The American Egypt Part 4

CHAPTER V

A YUCATECAN BREAKFAST, AND OTHER "SIGHTS"

Unless one is endowed with the appet.i.te of the proverbial ploughboy there is surely nothing which puts you off your food more than having too much on your plate. One's sympathies go out to the irritable old gentleman at the London club who, having ordered a plate of beef and getting beef and a plate, snapped out angrily to the waiter, "Do you think I haven't eaten for a month?" The next worse thing to having too much on your plate is to have too much on the table. Every traveller knows the bewildering effect of those breakfasts served on the Paris and Mediterranean Railway, when seven dishes are placed before you, with fifteen minutes in which to eat their contents. But though there is no time-limit for feeding in Yucatan, you have got to get accustomed to the whole meal, in all its courses, being placed before you at once.

We had brought with us to Merida several letters of introduction, and on the Monday we presented one of these to a Yucatecan millionaire whom we ran to earth in his office (he was mayor of the city) transacting official business. After our preliminary greetings he said, "We Yucatecans never ask anybody to our houses, but I should like you to see the interior of a Yucatecan home. Therefore, will you breakfast with me to-morrow at 11.30?" In fulfilment of this engagement we turned up the next day in his patio at the appointed hour. The house is one of the finest in Merida, and is so typical of the people as to be worth a short description. Entering through the patio, bright with flowering shrubs, with orange trees loaded with the golden fruit, with palms and evergreens, you ascend a short flight of stone steps into a long central tiled hall forming a kind of glorified verandah on two sides of the courtyard. On the tiles are thrown a few cheap coloured mats. Ranged in two rows facing each other are eight or ten American bentwood rocking-chairs. On the walls hang a few oleographs. Here we were received by our host in a linen suit, and his Senora, a celebrated Meridian beauty, daintily dressed in a pink muslin frock, the mother, as we afterwards discovered, of seven children, though she herself looked little more than out of her teens. One or two other guests, male relatives, all in cool linens, having arrived, our hosts lead the way to the further end of the hall, out of which opens the dining-room. Not at all such a dining-room as we English a.s.sociate with the sacred occupation of feeding. It is really nothing but another tiled annexe to the hall with huge doorway, but without doors (there are no real doors between the rooms in Yucatecan houses), at which the chickens and turkeys from the back yard are congregating to see the fun, hopping, cackling, out of the way of the half dozens of Indian women servants who are pattering in with bare feet from the kitchen of which you catch a glimpse down a vista of tiled yard.

But here's the table, and what a spread! There are only eight of us to breakfast, for it is the children's school hour, and thus they are not present; but if there were eighty-eight of us we feel, as we look at the groaning board, that the Indian maids would be able, when everybody's appet.i.te was satisfied, to gather up of the fragments that remained many basketfuls. As we take our places, our host perhaps detects the amazement in our eyes, for he says with a wave of his hand, "I wished you to have a Yucatecan meal. It is always our custom to have everything on the table at once." There is certainly everything, almost everything you can think of. There is a dish of steaks; a stew of rabbit; a great plate of pork sausages; chickens stewed and chickens roasted; turkey minced with egg and turkey in _puris naturalibus_; a greasy mess of pork joints; a great heaped-up ma.s.s of venison; a vast soup-tureen of beef broth; a dish of chopped eggs and tortillas; a huge salted sausage in red skin, a favourite food of all Yucatecans; a minced mess of meat known throughout Yucatan as _Chile con carne_; a plate of veal cutlets; a large boiled fish, the famous red-snapper of the Mexican Gulf; and last but not least, turtle steaks. And for vegetables there are dishes of tomatoes, of green and red peppers, of garlick and onions, of black beans (frijoles) squashed into a greasy dark purple pulp, of snowy pyramids of rice, of boiled plantains, of sweet potatoes, and boiled Indian corn. But the sweets are here too; jellies and stewed fruits, cranberries squashed into a luscious disguise of pipless semi-liquid jelly fringed round with cream; pineapples stewed in thick slabs, and peaches floating in a wine-tinted syrup. And among all these _plats de jour_ (the wonder is that the Indian maids have found room to place them on the table) are china baskets of fruits, apples from California, oranges from our host's farm, bananas and banana-apples, peaches and the purple-brown _caumita_, which looks like a cross between a rosy-cheeked apple and a nectarine and has a white soapy flesh with a taste which is somewhat like that of a green fig soaked for an hour in a lather of delicately scented soap. And to wash down this Gargantuan feast there were three cut-gla.s.s short-stemmed long-bodied goblets beside each breakfaster, which were kept filled by the Indian maids with red and white wines, aerated waters, iced lemonade made from the limes from the patio, fruit drinks, or iced milk.

Bread-throwing at school, if we remember aright, was an offence punishable with the sixth book of the Aeneid to write out and the loss of a half holiday as the minimum penalty. In Yucatan it is all the fashion in the highest circles. No sooner had we taken our places at the table than an Indian maid brought in, holding them in her brown hands, a towering pile of soft white doughy tortillas, each about as big as a large Abernethy biscuit. These she placed at the side of our hostess, who at once began to throw them to us all. It was so adroitly done that before you had recovered from the amazement with which the mere act filled you, you found yourself admiring the exquisite dexterity of the gentle thrower. Those of our readers who have visited Monte Carlo and admired, as every one must, the marvellous precision with which the croupiers flip the golden Louis to the lucky "punters," will be able to imagine something like the dexterity of our hostess. A tortilla whizzed circling across the table under your very nose, and landed with exquisite softness, like a tired dove, at the side of your host's plate.

Whizz, whirr! here comes another! Why, it's like boomerang-throwing, for this last, you'll swear, circled round you before it sank nestling under the edge of the plate of steaming pork-stew in front of you. The air is thick with these doughy missiles. n.o.body is the least surprised except us, and we become quite absorbed in watching the friendly bombardment.

Our host engages us, as the newspapers say, in "animated conversation"; enquires the purposes of our tour, and our theories as to the origin of the Mayan people. It is hard to give him our whole attention, for we feel we are losing all the fun. For the tortillas are whizzing over the table now and round it just like boomerangs, and then the hostess's supply is exhausted. But here is a plump Indian maid with a fresh supply, snowy white and softly fluffy, such as would fill a London m.u.f.fin man's heart with envy. It is all very funny, and the climax is reached when your host peels an orange of some very rare flavour, and offers you the juicy dripping quarter in his fingers, following this up with a like exhibition of his hospitable wish to share with you his apple and his peach.

We had defended ourselves as well as we could from the unbridled hospitality of our host, but all the same we felt like boa-constrictors who had made an injudicious meal of goats whole, when we packed ourselves into a skeleton cab to pay a visit of inspection to the Merida prison, which is one of the sights of the place. The drive thither was through one of the finest thoroughfares in the city, lined with substantially built bungalow-houses of stone and stucco, each standing in its picturesque tropical garden, a ma.s.s of bloom and waving fan-palms. This street debouches upon the broad Avenida de Paz, a wonderful stretch of asphalt running the full width of the city and forming its western frontier. Beyond this opens out the really fine Plaza de Porfirio Diaz, a great oval of lawn intersected by broad paths of asphalt meeting in a large central s.p.a.ce ornamented by a small artificial lake with fountain. The Penitenciaria Juarez fronts upon the plaza, a long low building of limestone stuccoed, one-storeyed save over the central doorway, where a turreted second storey forms the residence of the President, as the governor of the gaol is called. This official met us at the doorway. He was a Mexican of about forty, a tall, handsome, military-looking man, swarthy-skinned, with a big black moustache. He impressed us very favourably, for there was in the face a certain charm of frankness and straightforwardness which is not characteristic of the Mexicans, and is almost wholly lacking in the Yucatecans. His smile was quite kindly, though behind it it was not difficult to detect a certain official grimness which suggested a man capable of anything if duty demanded. He had been imported into Yucatan because of his reputation as a specialist in the governing of gaols, and what we saw of the administration of the building under his control suggested that Yucatan had been very wise in her importation.

Armed with an ordinary walking-stick, in linen suit and a panama hat, he led the way across the central hall, where loafed half a dozen soldiers in holland uniforms ornamented with green and white braidings and wearing a cap of the French kepi type, to the interior of the prison.

The iron gates were unlocked by a convict dressed in a red and white striped shirt, the President explaining that all the short-term and good-conduct men wore these, while the more desperate characters have blue and white striped shirts. From the gateway three long corridors branched off, and we pa.s.sed down each in turn. Out of these opened on each side the cells, small cubicles of stone, their only furniture a wooden shelf, some three feet wide, let into the wall about three feet from the ground and supported by two wooden legs. Upon this shelf the prisoner sleeps, his bed-clothes the simple blanket universal throughout the country. In the corner of the cell was a small gutter and drain for washing down the cell, which was ventilated by a small grated window in the corner furthest from the corridor. At the end of the central pa.s.sage was a large stone room where convicts in blue striped shirts were busy making hammocks. The place reminded one of a hop garden in Kent. There were long rows of posts, two to each man, between which were stretched the rough string frameworks of the hammocks, the men pa.s.sing up and down between the posts threading the strings backward and forwards like carpet-weaving. Pa.s.sing through this, we came into a large garden quadrangle at the further end of which, in a big shed, scores of red-striped convicts were busy carpentering. At a signal from the President's stick the buzzing of lathes and saws stopped, as if by magic, and the men stood at attention. The superintendent-carpenter was called up, and explained everything to us, and the President called one or two of the men to him and asked particulars of their cases. One of these was a n.i.g.g.e.r who rejoiced in the British name of John Williams.

With a broad grin which showed his white teeth to the gums, he told us that he was serving a month's sentence for fighting a man in the street.

All the men looked well cared for and contented.

On the other side of the courtyard was a large washhouse with baths for the men and big sinks in which the prison washing was done. Close by was a blacksmith's shop where a score of men were engaged in all sorts of iron work, much of it quite artistic, the chief job at the moment being the designing of railings for the outside of the Penitenciaria, which had been opened only a short time. Here the President told us that much vigilance had to be exercised to prevent the more desperate men from using their opportunities to make less innocent things than railings.

Only a few days before our visit one of the workmen had been found in possession of a bloodthirsty-looking knife which he had manufactured with the purpose possibly, as the President coolly said, of trying its metal upon him. Close by, sitting in the garden, were a row of men busy weaving sacks from henequen fibre. Crossing the yard, we were shown the kitchens. Here were two or three large circular blocks of masonry, into each of which were let several coppers or ovens, the fireplaces beneath.

The whole building had a businesslike and cleanly air, and a couple of convicts were engaged in manufacturing a stew which had a very garlicky Yucatecan smell. We complimented the President upon these kitchens, which would certainly very favourably compare with those in even a first-rate British barracks.

After having inspected an excellent miniature hospital which formed an annexe in the rear of the gaol, we were taken by the President to his private room, where from a safe he produced the prison books. These were most interesting volumes from the criminologist's point of view. To each prisoner was devoted a page, headed by a photograph of him, stripped to the waist and with head shaved. Thereunder were entered details of his crimes, birth, parentage, age, health, weight, and any physical peculiarities. They do not go in for fingerprints in Yucatan. Two or three facts struck us as we turned the pages of these truly human doc.u.ments. First, there appeared to be no Indians in the gaol. Secondly, the clean-shaven presentments of the culprits emphasised to a startling degree the physiognomical lowness of the Mexican type. The majority of the men--certainly of those imprisoned for the more serious offences--were Mexicans, and not Yucatecans. Some of them were mere lads, but one and all had features which suggested the atavism of crime.

They were born murderers. And thirdly, as was logical enough, four-fifths of the offences chronicled in these books were homicide or robbery with violence. It was a curious sidelight into the condition of even this peaceful corner of the Mexican Republic--"that purple land where law secures not life." We were astonished, too, to notice that the maximum penalty for murder appeared to be fifteen years' imprisonment.

The President explained that as a rule capital punishment was not inflicted, but was reserved for parricides and murderers of the most brutal kind. We ventured to suggest that, in such a land, this was a somewhat ill-judged leniency. But the President shook his head. He probably thought that it would make too serious an inroad upon the population of the Republic if every murderer was shot. The supreme penalty of the law here, as in Mexico, is always by the rifle bullet, never the rope.

The President explained in detail the administration of the prison, and the regulations seemed to be quite Utopian in their mildness. Thus each prisoner is allowed to see his relatives once a fortnight, and they can bring him food. During these visits the utmost vigilance is needed to prevent the smuggling-in of contraband articles, money and so on. As ill.u.s.tration of this, the President took from his desk a broken tortilla into which had been kneaded two half-dollars and the tortilla then cooked. The ruse had been discovered, and now the rule is for every tortilla brought into the gaol to be broken in two by the guards. The Gilbertian element, which we had noticed so much in Mexico, was represented here by the truly astonishing provision of a gaol band, which discoursed sweet music to the culprits every afternoon. Evidently our friend the President firmly believed, with Congreve, that

"Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast."

Another benevolent regulation was that by which the prisoners received on their release all the moneys which they had earned by industries, the only deduction being for the purchase of materials and the upkeep of the working sheds. The President took us out to a gallery where were stored a quant.i.ty of really excellently made pieces of furniture, tables, writing-desks, wardrobes, washstands, chairs, and carved cupboards. In this way a prisoner on his release is sometimes ent.i.tled to as large a sum as six hundred dollars (60). Having inspected the school department where the humanising effects of education were tried upon the criminals, we were taken up to the roof of the prison to view the method of guarding it. Between the outside street wall and the inner wall of the building was a moat some thirty feet wide. In this were stationed at intervals soldiers armed with rifles. On the outside wall, some two or three yards broad, paced more armed sentries, who thus commanded an entire view of the whole prison. In bidding the President good-bye we said, what we felt, that he was the head of an establishment which did him the utmost credit, and from the humanising and rational system of which the English Prison Commissioners might take many valuable hints.

There is a Museum in Merida, a poor affair and badly housed in three dark rooms; but there were several things we wanted to see specially, so we made our way thither after leaving the prison. With some difficulty--for our driver did not appear, with true Yucatecan stupidity, to know that his city contained such a very unnecessary adjunct--we ran the national treasure house to earth in a back street, where a small bra.s.s plate on a decayed-looking doorway announced itself as "El Museo." The director, a middle-aged Yucatecan, whose amiability was only equalled by his archaeological ignorance, was routed out of his hammock by his little ten-year-old son who opened the door to us, and sleepily proceeded to do the honours of the place. It is a great pity that, with such limitless wealth and such boundless opportunities, Merida has taken no pains to establish a Museum worthy of her position as the capital city of the Egypt of the New World. What we saw, if it had not been so sad, would have been really comic. Absolute confusion reigned. There was no catalogue, the smiling director forming a peripatetic one. Exhibits bore numbers which were thus meaningless to every one but himself. It was Mexico Museum over again on a humbler scale. Wretched pieces of Spanish carved stone-work from the interiors of churches or from the facades of seventeenth-century houses, were jumbled up with really marvellous pieces of Indian workmanship, figures in bas-relief of G.o.ds and animals and warriors in feathered dress. But the good director had not been content with making a hotchpotch such as one sees in the shop of a dealer in marine stores and sc.r.a.p-iron. He was guilty of archaeological crime, for on the top of a Spanish church pillar he had actually cemented a carved Indian head from one of the temples.

In another corner a slab of stone, an eighteenth-century Spanish coat-of-arms, had joined forces by means of cement with a wonderful Indian frieze. The result was ludicrous in the extreme; but when we expostulated with him, he smilingly explained that he had done it to "prevent them from falling about"!

There was, as far as quant.i.ty is concerned, an excellent display of Indian pottery, incense-burners, water-pots and domestic utensils, and small stone figures of G.o.ds. But these were all lying haphazard in a case with Spanish pottery and tile work. One of the most interesting exhibits from the archaeologist's point of view is the much disputed "Cozumel Cross." Found on the island of Cozumel in the seventeenth century, it was brought to Merida and placed first in the patio of the Franciscan Convent, then in the Church of the Mejorada, whence it was removed to its present position. It is a very ordinary stone cross, standing some three feet high with a two-foot cross-piece. On it, in half relief, is an image of the Saviour, made of plaster, coloured, with the hands and feet nailed. Chiefly upon this relic has been based a ridiculous theory that at some remote date Christianity had been preached to the Indians and that the worship of the Cross was found to exist in Yucatan by the Spaniards. The truth is, as the American traveller J. L. Stephens showed years ago, the "Cozumel Cross" is nothing but a poorly sculptured piece of ornamentation from the first Catholic church built in the island of Cozumel by the order of Cortes.

The director made vigorous efforts to convince us of its Indian origin, but one look at it was enough; and we pa.s.sed on to an exhibit which was the special object of our visit.

In Guatemala, around Copan and Quirigua, skulls have been unearthed from time to time the teeth in which had in some instances been ornamented with tiny discs of polished jade. The workmanship was of the most exquisitely precise nature, and the object had evidently been adornment and not dentistry. When these skulls were submitted to expert dental surgeons in America, they declared the work so excellent as to be unsurpa.s.sable even with the present-day mechanical devices and instruments. Since these finds, archaeologists have been searching for years in Northern Yucatan for some skull which exhibited a like dental ornamentation. A few months before we arrived in Yucatan their persistent hopes had been fulfilled. About twenty miles to the north-east of Merida, at a town called Motul, during casual excavations at a hacienda, a skull was found which now lay before us. Several teeth in the upper and lower jaw were missing, but in the former two of the front teeth had let into their centre tiny discs of bluey-green jade so firmly done that, after the lapse of centuries, the stone still formed a surface flush with the enamel of the tooth. Since our return to England we have seen in the British Museum a skull from Ecuador, in which some of the upper teeth are ornamented in the same way, but with gold.

Only one room of the three was devoted to Indian antiquities, and after the director had made a special point of showing us a gigantic broken stone phallus which appeared to interest him and his little son more than any of the other exhibits,--(characteristically enough, for the Yucatecans are nothing if they are not phallic worshippers),--we spent a few minutes in rambling round a medley of cases containing such incongruities as ftal monstrosities in bottles of spirits of wine, pistols which in their youth had had the honour of dangling round the waist of Yucatecan heroes, a model of a gas engine, examples of sixteenth-century ecclesiastical furniture, moth-eaten collections of bugs and beetles, examples of the coinage of all nations (very faulty collections), and some battered Spanish armour. There is a great deal of Ego in the Yucatecan Kosmos, and these rooms represented self-complacency run amuck, with its mementoes of persecuting Catholic clerics, pseudo-heroes and munic.i.p.al nonent.i.ties; with the tag-rag and bob-tail of their wretched relics, their chairs, their wigs, their coats, their walking-sticks, their slippers and their snuff-boxes. On the walls were a series of ill-drawn pictures representing poor (!) Spaniards being disembowelled, hanged, quartered, and burnt by ruthless Indians; and as we made our way to the door, our cicerones pointed out to us four large wooden wheels which had supported the truck upon which Dr. Le Plongeon had had the Chacmool he discovered at Chichen, and which we mentioned in describing Mexico Museum, brought to the coast. If Merida had not got the statue--and in the circ.u.mstances she has probably not lost much--she at least had the genuine cartwheels.

The att.i.tude of Mexico towards foreign archaeologists is that of the "dog in the manger." This is more particularly noticeable in her policy regarding the comparatively recent activity of German and American students in Yucatan. We were the first Englishmen to approach the Government for permission to cross the Peninsula, but we found ourselves somewhat the victims of the indiscretions of foreign rivals, whose conduct during the past few years has gone some way to justify the churlishness of the Mexicans. The Mexican or Yucatecan is, as a rule, an illiterate sensualist, who cares not a jot about his country's past and is incapable of differentiating between a magnificent ruined Indian palace and the stuccoed carca.s.s of a hideous eighteenth-century church.

Too mean and too indolent to enter upon researches for themselves, they regard with suspicion and dislike all who would study the ruins. The pa.s.sport granted us was none too generous, and its wording made it clear enough that our archaeological enthusiasm was scarcely welcomed.

In accordance with its terms, we had reckoned our most important official duty in Merida was to call on the Conservator of Monuments. We expected an Ancient of Days whose talk on Mayan problems would be a treat. But nothing is as you expect it in this Gilbertian land. We found the Conservator gently rocking himself amid the orange trees of his patio. He was a sleek, self-satisfied, shiny-booted, white-waistcoated young man, good-looking of the barber's-block style. He languidly informed us that he had never seen the ruins of Chichen: a confession equivalent to the Keeper of England's Regalia admitting that he had never set eyes on the Koh-i-noor. Our amazement was so obvious that he apologetically added that he had photographs. It was irresistibly reminiscent of poor Dan Leno as private detective, tired of watching the suspected house, taking a photograph of it and sitting at home in comfort watching that.

Months later we learned that a bitter battle had been waged in Mexico City by contending bands of German and American archaeologists to influence the Federal Government to appoint their respective nominees to the then recently created post of Conservator. What might not result were the work of guarding and studying the marvellous ruins of Yucatan in able and competent native hands? The Germano-American battle had ended in a compromise. As they could not get their special candidates appointed, they had agreed that it was safest to have a nonent.i.ty. The Federal Government had certainly granted them this favour.

CHAPTER VI

AMID THE PALACES OF THE ITZAS

By all means let the sluggard go to the ant, if he feels equal to the journey; but on no account let him go to Yucatan. For if he ever arrived at Merida he would never get further. It is only the early bird which catches a Yucatecan train. Bradshaw would find himself in Yucatan one of the unemployed, for there is no need of railway tables. All Yucatecan trains start at dawn, one from each terminus, east, south, and west.

With the rising of the sun there is a setting of railway activity, the only remaining excitement of the day being the reception of the incoming train from east, south, or west, which has also started at dawn. Early rising is accounted a virtue in most countries; in Yucatan it has become a vice. It may have something to do with sleeping in hammocks.

Everybody, rich and poor, sleeps in hammocks in Yucatan, and until the last year or two a bedstead, even in Merida, was scarcely known as a curio, and even now the few existing are restricted to the hotel and one or two American houses. For even the energetic to get out of a bedstead "with the sun" is an undertaking, an enterprise, demanding real moral courage and iron will-power. But the hammock is so different. You give a sharp twist of the body to the left, raise your feet clear of the blanket, and, before you know where you are, you are up, or, to speak more accurately, you are down, for there are falls in plenty for the uninitiated in hammock-sleeping. But whether it is due to hammocks or not the Yucatecans are all early birds, though they seem to have no designs on the early worms; for they simply sit about in the dark and shudder with cold.

The stars were still bright and it was pitch dark when, cursing the unearthly hours of Yucatecan railways, we tumbled out of our beds and into our top boots on the morning of our leaving Merida. There are many pleasanter occupations than putting the finishing touches to one's baggage for a long journey in the wilds in a gloom which is almost Cimmerian. The worst of the Yucatecans is that, having forced you, by the intemperance of their railway methods, to leave your bed, they do nothing for you in the way of providing food. Though the barbarians are all up themselves and the markets opening, you could not get a square meal for love or money. We were due to catch the dawn train going eastward, and the irritability born of dressing in the dark had developed into a sullen despair by the time we reached the station. It was deadly cold, that penetrating coldness which is typical of the tropics before dawn, and, as the little ramshackle train jolted through the suburbs, we wondered at the obstinacy of a people who will get up early and will not breakfast.

This eastern railway, which now runs as far as Valladolid--a small place which we shall describe later--had only just been completed on our arrival in Yucatan. Its total length is some eighty miles. At first the scenery was much what we had seen in our journey from the coast.

Desolate, flat, stony country, all grey walls and henequen. After about ten miles of this, the little ill-laid single line enters the forest, which it thereafter never leaves, except at the clearings for the stations. Some of these are primitive enough, the platforms merely mounds banked up at the side of the rail. The monotony of the journey was broken by one or two humorous incidents. The slowness of Yucatecan trains is such as to make applicable Artemus Ward's sarcastic suggestion in regard to the American trains of old times, "that it's no use having a cow-catcher on the engine, for we shall never catch up a cow. It ought to be at the rear to prevent the cows from boarding the train and biting the pa.s.sengers." We did not literally face this peril, but we did suffer the indignity of being chased by a pack of barking dogs, and at one point we had to slow down for a herd of cattle which had blundered from the woods on to the track and galloped, tails in the air, in front of the engine for about five miles. After we had been delayed for some time, further on, by the wood fuel, stored on the tender of the engine, catching fire, we eventually reached Citas, whence it is some eighteen miles through the forests to the famous ruins of Chichen Itza. Citas is a dirty village with a large church. There is something pathetic about Yucatan's churches. They are all too big for their towns, and look as much out of it as a boy of sixteen at a child's party. The smallest village in civilised Yucatan always possesses a large church and a small official with a big name, _el Jefe politico_, "the political Chief," a kind of mayor without the sables and the chain of office.

Citas's mayor had very little on but a panama hat and a shirt, but he was an intelligent fellow to whom, as strangers in a strange land, we felt grat.i.tude, for he had provided horses and an Indian guide.

It was our first experience of a Yucatecan road, and we were not impressed. Even the best roadways resemble a Scotch trout stream with the water dried up. Ledges of rock a foot or more high; stretches, a quarter of a mile at a time, covered with boulders but a few inches apart, make riding an absorbing exercise. The horses of Yucatan have learnt to take matters quietly (they certainly would not last a week if they fussed), and your mount will balance himself on a rocky promontory, like a chamois, and deliberately look about for the best place for his next hoof-step. A hold on the rein in case of a stumble, but no steering, is the best rule for the rider in Yucatan. If you try to steer your mount, you come to grief four out of five times; he knows best. The light was fading with tropical quickness as we rode through the Indian village of Piste, a ruinous settlement, thrice the scene of battles and raidings in the native wars of last century. Thence less than a league lies Chichen, and the road, deep embowered in trees, looked like a cavern's mouth ahead of us till the moon rose.

We had been riding forty minutes or so, when of a sudden the trees parted. Looming up, momentarily blotting out moon and sky, rose a mighty pyramid, rearing its vast ma.s.s of ink-black shadow into the silver sky.

As we rode towards its western shoulder, the moon touched with a glinting light the flat stones of its southern slope and struck on the huge plinths and door-lintels of the temple which crowned it. Around us, as our eyes became used to the light, we saw, rising gaunt above the tree-tops, the crumbling walls and facades of palaces and temples. It was Chichen! Chichen the magnificent! and this the "Taj Mahal" of Central America, down the steep steps of which the solemn procession of priests and victims had pa.s.sed in their journey to the scene of the sacrifice! Reining in our horses, we sat there gazing up at this grand relic of a dead people. Instinctively, one almost held one's breath; there was something so sublime, so awe-inspiring in this imperishable monument to perishable G.o.ds. What did it all mean? The tyrant priests, majestic in their bejewelled and befeathered robes, standing at the head of those now crumbling steps, with supplicatory hands uplifted to the starlit heavens; the mighty lord of the Itzas, at whose command tens of thousands had toiled at the building for years in the blistering sunlight; the G.o.ds, to appease whom the blood of human victims had perchance flowed in rivers before their grotesque idols; all dead, unutterably dead, impotent, discredited! As we sat there, from the dark woods echoed the weird long-drawn cry of the Mayan night-jar--the pubuy--like a spirit-wail over the fallen race.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EL CASTILLO, CHICHEN ITZA.]

The history of Chichen Itza before the arrival of the Spaniards is as vague and as untrustworthy as all else concerning the ancient Mayans. In a later chapter we shall review the evidence available as to the date of its building. M. Desire Charnay labours needlessly to prove that the city was inhabited at the time of the Conquest. Of that, at least, there is no doubt. Even if no credence could be given to the report of the expedition thither of the elder Montejo in 1528, there is a sufficiency of Spanish doc.u.mentary evidence to show that the city was not only inhabited, but the centre of a vast and powerful population in the twenties of the sixteenth century. But there is no reason to doubt the truth of Montejo's account of his sojourn there which has been outlined in Chapter III. He found Chichen the metropolis of the vast tribe of the Itzas. The Spanish historian Herrera a.s.serts that Montejo had a return of the population taken with a view to apportioning the Indians among his soldiers as slaves, and that each Spaniard became master of between two and three thousand. Montejo's troops possibly numbered on his arrival at Chichen some 350, and this would make the census of Indians work out at something like a million. This is obviously a gross exaggeration, for even if there was any evidence that Montejo succeeded so completely in subjugating the Itzas as to be able to enslave them, we are quite certain from a careful personal survey of the district, that the country around never could have supported, any more than it could to-day support, so many inhabitants.

But as a matter of fact it is thoroughly clear that though Montejo succeeded in making a lodgment at Chichen and possessed himself of the princ.i.p.al buildings, occupying these for something like two years, the vast horde of Indians were not in any sense conquered, but had simply temporarily withdrawn into the surrounding woods and village suburbs of the city. Unable in the face of firearms to recapture their palaces, the natives played a waiting game, setting about slowly but surely to starve the Spaniards into submission. Weakened by months of privation, with every square mile of woodland thick with his enemies, Montejo's position became at last desperate, and there was nothing for him but to evacuate the city. This was done in a picturesque way. Choosing a dark night, Montejo collected his men, keeping the sentries on the walls till the last moment, and then, m.u.f.fling with cloths the horses' hoofs, he tied a dog to the bell-rope attached to the clapper of a bell, putting a piece of meat a few feet away, but just out of his reach. Stealthily the war-worn Spaniards moved off into the woods, and naturally, as the dog saw them going, he pulled at the rope, thus ringing the bell. When they were actually out of sight the dog presumably scented the meat, and thereafter throughout the night made efforts to reach it, ringing the bell the while. This ruse entirely succeeded, the Indians believing their enemies still in camp; and it was not until their suspicions were aroused by the continuous ringing of the bell until dawn that they approached the buildings and found them deserted. But it was too late, and the Spaniards on their horses were able to make good their escape to the coast.

At the hacienda a kindly welcome awaited us from Mr. Edward Thompson, Consul-General for America in Yucatan, who has for some years been the owner of the property. A keen archaeologist, he pluckily entered into possession of the estate some fifteen years ago when the neighbourhood had long earned an unenviable reputation. The last two haciendados and their families had been ma.s.sacred by the revolted Indians and the house pillaged. Even to-day Chichen, which practically stands on the borderland of the disaffected eastern district of the Peninsula, is not as peaceful as it looks. A fortnight before our arrival a village some thirty miles off called Xocen had been raided and burnt. But these outbreaks do not distress Mr. Thompson, whose sympathies are with the Indians, and who, speaking Maya like one of them, is beloved by all around. An experienced traveller himself, Mr. Thompson gained our hearts at once by introducing us, as soon as our greetings were over, to a palm-thatched bathhouse in his garden, where in a stone trough we revelled for some time in the pleasures of cold water after our dusty, burning ride.

With the dawn we were up and out at El Castillo, to use the stupid Spanish name of the great pyramid. It loses none of its majesty in the daylight. It is a truncated pyramid close on 100 feet high, squared almost to the four cardinal points, but not, we believe, orientated; the northern side being the front because in that direction lies the Sacred Cenote which we shall describe in a moment. The four base lines are each, as near as can be, 200 feet long. On each of the four sides were gigantic staircases. That on the west, still in fair preservation, up which we must climb directly, is 37 feet wide. That on the north was 44, but this latter and that on the east are so entirely destroyed as to be barely traceable. The stairs on the south, about 40 feet wide, are much broken and overgrown by cactus and shrub. The pyramid is built of rubble and earth, and was completely faced with flat-hewn slabs of limestone about 5 feet by 4 and 4 to 6 inches thick. In places these are still in position. This is particularly the case with the south front. The four corners were evidently once dressed with rounded stone blocks from top to bottom.

It is difficult to exaggerate the magnificent appearance the mound must have once presented. The stairways, which are so steep as to appear in some places almost perpendicular, were bal.u.s.traded, each bal.u.s.trade ending on the ground in those gigantic carved stone serpent-heads, the jaws wide gaping, which we find again and again in Mayan ruins. The climb of the 120 steps, on the average about 9 inches high and 8 broad, is an undertaking before which any one not a practised Alpine climber might be excused for quailing. Pausing for breath at the eightieth step and looking downwards, your head reels; for the edges of the steps appear to merge into one another by reason of their steepness, giving one the feeling of being perched, fly-like, on the face of a grey cliff.

On reaching the top step, a few feet of platform separates you from the temple. Climbing as you have been from the western side, the real one-time grandeur of the sanctuary does not strike you. It is not the front, and you must pa.s.s to the north, where was the state entrance to the Holy of Holies. This is 20 feet wide and the lintel of the gigantic doorway is supported by two pillars, 8-1/2 feet high, carved with a snake pattern and once ending at the base in snakes' heads, open-mouthed, the now empty eye-sockets having once been filled with brilliantly painted stone or pieces of polished jade. These heads are broken up, and only enough remained for the tutored eye to reconstruct the whole. Entering, you are in a now roofless room running the full length of the building east to west, 40 feet long and 6 broad. In front of you is a second doorway, its ma.s.sive door-posts carved with life-sized figures of warriors in full ceremonial dress. By this you enter the central room, 20 feet by 12. Two pillars, each 1 foot 10 inches square, carved on every side with life-sized figures of warriors or priests in feathered costumes, support beams of sapota wood, once carved, but now too decayed to permit of the designs being traced.

There is no doubt that the building formed a temple. The religious nature of the Castillo must be indubitable to any one standing in front of it. Whether the b.l.o.o.d.y rites which are known to have been celebrated by Moctezuma's people in honour of Huitzopochtli, G.o.d of War, on the pyramids of Mexico had their equivalent on Chichen's mound is a very different matter. There is really no proof for or against. And if it were argued that the fact that there is no altar stone within, as is the case, goes far to prove that there were no such rites, there would be no value in such negative evidence. If b.l.o.o.d.y deeds in honour of a Sun-Deity were here enacted, possibly the flattened serpents' heads at the outer door, which would have been in view of the congregated thousands on the plains below, formed the butcher-blocks upon which the victim's palpitating heart, after his breast had been sliced open with the silex knife, was torn from its tissues to be burned as an offering to the G.o.d in the inner Holy of Holies; while the body, scarcely lifeless, was pitched (as some writers who value the picturesque rather than the accurate would like us to believe) down the steps to be sacramentally eaten by the worshippers. On the other three sides of the building runs a corridor 6 feet wide, three doors with sculptured jambs facing almost due south, east, and west.

A woodland path, in places wide enough to merit the t.i.tle of road, and here and there showing signs of an ancient cementing, leads from this grimly majestic shrine of fallen G.o.ds to perhaps the grimmest pool in the world. Yucatan is peculiar in being riverless and lakeless. Rivers and lakes there are, but these are all subterranean, generally from fifty to two hundred feet beneath the surface. But dotted over the Peninsula are deep holes or water-caves, reservoirs carved by nature out of the limestone and fed by these underground sources. For these the Mayan Indian name is "cenote," and they are often huge. Two of the largest are at Chichen. Indeed the very name is due to them; for "_chi_"

is "mouth" and "_chen_" is "wells." Thus _Chichen_ was the city at the "mouth of the wells."

But only one of Chichen's natural wells served as water supply. This flower-bordered path we follow leads to the Sacred Cenote, round which grim rumours have long collected; rumours which it is now our privilege to confirm as facts. As we approach, the trees on either side give a denser shade. A few yards further and the path debouches into a small semicircular s.p.a.ce with tiers of stone running round it to the left, suggestive of a tiny amphitheatre. In front of you is a small stone building, one-roomed, possibly the scene of the penultimate acts of the terrible dramas played so many centuries back in this tropic woodland. A step more and you are on the brink! Hold the branch of that sapota sapling fast, for the fall is sheer! Seventy feet below you in a huge limestone basin, two hundred feet or more in diameter--so nearly a perfect circle that as you look into it you find it hard to believe it has not been engineered by man, that it has worn thus from the infinitely slow corrosive action of the rainfall and natural drainage water--seventy feet beneath you lies the black, still water. It is an inky black. High above it on the limestone sides of the great hole sprawl ferns, cactus, and orchid; higher still, fringing its verge, thorn-bushes and pale-green acacias, the grey-barked sapota, and the heavy-leafed ceibo-tree raise their branches into the sunlight. But the sun never touches that gruesome, deadly still, pitchy lake. Its very gla.s.sy stillness sends a shudder through you. In its sepia depths what wonder that Mayan priest and people saw the home of the terrible Rain G.o.d, at whose will the land might smile with plenty or the spectre of famine lay his bony hand on the shrinking townsfolk?

From the earliest days of the Spanish invasion to the present time rumour has been busy in circulating many gruesome stories of the exact sacrificial uses to which this terrible pothole in the limestone was put by the ancient Mayan Indians. If Montejo the elder, during his stay at Chichen in 1528, was cognisant of human immolation in the cenote, he has left no record of it. But this is no evidence that he was not, because, like most of his fellow-adventurers in the New World, he left no chronicles at all. The probability is, however, that he knew nothing accurately and certainly witnessed no sacrificial rites, for during the foreign occupation of their city the ritual of the Indians would almost certainly be in abeyance, or at any rate practised with the utmost secrecy. The first actual written Spanish testimony to the sacred character of the pool appears to be that of Bishop Landa in his _Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan_ (1556). He writes: "A good wide road led to a well into which in times of drought the natives used to throw men, as indeed they still do, as an offering to their deities, fully believing that they would not die, even though they disappeared.