Spaniards to be living was probably in its minutest detail the life which they had led for centuries before.

And thus in presenting here a short account of their civilisation, pieced together from the haphazard writings of those Spaniards who were not entirely absorbed in the congenial task of ma.s.sacring and destroying, we are safe in a.s.suming that we are giving the reader a very fair and accurate idea of how the builders of even the oldest ruins lived and loved and died.

Politically Yucatan was divided into a number of provinces, each ruled by a cacique. These provinces at the time of the Spanish invasion appear to have numbered nineteen. The power of these caciques within their own territory was so absolute as to amount to a virtual monarchy; though kingship in its true const.i.tutional sense would appear to have never existed in Yucatan. The caciqueship was hereditary, and pa.s.sed from father to son. Females appear to have been excluded from succession. If a cacique died leaving a son who was a minor, his eldest or most capable brother succeeded as cacique, and actually held the position after the heir had reached full age; the nephew being obliged to wait until his uncle's death before he attempted to claim his heritage. If the cacique left no brother, the priests and chief elders elected a successor who held the government for his life, the rightful heir only acceding at his death.

Each cacique maintained a small bodyguard; but the army for the defence of the State was the whole body of citizens capable of bearing arms. The cacique himself does not appear to have been commander-in-chief, but delegated this post to two subjects, one of whom held his military leadership by inheritance, transmitting it to his son, and the other being elective every three years. This latter official combined with his military duties certain sacerdotal functions, presiding at the feast of the War G.o.d, and during his term of office leading a hermit's life, maintaining complete chast.i.ty and abstaining from intoxicating liquor.

The weapons of the soldiers were bows and arrows pointed with stone or fishbone, stone axes, and lances, swords and daggers of wood hardened by fire. They carried shields of plaited cane covered with deer-skin, and wore an armour of thickly woven cotton. Having no horses and no draught animals of any kind, each soldier had to be commissariat waggon for himself, and this difficulty of providing food for a long campaign made the wars short and sharp. Ordinary captives were usually reduced to the condition of slavery, but the general or cacique who was made prisoner was sacrificed to the War G.o.d as a thank-offering.

The centre of each town or village was occupied by the chief temple, around which were built the houses of the priests, the palace of the cacique and those of the chief men. Outside this sacred pale lived the poorer people in huts of the same type as those inhabited by the Mayans of to-day. Close to the temple was ordinarily the market-square, where stood the town hall in which all public business and reunions of the tribe took place, and justice was administered. Here presided a special functionary who ordered public festivals and ceremonies, and took the chair, so to speak, at general meetings of the people. As a matter of fact he appears to have rejoiced in the name of _Holpop_, which according to D. G. Brinton means literally "head of the mat," because at the tribal meetings when the elders squatted round on the mats, the _Holpop_ sat at the end. He appears also to have been Master of the Music, and to have had in his keeping the musical instruments of the tribe--namely the _tunkul_, which seems to have been a small drum of wood, trumpets of conch-sh.e.l.l and flutes of cane. The _tunkul_, which produced a melancholy note, was used to summon the people to worship, to give notice of dances and festive meetings, to call together the warriors, and as an alarm signal in case of sudden attack. Thus the _tunkul_ was in a special sense the sacred national instrument of the Mayans.

Justice was administered in a summary manner by the cacique, who personally heard plaints and disputes and gave such judgment as he thought fit. In the matter of damage to property the guilty party was made to compensate the injured by payment of his own goods. If he had no property, his relatives had to pay for him. This penalty of fining was the usual punishment for accidental homicide and unintentional arson and in the case of conjugal quarrels. Adultery was regarded as a grave offence when committed with a married woman. Accusation of adultery having been notified, the cacique, accompanied by the tribal elders, held a court, when with the greatest solemnity, and in the presence of the injured husband, the adulterer was tied hand and foot to a post of infamy. He was then at the disposal of the injured man. The latter could pardon him if he wished, or could take his life there and then by smashing in his head with a stone. The woman in fault suffered no bodily punishment, but was branded with infamy and usually repudiated by her husband. It is obvious that much respect was shown to women, for the penalty of death was meted out to any man who was guilty of outrage or rape, technical or actual. The cacique always condemned the offender to be stoned, and the penalty was inflicted by the whole village. n.o.body, not even the highest n.o.ble, appears to have been able to escape the rigour of this law.

For murder the penalty was death, either by order of the cacique; or, if the criminal escaped, he could be pursued by the family of his victim and killed wherever they found him, his crime thus making him an outlaw.

In the case of murder by a minor, the penalty of death was not inflicted nor could the injured family pursue him. But he became their slave for the rest of his life. Unintentional homicide was less rigorously punished. A fine either in goods or a slave was usually the penalty imposed. Other accidental injuries, such as the unmalicious firing of houses or crops, were made good by fining. In the case of intentional arson, however, the culprit was put to death; and the supreme penalty of the law was also inflicted on traitors.

Enslavement was the punishment of all robbers, who could only regain their liberty by restoring the stolen goods and making good the damage.

So severe were the laws as to robbery that no excuse was found in circ.u.mstances of extreme want. The man who stole because he was starving was reduced to the condition of a slave just the same as the wanton or violent robber. Robbery and war were the chief sources of recruiting the ranks of the slaves. But if a theft was committed by a cacique, priest, n.o.ble or official, an exception was made in their favour. They did not become slaves, but were obliged to submit to a public degradation. The popular a.s.sembly was summoned, and there, before the eyes of all the people, the culprit was branded on both cheeks, from chin to forehead, with figures symbolical of his crime, tatooed on in paints with fishbones.

There were no regular prisons or houses of detention. Indeed they were not needed, as justice was in all cases summary. Where possible the offender was brought before the cacique forthwith. If, however, the arrest took place during the night, or the carrying out of the sentence had to be delayed for some hours, the criminal was imprisoned in an enclosure of stakes. If the penalty was death it was executed immediately, except in those cases where the criminal was reserved for sacrifice, and then he was kept caged up until such day as the priests had ordained. A murderer condemned to slavery became the property of one of the chief men, if there was no kinsman of his victim to whom he could become servant.

There was a very marked differentiation of cla.s.ses among the Mayans.

There were the n.o.bles, the priests, the people, and the slaves. The children of these latter inherited their parents' status and _ipso facto_ became slaves. A free man who married a slave woman lost his freedom. Thus were cla.s.s distinctions sternly maintained. Even s.e.xual intercourse between a free man and a slave woman was severely punished on the first offence, and, if repeated, the man lost his liberty and became a slave to the owner of the girl. There appears to have been a regular slave-market in each large Mayan city. The Spanish chroniclers endeavour to denigrate this system of servitude, declaring it to be a cruel debas.e.m.e.nt of human beings to the position of beasts of burden.

But though all slavery is detestable, there seems to have been little or no cruelty in the system in vogue among the Mayans, and it is quite obvious that it was untainted by that basest of all advantages which are taken of a slave cla.s.s--namely, the using of them for immoral purposes.

Spanish writers should recollect, in view of this very black page of their own history, a homely little proverb which begins "those who live in gla.s.s houses."

As has been said, the Mayan city had as its centre an open s.p.a.ce where stood the temple and the chief houses. Thence branched off paths (they were not roads) connecting this central plaza with the houses of the n.o.bles and middle cla.s.s, the outlying suburbs of the city being occupied by the poor and the slaves. The richer people lived in stone houses, but those able to afford these were always few, and the average Mayan city consisted of huts built just as they are to-day by the modern Mayans; palm-thatched, oval-shaped enclosures of stakes bound together by lianas and sometimes plastered over with earth. The huts were of various sizes and shapes. The majority were oval, some were nearly round with a diameter of twenty-five feet, while a very few were rectangular. They were often divided into two apartments, a sleeping and a living room.

There was no attempt at or need for foundation, the natural earth forming the flooring, as it does in the huts to-day. Each hut stood in its own garden, in which were cultivated plum-trees, the _mamey_ and the _sapota_ for their fruits, and other trees and shrubs, possibly a little cotton and henequen, and such flowering plants and sweet-scented herbs as wormwood, sweet basil, white and violet irises, and a small white flower, much like the English jasmine and strongly perfumed, which one sees growing everywhere in the woods of Yucatan to-day. Outside each city were the clearings devoted to agriculture, the chief products being maize, frijoles or black beans, a kind of pumpkin, sweet potatoes, cotton, and maize of different kinds. When the harvest was abundant it was stored in granaries as a reserve for bad years.

The Mayans had few domestic animals. They kept turkeys, which were indigenous to Central America, and they probably early domesticated the wild pig or peccary. They had a type of dog which one chronicler declares was incapable of barking, though an excellent hunter. These dogs were often fattened to form a dish at the feasts, being regarded as a great delicacy. The women and children appear to have made pets of the small Yucatecan rac.o.o.n, the _coati_ or _pisotl_, as the Indians call it, and birds were tamed and kept.

The Mayan family, irrespective of s.e.x and age, all slept in that portion of the hut that was set aside as a sleeping apartment. They slept on beds of rushes loosely strewn or woven into mats. The hammock was unknown in Yucatan until the arrival of the Spaniards. It is a very common mistake to believe that the hammock was indigenous to Yucatan.

Columbus is the first to mention the hammock, and he found it among the West Indians. It is said to have originated in San Domingo; but whether this is so or not, it is quite certain that the Mayans did not sleep in hammocks until the Spaniards introduced the custom. These Mayan rush beds were sometimes raised from the ground on a sort of rough table made of sticks bound together and supported on four legs. In the poorer huts this is quite a common form of bedstead to-day. As bed-clothes they had cloaks of cotton of varying degrees of thickness according to the wealth of the family.

The farm lands belonging to the city were cultivated by the people in common. A special portion of these public lands was set apart each year for the support of the cacique and his family, and it was his subjects'

duty to cultivate and reap his crops and carry the harvest to his granaries. A like apportionment of land was made to the highest n.o.bles and functionaries of the State. Hunting grounds were also allotted to the cacique and his chief n.o.bles, and anybody trespa.s.sing on these was punished. The Mayans were great hunters, going out in large parties into the woods after attending at the temple and praying for good sport from the G.o.ds of the woodland. The quarry were the several birds of the pheasant family which haunt the Yucatecan woods, the marvellously beautiful ocellated turkey and other members of the gallinaceous family, deer, rabbits, the wild pig and, last but not least, the jaguar. A t.i.the of the "bag" was presented to the caciques. Of fisheries, where available, the cacique and his n.o.bles also got the pick. Fish were abundant, as they are to-day, along the whole coast of the Peninsula, and the Mayans caught them with nets or, when the water was low, by shooting them with arrows. The fish were dried in the sun, and thus kept for many days, and carried twenty or thirty leagues into the interior.