+? eee p et va here PPP ree EY Pee reE ee he 99 oy Pa 2 8095 YGLESIAMA yor se ia SuY BX -Lip Re RICARD 9° DE R°BINA — f S- ee a Sere... soo ae ‘fh Pe es eo IN AN UNKNOWN LAND ONE OF THE HEADS FROM THE CASA DEL GOBERNADOR, UXMAL. [See p. 246 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND By THOMAS GANN J.P., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. Member of the Maya Society NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1924 Be “i, SES ee ate in “ 3 = : - fends aN eae, oe : 4 45 = a M = 5 a ae s Pee : ‘ Fe kana At gq E AND PRINTED IN ‘MAD 1924 GREAT BR SOUTHAMPTON TIMES LTD., SOU § CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I.—Arrival in Belize—Population of the Colony—Belize Market—Belize founded by Buccaneers—Efforts made by Spaniards to eject them unavailing—Battle of St. George’s Cay—The “‘ Poke and Go Boys ’’—Celebrations of the An- niversary of the Battle in Belize—Mahogany Cutters— Their hard Lives—Case of Piracy on the High Seas occurring recently inthe Caribbean . . : ; ; ° Micka CHAPTER II].—Leave Belize—Members of the Expedition—Arrival in Payo Obispo—Ashore on the Rocks—A dangerous Coast— Xcalac—Espiritu Santo Bay—Landing through the Mud— A deserted Fishing Settlement—Our first Maya Ruin—The East Coast Civilisation—Culebra Cays—A contented Colony— Ascension—Wreck of Mexican Gunboat—Vigia Chica—Arrival at Central—An Uncomfortable Night—-Chicleros—Santa Cruz Indians—They refuse to carry the Letter to their Chief— The Chicle Bleeder’s Life—Arrival in Santa Cruz de Bravo— History of the Town—lIts Abandonment by the Mexicans—Old Spanish Church at Santa Cruz—The Worship of the Talking Cross—Victims sacrificed to it—Lunch with the only Indian Family in the Town . : g - 4 19 CHAPTER III.—Leave Santa Cruz—A lazy Mule—A Maya Shrine—Its Origin—Beliefs of the modern Indians regarding these Shrines— A Dance Platform—A Sunken Stone Cistern—Traces of the three Civilisations of Yucatan—Start for the Coast—We meet the Commander-in-Chief of the Santa Cruz Army—We entertain him and the General’s Nephew—Useful Maya Phrases—Fatal Complaint amongst the Indians—Description of Maya— Origin of the Maya—Appearance—The Women—Costume —The Women’s Work—Their Indifference to Money—Food— Traps for Game—Dangerous Hammocks—Marriage—Armlets worn by the Children—Drunkenness—Effects of Alcohol— Method of appointing Chiefs—Methods of Punishment— Executions—Flogging—Witchcraft—Feeble hold on Life— Small-pox—-Bleeding —Remedies—The Cha Chac Ceremony 36 CHAPTER IV.—A Mad Mule—Arrival in Vigia-Boca Paila—A Sports- man’s Paradise—Arrival in Cozumel—Carnival Celebrations— The Administration—The Island of Cozumel—An Ideal Life— Mexican Officialsk—A Native Dance—Vino del Pais—Island Ladies—Savage Dogs—An ancient Church—Cortez’ Visit to 5 6 CONTENTS PAGE Cozumel—Vaults and Graves opened by Treasure Seekers— Grijalva’s Visit to Cozumel—The Buildings found there by Him—He takes Possession in the Name of the King of Spain— Sitting on a Jerisco—The Pests of Yucatan—Salubrity of the Island—We engage a Pilot—He knows of a hitherto unvisited Ruined City—Arrival off Ascension Bay—We Land to Sleep— Tracks in the Sand—Good Fishing and Sport—Wonderful Flotsam on the Beach—Discovery of the Ruined City . » 59 CHAPTER V.—Soldier Crabs and Bats—Clearing the Bush round the Ruins—Hubert lives up to his Reputation—-Maya never dis- covered the Principle of the Arch—Description of the Temples— A Chacmool’s Offerings found buried beside it—Market-place —Curious Stucco Ornaments—Ceremonies Performed at these Temples—The Builders of this and other East Coast Cities . 77 CHAPTER VI.—Maya History—lIts Sources—Methods of Reckoning the Passage of Time—History of the Old Empire—History of the New Empire—Foundation of the Various Cities in the Maya Area—Reasons for Maya deserting their Old Cities for Yucatan—Settlement of New Empire—Founding of New Cities —Itzamna, the Hero God—Migration from Chichen Itza to Champoton—Return to Chichen Itza—Entry of the Tutul Xiu to Yucatan—The Hero God Cuculcan—The Maya Renaissance —The Breaking-up of the Maya Triple Alliance—Its Cause— Mexican Mercenaries called into Yucatan—The Cocomes Rule in Yucatan for 250 Years—They are overcome by the Tutul Xiu —The Country is divided up into a Number of Small States constantly at War till the Coming of the Spaniards—Naming the new City Chacmool—The Period to which these Ruins belong—Uncomfortable Quarters—We take leave of Chacmool 89 CHAPTER VII.—Camp out at Nohku—Arrival at Tuluum—The Town first sighted by Grijalva in 1518—Revisited by Stephens in 1841 —Subsequent Visits—Reading the Date on the Stele—The Castillo from the Sea—Difficulties in Landing—We find no Trace of the Stele—Landing the Camping Outfit—We Camp in the Castillo—Description of the Castillo—An Uncomfortable Night—We Find the Stele—Description of the Sculpture on the Stele—Maya Chronology . : ; : , « tog CHAPTER VIII.—Possible Explanations of the Initial Series Date on the Stele—The Mystery Solved—The Wall encircling the City Watch-towers—Use of Walled Cities—Impossibility of Starv- ing the Garrison of the City—Discovery of New Buildings within the Walls—Types of Buildings Found—Stucco Figures— Mexican, Maya, and Christian Religions—Mural Paintings— The Only Calendar Hieroglyph found at Tuluum—Resemblance of the Figures of the Gods on the Stucco to those of the CONTENTS 4 PAGE Dresden Codex—Destruction by the Spaniards of the Maya Books—Origin of the Dresden Codex—Gods worshipped at Tuluum—Tuluum and Chacmool Compared—Human Sacrifice —Non-arrival of Desiderio Cochua—Silence of the Ruins— Reflections on Tuluum : . : : ‘ ‘ » 120 CHAPTER IX.—Landing at Playa Carmen—Primitive People—Bar- tering with the Indians—Uselessness of Money—Tobacco Curing—Temples of the Tuluum Period—Visiting the Sick— Aguilar, the first European to visit Yucatan—Treatment of the First Spanish Visitors by the Natives—Aguilar’s Ransom by Cortez—His Opportunities of Learning the Manners and Customs of the Natives—Puerto Morelos—A once thriving Settlement gone to Decay—lIsla de las Mujeres—Origin of the Name—Monotonous Life of the Islanders—Fish Plentiful— Drifting Sand—Reception by the Municipality—An Excellent Dinner—Ruins on the South End of the Island—A Great Kitchen Midden of the Ancients—Ill-luck Attending those who Meddle with the Possessions of the Ancient Inhabitants—A Miraculous Cross—Treasure Formerly Buried in the Islands of the Caribbean—Island of Cancuen—Set out in Search of Ruins Recently Brought to Light—The Ancient King of Cancuen and his Palace—Other Buildings at Cancuen—Buildings neither Fortified nor Centralised—No Mention of Cancuen by Early Historians—Ruins of El Meco—Unusual Isolation—The Original Temple added to at Later Dates—An Uncomfortable Night : ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ : . ; » 53s CHAPTER X.—Arrival at Boca Iglesias—Difficulty in Starting Up the Boca—Stuck in.the Mud—An old Church—Curious Offerings on the Altar—Reflections on the Deserted Church—Probable Date of the Church—Reason for Its Isolated Situation—Cape Catoche and the Island of Holbox—Arrival at Yalahau—-We Sleep on Board—A Former Pirates’ Stronghold—An Old Stone Fort built to Subdue Piracy—Arrival at Cerro Cuyo—Differ- ence between the North and East of Yucatan—We reach Silan —Set out on a Mule Special for the Interior—A Yucatecan Ranch—Difficulty in Hiring a Tramvia—The Town of Silan —Its Resemblance to an Irish Village, in the Suburbs— Gigantic Mound in the Town—The Spaniards driven out of Chichen Itza took refuge here in 1531—Ancient Stele from the Mound now set up in the Cabildo Wall—Calendar Round Date on the Stele—Stele Built into Church Wall—It had contained an Initial Series Date—The Pirate Laffite buried at Silan— A Maya Tombstone from the Old Church—Difficulty in getting Refreshments—We meet Members of the Municipalidad—An Expensive Meal . . ° ° ° . . - 156 8 CONTENTS CHAPTER XI.—Arrival at Progreso—English and Americans popular in Yucatan—We are Relieved of our Arms—High Cost of Living and Service—Inflated Wages—Resemblance of Merida to Monte Carlo—Mass no Longer Celebrated in the Churches— Palace of Francisco Montejo—Sculptured Fagade all the Work of Native Artists—Damage Done in Cathedral by Mexican Federal Troops—Flower Decorated Plaza Chief Rendezvous —Boot Cleaning—Reason for Few Entertainments being Given by Meridanos to Foreigners—Caste Barriers being Broken Down—Mestizas Formerly Compelled to Wear Special Dress— Native Dress of Men and Women—High Prices—No Alcohol on Sale—An Unfortunate Incident—Meridanos All Speak Maya, and many English—The Governor of Yucatan—A Successful Administration—Sefior Don Juan Martinez, an Accomplished Maya Scholar—Guardians of the Ruins—Land Barons of Yucatan, their Recent Rapid Enrichment-—Molina Solis, the Historian—Early Start of Trains from Merida—dArrival in Dzibalché—Hiring a Fotingo—Ranch of San Luis—Decline of Cattle Ranches in Yucatan—A Bad Road for Motoring— Arrival at the Ruins of Dzibalche—Descriptions of the Temples —Undecipherable Inscriptions—The Initial Series Inscription —The Date Recorded by it is the Latest of all Long Count Inscriptions—Historically not Improbable . . ° ; CHAPTER XII.—Inconvenience of Sleeping in a Liquor Store even when Closed—Natives Turn Night Into Day—Superiority of Yucatan Women of the Bourgeois Class to the Men Exemplified in our Hostess—Heavy Municipal Taxation—No Curas in the Villages Now—An Officious Jefe—Arrival in Campeche—The Hotel Guatemoc, Formerly the Governor’s Palace—Campeche, Formerly a Prosperous City, now suffering from Dry Rot— Great Wall Surrounding the City—Two Fine Old Churches— Trouble in Clearing from and Entering Mexican Ports—Port of Campeche Silting Up—We leave Campeche—An Unfortunate Accident—Arrival at Champoton—Rumour of German Wire- less—Archeological Interest of Champoton—Strangers in Town—A Terrible Trek Across the Peninsula from East to West —The Campo Santo—Champoton a Decaying Town—Dif- ference between Yucatecan and Campechano—We Leave Champoton—Seiba Playa—Return to Merida—Difficulty in Ob- taining Old Books in Merida dealing with Yucatan—Set out for Xcanchacan—A Light-hearted Crowd of Natives—A Vast Ranch—Absolute Power of the Owner over his Servants— Indian Girls at Xcanchacan—Henequen Cultivation and Pre- paration of the Fibre—Stele with Important Katun Date at the Rancho—Arrival .at the Ruined City of Mayapan—Primitive PAGE 171 CONTENTS : 9 PAGE Means of Drawing Water—Destruction of Mayapan and Slaughter of the Cocomes—Some of the Reigning a Probably Escaped . , . . : : : 190 CHAPTER XIII.—Return to Merida—Set Out for Dzitas—Travelling by Volan Coche and on Horseback—First View of the Ruins of Chichen Itza—The Casa Principal and its Legend of Buried Treasure—Attacked by Marching Army of Ants—The Monjas said to have been used as a Nunnery by the Maya—The Iglesia—Tradition that Maya came originally from India— The Akatzib—The Caracol—The Chichanchob, or Red House —The High Priest’s Grave—Inscription Giving the Date of Its Erection—Burial Chambers found within it—Probably a Royal Mausoleum—tThe Ball Court—Temples at each end of it—Curious Acoustic Properties—Herrera’s Account of the Aztec Game of Ball—Fragments of Incense Burners found amongst Débris of Ball Court of Much Later Date—The Temple of the Jaguars—The Serpent God—Painted Sculpture— Paintings on Stucco—The Castillo—Description of the Temple Wanton Damage to Wood Carving—Temples of Owl and Phalli, Old Chichen Itza . : ‘ ; : ‘ si: 207 CHAPTER XIV.—The Cenote of Sacrifice—A Weird Pool—The Most Sacred Spot in Yucatan—Sacrifice to the Rain God of Young Girls—Wonderful Treasure Recovered from the Cenote, with Skeletons of Girls—Objects Found—Wide Distribution Geo- graphically of Art Treasures—Sacrificial ‘‘ Killing’”’ of Objects before Throwing in the Cenote—First Historical Account of the Ruins—Montejo’s Ill-fated Occupation of Chichen Itza— The Spaniards Escape by a Ruse—The Temple of the Initial Series—The Chacmool Temple—The Temple of the Atlantean Figures—The Temple of Two Lintels and its Date—The Temple of the Owl and its Date-—-Dated Buildings Found Covering the Three Periodsofthe City . ‘ . ‘ ‘ * x 222 CHAPTER XV.—We return to Dzitas—Unsuccessful Effort to Stop Réveillé by Indian Performers—An Accommodating Judge— Similarity of the Yucatecans to the Irish—Arrival at Ticul— An Uncomfortable Night—The Cave of Loltun—Petroglyphs— Water Receptacles—The Only Date found in the Cave—Tra- dition Amongst the Indians in Connection with the Cave—The Ranch of Tabi—Hospitably Entertained—A Luxurious Ranch— An Equine Battle Royal—A Curious Stele showing traces of Spanish Influence—The Inscription Undecipherable—A Bad Road—Santa Ana—Great Pyramid at Kabah—Great Numbers of Ruined Buildings throughout Yucatan—Other Buildings at Kabah—Glyphs which we Could Not Read—A Triumphal Arch —A Stone-faced Terrace; Buildings on It—Removal of Io CONTENTS Sapodilla Beams Leads to the Fall of the Buildings—Removal of Sculptured Lintel to New York and Its Destruction— Sculptured Door Jambs—Disappointed In Not Finding a Date in the City—Pleasant City to Visit—Scarcity of Water—Source of Water Supply of Ancient Inhabitants . ‘ ‘ . CHAPTER XVI.—Visit to Uxmal, the City of the Tutul Xiu—The Casa del Gobernador—We Take Up our Abode on the Uppermost Terrace—A Romantic Spot—Mausoleum of the former Kings of Uxmal—Graffiti on one of the Walls—Removal of the Sapodilla Lintels from the Casa del Gobernador—The House of the Dwarf—Uxmal Visited by Padre Cogolludo—The Ruins Still Venerated by Modern Indians—Casa de las Monjas— Description of the Building—Inscription in One of the Rooms —Painted and Dated Capstone—Other Capstones on which We Could Not Read the Dates—Stele with Time Count Engraved upon It—The Ball Court—Inscribed Rings—Pro- bably Record the Shifting of the Month Coefficient by One Day—Accounts of the Unhealthiness of the Ruins Not Justified —Held’s Unpleasant Job of Copying the Capstones—Visit from Indian Pilgrims—Two Pretty Girls—An Aboriginal American Royal Family—End of our Work in Yucatan—What We had Accomplished During the Trip . : . . : . PAGE 231 244 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ONE OF THE HEADS FROM THE CASA DEL GOBERNADOR, UXMAL ; : ‘ : ? : : . Frontispiece Facinc PAGE SKETCH Map oF YUCATAN i 4 A : » : “warts MARKET PLACE, BELIZE . ° . : . . . . 14 HUBERT’S PASSPORT . : : : ; : “ . ; 14 INDIAN CHIEF WITH GENERAL SOLIS . 2 ‘ ‘ : - 20 VARIOUS AVATERS OF GEORGE . ; : ; ‘ . j 20 SANTA CRUZ DE BRAvo: OLp CHURCH. : : : ‘ ». 32 BACALAR : CHURCH WHERE MASSACRES TOOK PLACE ‘ : SJ at ee BACALAR CHURCH INTERIOR . : : . : : pais. | INCENSE BURNER . é p é H . ir ° o 4d MaAyA INDIAN CHILDREN . : d ° ; . ° - 84 PRIEST BEFORE ALTAR IN CHA CHAC CEREMONY . : : Bua ee SAN MIGUEL COZUMEL, FROM THE SEA . . : . . a) oo CHACMOOL: PLAN OF MAIN GRouP OF RUINS . ° ; ey ees CHACMOOL : FACADE OF TEMPLE “‘ C,’’ AND PARTOF TEMPLE’ D” . 80 THE CHACMOOL ‘ é : : : < : A oe THE CHACMOOL IN SITU WITHIN A LITTLE TEMPLE IN LINE OF APPROACH TO CHIEF TEMPLE . 3 : ‘ » : ‘ 82 PLAN OF PRINCIPAL GROUP AT TULUUM . - ; ‘ ° =. Fie TuLuuM : TEMPLE WITH RoOFCoMB . : - “ ; » 220 MONTHS OF THE MAYA YEAR ‘ ‘ “ ; dj ; TC Teae DAyYs OF THE MAYA YEAR . ri : : A ; : a) 4X2 TULUUM . ‘ , , ‘ é 5 ; > s i - 330) TuLUUM : TW0-STORIED BUILDING ; : , ; «| £26 TULUUM : SEATED FIGURE OF GOD . : F P A ~ 396 Au PuCcH, THE GOD OF DEATH . : ; P ‘ $ » x28 THE Gops CUCULCAN AND ITZAMNA , ; < : > ee PLAYA CARMEN : BARTERING WITH INHABITANTS . : ‘ - 144 IsLA DE MUJERES: REMAINS OF TEMPLE ., : . : - 144 SILAN, BROKEN STELE P ‘ ° ° ° . ‘ » 166 II IZ MESTIZA, LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS GIRL OF MERIDA . < ‘ ‘ ‘ TEMPLE OF INITIAL SERIES, HOLACTUN : ; HoLactun : LOWER PART OF SERIES WITH CARVED LINTEL HoOLACTUN : FIGURE ON DOORWAY i . : INITIAL SERIES AT HOLACTUN i s - ; PLAN OF RUINS OF CHICHEN ITZA A > be MAYAPAN : OR 1438 A.D. » : ; . ‘ . CHICHEN ITzA: LINTEL IN WATER TROUGH ~ THE Monjas, ORHOUSEOFTHENUNS . 4 : CHICHANCHOB, OR RED HOUSE . : ' * SERPENT COLUMNS BY RUINED STAIRWAY . ss XCANCHACAN STELA SHOWING DATE KATUN I0 HicH Priest’s GRAVE, COLUMN SHOWING INSCRIPTION . SERPENT COLUMN ON HIGH PRIEST’S GRAVE . INDIAN STANDING IN RUINED SANCTUARY . THE BALL CourRT, CHICHEN ITZA ‘ ; . CASA DEL TIGRE, OR TRIANGLE OF THE JAGUARS . CHICHEN ITzA : CASTILLO FROM THE WEST . - INSCRIPTION ON INITIAL SERIES LINTEL ‘ ‘ CHACMOOL STATUE, CHICHEN ITZA m : ; UXMAL: HOUSE OF THE ADIVINO i a . CHICHEN ITzA : TEXT FROM PRIEST’S GRAVE “ CHICHEN ITzA: TRIANGLE OF THE Two LINTELS . STONE ALTARS ON ATLANTEAN COLUMNS ' ‘ STELE REPRESENTING NATIVES CARRYING DEER . KABAH : KABAH : KABAH: UXMAL: UXMAL: UXMAL: ENTRANCE TO OUR SITTING-ROOM . . FACADE WITH FACES OF THE LONG-NOSED FACADE OF ONE OF THE MAIN TEMPLES . WEsT RANGE OF MONJAS . ‘ ¢ Monjas ; . : ‘ , INSCRIPTION, DATES, GRAFFITI : F Facinc PaGE 166 184 184 186 186 202 202 208 208 212 214 214 216 216 218 218 220 220 226 226 228 228 230 230 240 240 244 244 244 248 SKETCH MAP OF YUCATAN, SHOWING THE PRINCIPAL TOWNS AND RUINED SITES VISITED. ft.) (BELIZE 15. ISLA DE LAS MUJERES 2. .COROZAL I6. BOCA DE IGLESIAS 3. BACALAR 17,, \MOLEBOXMISEAND. 4. PAYO OBISPO 18. YALAHAU SK CALAG TO.) SILAN 6. PUNTA HERRERA 20. PROGRESO 7, ESPIRITU SANTO BAY 21. CAMPECHE 8. CHACMOOL 22. CHAMPOTON 9. CAYO CULEBRA 23. MAYAPAN IO. ASCENSION BAY (24e. CHICHEN (IZA II. CENTRAL 25. UXMAL A, IDET 26. KABAH I3. SAN MIGUEL COZUMEL 27. CAVE. OF LOLTUN I4. CANCUEN ISLAND 28. MERIDA 29. HOLACTUN IN AN UNKNOWN LAND CHAPTER I Arrival in Belize—Population of the Colony—Belize Market—Belize founded by Buccaneers—Efforts made by Spaniards to eject them unavailing—Battle of St. George’s Cay—The ‘‘ Poke and Go Boys ’”’ —Celebrations of the Anniversary of the Battle in Belize—Mahogany Cutters—Their hard Lives—Case of Piracy on the High Seas occurring recently in the Caribbean. For several years Dr. Sylvanus G. Morley, of the Carnegie Institution, and myself had contemplated an expedition to the East Coast of Yucatan, one of the least known and most in- accessible parts of Central America, and the last place on the American continent where the poor remnant of the great Maya race, whose civilisation was the most ancient and highly developed in the New World 1,500 years before the coming of Europeans, still holds its own, unconquered and unsubdued, in the dense, impenetrable forests of the interior. Belize, the capital of British Honduras ever since the early forties, when John L. Stephens set forth from here on his celebrated search for a Central American Government, has been the jumping-off place of nearly all archeological and exploratory expeditions into Central America, being a good place to outfit in, and conveniently situated for all the Central American republics, as filibusters, gun-runners, and refugees, from their interminable revolutions are well aware. Here, then, we found ourselves early in January, with at least four months of assured dry weather in front of us before the rainy season set in which renders travelling through the bush practically impossible. The population of Belize is an extraordinarily mixed one. English, Spanish, French, German, and representatives of nearly every nation in Europe rub shoulders with Chinese, East Indians, and other Asiatics, while the indigenous 13 14 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND population is represented by negroes, Caribs, Maya, and Quiché Indians from the far interior, and the extra- ordinarily mongrel races which inhabit Southern Mexico and the five republics of Central America. The scene at the market each morning is an extremely lively and animated one. Everyone comes down about six to buy the day’s provisions. Burly negresses, in spotless white, their heads wrapped in gay cotton handkerchiefs, their vast feet thrust into still vaster unlaced boots belonging to their husbands, clump happily along, screaming, laughing, and chattering like a flock of parroquets, and chaffering over the price of their fresh fish and plantains. Saturnine Spaniards and Mexicans, thin, yellow, and cigarette-pickled, laying in supplies of frijoles, chili pepper, garlic, and corn cake ; coolies, shining and odoriferous from their morning rub- down with coco-nut oil, purchase rice, oil, and fish; coal- black Caribs, their faces and hands covered with white, leprous-looking patches, who, notwithstanding constant sea baths, always retain an unpleasant mousey smell, seek their daily rations of fish and cassava bread, and even an occasional pale-faced, starchily-clad English housewife may be encountered, cool, business-like, and unhurried amidst all the excitement. They form a shouting, gesticulating, chaffering, laughing, quarrelling, noisy throng, their skins varying from lightest olive through snuff and butter and café-au-lait to coal-black, their bright-coloured clothes making a constantly changing kaleidoscope around the market square. Belize was founded in the early part of the seventeenth century by English and Scotch Buccaneers, who for many years had driven a thriving trade along the coast in robbing Spanish vessels laden with logwood. Finding at length that the supply of victims was beginning to run short, and that it was really easier to cut logwood for themselves in the neighbourhood of Belize, where it grew in practically in- exhaustible quantities along the river banks, they formed a settlement for this purpose, and imported a number of 61 ‘d] 14 ‘LNOdassvd §$,1NadOH [p ELIZE. a R.A . Luke, S . By H THE, MARKET’ PLACE » 7 ’ : | } i i | 5 A ' ; | a: | , ; be : | | ‘ ‘ x m ; ‘ ‘ | % . i i . . . P . | , z . . ' | * i ee ee IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 15 African slaves, who worked for them. Repeated efforts were made by the Spaniards to eject these hardy settlers from their territory, but without avail, till early in the last century a large Armada was collected by the Spanish Governor of Yucatan at Bacalar and despatched south to St. George’s Cay, a sandy island about nine miles from the mainland, and at that time the capital of the colony. The inhabitants got wind of this invasion, and, collecting their slaves and servants and every crazy old canoe, dug-out, and sailing vessel they could muster, gave battle valiantly to the much superior force of the invaders. The slaves were armed for the most part only with palm- stick lances hardened in the fire and sharpened, but they rendered such a good account of themselves with their primitive weapons, that after several hours fighting the Spaniards had had enough of it, and, getting on board such vessels as were still left them, turned tail, and retreated north again, never to return. The natives were christened, from their method of fighting at this battle, the ‘‘ Poke and Go Boys’’—a term which has clung to them ever since, though some etymologists have recently promulgated the ~ theory that the name was derived from the rations supplied to the slaves, and should be “ Pork and Dough Boys.” Every year, on the anniversary of the battle of St. George’s Cay, the event is celebrated with music, dancing, fireworks, and processions of mahogany and logwood cutters through the streets, dressed in their ancient costume of red flannel cap, blue jersey, white trousers, moccasins, and machete, or cutlass, and carrying axe, lance, or paddle, symbols of their occupation, during the procession. An endless ditty, composed by some local poet, of which a single verse is here given, is chanted to the tune of ‘ Villikins and his Dinah.”’ We jooked them and we poked them and we drove them like fleas, Right into salt water right up to their knees, And each greasy Spaniard to the other did say: O vamonos compadres de St. George’s Cay. (O campadres, let us get out of St. George’s Cay.) 16 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND The descendants of these same black slaves, who fought side by side with their owners at St. George’s Cay, form to-day the backbone of British Honduras, and probably one of the finest coloured citizenry in the world, black and white respecting each other, and working amicably hand in hand for the advancement of their country. The lot of the negro labourer is not altogether a happy one. In January of each year he sets forth to his mahogany, logwood, or chicle camp at the head waters of one of the numerous rivers, or buried in the recesses of the thick jungle which covers most of the country. Here he constructs little palm-leaf shacks for himself and family, and spends from nine to ten months in strenuous labour with axe and machete, felling mahogany and logwood, or bleeding chicle (chewing-gum, the sap of the sapote tree), living on a diet of straight flour dough and salt pork, supplemented only by such game as his gun can obtain in the neighbouring bush, or coarse fish from the streams. No wonder that during the month or six weeks he spends at Belize at Christ- mas he endeavours to make up for lost time by a too strenuous devotion to pleasure, chiefly represented by the flowing bowl, and that when the time comes for him to start off into the bush again he is as often as not without sufficient cash from his advance to buy even the cooking- pots and clothes absolutely essential for a nine months’ sojourn in the woods, perhaps one hundred miles from civilisation. The matrimonial bond is worn lightly by the mahogany cutter. Marriage is not infrequent, but perhaps more as an excuse for the spree which the wedding entails than with any idea of forming a permanent bond, and the lady, if she finds her partner unsatisfactory, thinks nothing of accompanying some other man into the bush on the follow- ing season, so that it is not infrequent to find women with families each member of which is by a different husband. The small settler in the colony has an easy time of it ; he is troubled neither by the housing problem nor by the IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 17 H.C.L., as he can put up quite a comfortable thatched shack in a couple of days on a five-acre tract purchased from the Government at two dollars per acre. He will find his building materials—palm leaf for roof, pimento for walls, and sapodilla for posts—within a hundred yards of his future front door, and on this fertile soil he will have no difficulty in raising as many plantains, bananas, yams, and as much corn as he wants, while chickens, eggs, and pigs provide means of obtaining what luxuries he may desire in the form of clothes, rum, and tobacco. That piracy as a profession is not quite dead along the shores of the Caribbean Sea, even in the twentieth century is shown by the following incident. A short time ago a small sailing vessel set out from Belize for La Ceiba, a port in Spanish Honduras, with a coloured captain and crew and several passengers, amongst whom were two Belize negroes. The captain had very imprudently let it be known that he was carrying a considerable sum in silver dollars, of which the two negroes determined to possess themselves. When well out at sea they coolly took possession of the vessel, after shooting the captain and several of the other men and throwing their corpses overboard. Amongst the passengers was a Carib woman, whom they neglected to shoot and threw overboard alive, either because they felt some compunction at shooting a woman, or more probably because, being several miles from land in the midst of shark-infested waters at the time, they felt that such an act would be merely a waste of ammunition. This, however, proved to be a fatal oversight on their part, as the Caribs are wonderful swimmers, and as much at home in the water as on land, and with the aid of a piece of floating wood, which she fortunately encountered, the woman made her way safely ashore, landing on the coast of British Honduras, and, proceeding promptly to Belize, reported the matter to the authorities. In the meantime the vessel had reached her port in Spanish Honduras safely, and the two negroes not only got BL 18 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND away safely with the silver dollars, but actually succeeded in selling the vessel herself and her cargo. Considering themselves now quite safe, and never dreaming that the Carib woman could have escaped, they coolly made their way back to Belize, where they were greatly surprised at being arrested on a charge of “‘ piracy on the high seas ’”— probably the first occasion upon which such a charge had been preferred in the colony. The case aroused a great deal of interest amongst all classes, and the police were indefatigable in collecting evidence for the prosecution, with the result that, after a long and careful trial, the two men were found guilty, as charged, by a jury of their country- men, and were sentenced to death, which sentence was promptly carried out in the Belize gaol. CHAPTER II Leave Belize—Members of the Expedition—Arrival in Payo Obispo— Ashore on the Rocks—A dangerous Coast—Xcalac—Espiritu Santo Bay—Landing through the Mud—A deserted Fishing Settlement— Our first Maya Ruin—The East Coast Civilisation—Culebra Cays— A contented Colony—Ascension—Wreck of Mexican Gunboat— Vigia Chica—Arrival at Central—An Uncomfortable Night—Chicleros —Santa Cruz Indians—They refuse to carry the Letter to their Chief —The Chicle Bleeder’s Life—Arrival in Santa Cruz de Bravo— History of the Town—Its Abandonment by the Mexicans—Old Spanish Church at Santa Cruz—The Worship of the Talking Cross— Victims sacrificed to it—Lunch with the only Indian family in the Town. WE left Belize on February 2nd in the Government yacht Patricia, which had been kindly lent us by H. E. the Governor for our trip to Corozal, where we were to pick up our own boat, the Lilian Y, a 22-ton sloop with 36 h.p. auxiliary engine, which had been despatched with pro- visions for our trip, instruments, photographic material, etc., the previous day, in charge of my factotum, Amado Esquivel, generally known as “‘ Muddy.” At the last moment on the somwehat negative recommendation of Muddy that he had “ never been in gaol in Belize,”” we engaged as cook a youth named Hubert, a procedure which we never ceased to regret during the whole trip. As no photograph of him was available, Held sketched him in profile on the blank space left on the passport for the photograph, which satisfied everyone but Hubert himself, who said there was “ too much lip about it to please him.” The trip to Corozal was devoid of incident. Morley endeavoured to improve the occasion—and his Spanish— by translating English proverbs into his own language for a Spanish gentleman to whom we had given passage. “* El gusano tempano coje el pajaro”’—‘ The early maggot 19 20 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND catches the bird ’’—one I happened to overhear, seemed a doubtful recommendation for early rising. We spent the night at Corozal, the northernmost town of British Honduras, and next morning it was “‘all aboard the Iilian Y.” The party consisted of Sylvanus G. Morley, of the Carnegie Institution; John Held, artist ; myself; Captain Usher ; ‘‘ Muddy ” ; Hubert ; George—an immense negro from the Bay Islands, always cheerful, grinning, and ready for work ; a colourless old negro supposed to be cook for the crew, but whose only function appeared to be keeping the stove from falling overboard in heavy weather ; Alfredo, our Honduranian engineer; and “‘ Boy ’’—a negro youth from Belize, making his first voyage, ostensibly as oiler to Alfredo, though, as far as we could observe, he never did a stroke of work during the entire voyage, but lay about on deck, getting dirtier and dirtier—for we had no rain— and fatter and fatter, till his only pair of pants, splitting from stem to stern under the strain, became so indecent a spectacle that whenever we touched at any port he had to be segregated in the engine-room. We arrived at Payo Obispo, capital of the Mexican territory of Quintana Roo, next morning, and were very hospitably received by General Octaviano Solis, Governor of the territory, a veteran of thirty-three or thereabouts, who had risen in and through the revolution. Morley and Held were persuaded to stop over a couple of days, giving and receiving dinners, dances, and suppers, punctuated at frequent intervals by liquid refreshments. I, however, having experienced twenty years of the lavish hospitality of Spanish America, fled in the Lilian Y the same evening, arranging to join them at Xcalac, which they could reach in a few hours by crossing the peninsula separating Payo Obispo from the east coast of Yucatan. I spread my mattress on deck that night to get the most of what little air was stirring, as the cabin was hot and stuffy, and, anyway, a 5ft. roin. bunk offers no real hope of comfort to a 6ft. individual. About midnight I was roused by Sel Ger ey a) SUHLVAV SNOTYVA oz ‘d} ‘XHW ‘OOM VNVLNING JO NONUAAOD ‘STTOS IVUANAD HLIM AIH NVIGNI ZOO VINVS IN AN UNKNOWN LAND aI George singing. Standing—or rather crouching—on top of the wheel, the spokes of which he grasped with his pre- hensible toes, and leaning up against the after house, he reminded one of a great black ape. His voice was a squeaky tenor, and sounded curious coming from such a gigantic individual, but every now and then the bottom seemed to drop out of it, and it became a hoarse bass. I listened for nearly an hour to an apparently inexhaustible repertoire, catching such fragments as, ‘‘ Oh, where shall ah be when de las psalm is sung?” ‘“ Lard, ef yo doan hep me doan hep de grizzlen bar,’”’ and ‘“‘ Kiss me, kiss me.””’ Anyone glimps- ing George’s kissing apparatus will notice that he should be an adept in the art. I was aroused about 3 a.m. by a grinding shock, and found that we had run aground on the rocks off Blacadores Cay. A stiff breeze was blowing, and the Lilian Y was endeavouring to rip her bottom out on the reef. Ridge after ridge the staunch old tub scraped over, till at last we arrived in deep water, and anchored till daylight. The accident had been caused by George’s taking us several miles out of our course, and it was unanimously decided that in future steering should be done in the usual manner, and without musical accompaniment. About Io a.m. we ran in through the opening in the reef and anchored off San Pedro, the chief settlement of Yucatecans and Indians on Ambergris Cay. The people here are all fishermen, coco-nut growers, and chicle, or chew- ing gum, bleeders. We landed for a bath, breakfast, and arun ashore. Dur- ing the latter, however, a strong north-east wind set in, and we found ourselves in the same position as two small sugar freighters, bound to Progreso with sugar from Guate- mala, who had been held up here unable to pass the opening in the reef for four days. The entire east coast of Yucatan — is a nightmare to the small sailing craft which trade along it, as in a strong east or north-east wind they have to run behind the reef for safety, where they may be bottled up 22 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND for a week, or even longer, waiting for the weather to moderate. Next morning, the wind having died down somewhat, we set sail, and with the assistance of our 36 h.p. engine negotiated the opening in the reef safely, and found our- selves in the open sea again. Holding a course due north along a low, barren, sandy coast, about midday we sighted Xcalac. A brisk north-eastern was blowing, piling up a ribbon of white surf on the reef, which here and along the whole east coast of Yucatan runs parallel with the shore, hugging it closely in some places, in others retiring a mile or more out tosea. We made for a break in the surf line which looked like a passage through the reef, only to discover, just in time to sheer off, that it was one of those deceptive false openings where, the water being a little deeper than on other parts of the reef, the surf does not show up so con- spicuously. This nearly proved the end of our trip before it had well begun, as we missed the jaws of the reef by feet, and had the Lilian Y grounded she would very soon have had the bottom torn out of her on the sharp coral fangs, with the heavy sea then running. Morley and Held turned up in Xcalac within an hour of my arrival. They were accompanied by two members of the Governor’s staff to speed the parting guests, and showed distinct signs of wear and tear, bringing with them tales of a truly gorgeous time and most flattering letters of recommendation to all officials in the territory, advising them to give the expedition every assistance in their power. Xcalac is a miserable little isolated place, perched in the centre of an inaccessible stretch of barren sandy shore. Its population consists exclusively of Mexican soldiers, sailors and officials, the dull monotony of whose life is only broken by the arrival of a gunboat from Vera Cruz, bringing fresh troops for the territory. Like all settlements on the east coast, it has never recovered from the hurricane and tidal wave of the previous year, which simply wiped out the houses IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 23 and shipping, and tore great barrancas through the site occupied by the town. From Xcalac we ran north all night, arriving at five next morning in front of the opening to Espiritu Santo Bay. At Punta Herrera is a small lighthouse, where we put ashore, and secured one of the light keepers as a pilot for the bay. It is a desolate waste of grey water, running some twenty miles inland, whose western limits have never been thorough- ly explored. The shores, flat, barren, swampy, are entirely uninhabited, and covered with mangrove, salt water pimento, and low wiry scrub, while the water shoals off to aft. or less a mile from the beach. By means of the pram— an invaluable little boat, which without her Evinrude engine did not draw over 6in., and was absolutely impossible to upset in any sea—we reached the eastern shore, where we found ourselves separated from the land by 100 yds. of evil looking grey ooze. Muddy, stripped to his shirt, waded laboriously ashore through this, which reached well above his knees. Morley—always to the fore in adventures, great and small—next essayed the trip. He had forgotten, however that the soles of Muddy’s feet were calloused by many years of shoelessness, and on planting his own tender sole full on a sharp point of rock, with which the bottom of the mud was liberally supplied, he endeavoured to shift the weight to the - other foot, which, however, encountered an even sharper tooth. It is not an easy matter to change one’s footing rapidly when sunk in two feet of mud, and the performance ended in a series of spasmodic jerks, a shower of mud, collapse, and a shirt much in need of washing. Held and I from front seats in the pram enjoyed the show immensely, and, profiting by the experience, waded slowly ashore with the aid of a stick, never lifting one foot till the other had found at least a tolerably smooth resting-place. We slept that night on the veranda of the lighthouse, and early next morning set out in the pram with the lighthouse keeper to find a ruin, said to exist somewhere on the south 24 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND coast of the bay. We passed innumerable sandy and swampy islands, on one of which we discovered an old fishermen’s camp, consisting of a few primitive palm-leaf huts—or, rather, conical hut roofs, for they were wall-less— a well of brackish water dug in the sand, and a crawl, or small enclosure of sticks, built in the sea a few yards from the shore, in which the turtle captured may be kept alive till enough have accumulated to make it worth while sending them to Belize or the nearest market. After nearly two hours’ passage along tortuous channels separating mangrove-covered mud swamps, disturbing in our course thousands of water fowl of all kinds, including the beautiful white egret—whose time, however, had not yet arrived, for it is only during the breeding season that he is shot for his plumes—we arrived at a small rocky island covered with almost impenetrable low scrub, near the centre of which we came upon our ruin. It was a small sanctuary, or altar, built of stone and tough mortar, 8ft. square and 5ft. high. The roof and upper part had fallenin. In front was a small door, and in the back wall a square window. The building was covered with eight layers of stucco super- imposed one on the other, each of which had been decorated in red, yellow, blue, and black. On the front, to the right of the door, were the imprints of four red hands, so commonly found on all the buildings of this region. They were made by dipping the hands in red paint, and applying them to the surface to be marked, and may have been the builders’ sign manual. Indeed, so clear are they on some interior walls that the maker might still be identified, if in the flesh, by his finger-prints. The ruin is known to the Indians as Canché Balaam, or Tiger’s Seat, which is probably its original name, handed down from the ancient Maya. It is an insignificant little place, but of interest to us as the first building of this kind we had seen on our trip. Later we were to become well acquainted with the type, which we named the Tuluum style, from the remarkable conformity of all the examples with IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 25 the architecture of Tuluum, presently to be described, which was evidently the capital city of this east coast civilisation. The solitary little shrine is apparently the southern-most outpost of this civilisation, as to the south and west of it quite a different type of ruin is found, representing a much earlier period of the Maya civilization. These east coast buildings, whether single or in large or small groups, exhibit certain characteristics in common which distinguish them from both earlier and later Maya architecture. The masonry is crude and rough, and covered both internally and externally by layers of smooth, hard stucco, which nearly always show traces of painted designs. The main entrances of temples and palaces are usually supported on one or more circular stone columns, above which are lintels of sapodilla wood, often still 7m situ, hardly altered by their five hundred years of weathering. The fagades are frequently decorated by figures of gods and geometrical devices moulded in exceedingly hard stucco. Stone altars, or shrines, such as that just described, are of frequent occurrence all over the area, and at the larger sites ruins are found of extensive flat-roofed, arcade-like buildings, standing on terraced, stone-faced mounds, and supported by rows of great round stone columns, which were probably used as market-places. The east coast culture was the dying effort of the great Maya civilisation, and was most probably the work of refugees from Northern Yucatan after the conquest of Mayapan about A.D. 1450, which finally destroyed all central authority amongst the Maya. Thewhole country was divided into a number of small provinces, each under its own cacique, or ruler, allin a constant state of warfare with each other, up to the arrival of the Spaniards a century later, whose conquest of Yucatan, as of Mexico, was greatly facilitated by the internecine strife of the natives. This lonely, deserted-little shrine, looking out over a vast stretch of grey sea and desolate, uninhabited country, last decadent 26 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND effort of a once great civilisation, appealed somehow more strongly to our imagination than any of the ruined cities which we later discovered. Leaving Espiritu Santo at 1.30 p.m., we arrived about 5.30 at Culebra Cays, a group of mangrove islands lying right in the mouth of Ascension Bay. We landed at the easternmost island, where, on a small spit of sand, the only solid spot in the mangrove swamp, we found a curious bee- hive-shaped hut built of palm leaves, occupied by five ancient mariners, inhabitants of the island of San Pedro, who came here every year for some months during the turtle and barracouda fishing season. Wooden frameworks covered with drying fish, and a crawl well filled with green or edible turtle a few yards off shore, showed that their efforts had not been unsuccessful. Hundreds of yards of seine net were hung out to dry, while dozens of the little cedar models of turtles, used as net-floats and decoys for the precious “‘ Caray,’’ or tortoiseshell turtle, strewed the beach. These old fellows, friends of many years’ standing, were all married, but liked to get away from their families and have a good time together, camping out here on the bay for six months or so every year, fishing and hunting, and all agreed that the procedure greatly enhanced the joys of matrimony. Their life seemed an ideal one. All they brought with them was corn, tobacco, and coffee, the sea and the bush supplying every other need, even to the material for their house, while the constant sea breeze kept off mosquitoes and sand flies, which are at times such a pest on the mainland. We offered them whisky and cigars. The latter each accepted, but refused the former, all being total abstainers, except the youngest of the party, a youth of perhaps sixty, who said it was so long since he had had a drink that it was hardly worth acquiring the taste again as he would have no means of gratifying it after we had gone. Next morning we bade good-bye with real regret to our venerable hosts, sorry that, driven by the exigencies of a IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 27 long route and limited time, we could not give their simple life a longer trial. A few hours later we reached Ascension, a little settlement perched on a sandbank bounding the northern shore of Ascension Bay. A few years ago it was the headquarters of the Mexican troops sent to subdue the Santa Cruz Indians, and a place of considerable importance, with a fine pier and many large buildings. Like all other east coast settle- ments, however, it was practically wiped out by the cyclone, and all that remains of its former glory is the gaunt skeleton of the pier and a few ruined buildings. A celador, or minor Custom’s official, resides here, after reporting to whom we set out for Vigia Chica, higher up the bay, our next port of call, passing on the way the rusting wreck of the old Mexican gunboat Independencia, once a participator in the Mexican campaign against the Santa Cruz Indians, now— fit symbol of that campaign—ending her days stuck in the mud opposite the scene of her former activities, like the soldiers she carried, slowly becoming an integral part of the soil of the country she was sent to conquer. Vigia Chica, once the port of the flourishing city of Santa Cruz de Bravo, and terminal of the National Railroad of Quintana Roo, a 55-kilometre line joining the latter with Santa Cruz, is now little more than a depressing dump of ruined houses, wharf, and rolling-stock. Of all places on the coast it suffered most severely from the cyclone, the houses being flattened out, while the surface of the stone wharf, with the iron rails and rolling-stock, was literally skimmed off and dumped in the sea alongside. A Mexican lieutenant and a dozen soldiers are all that remain of the once large garrison, while the civil population is represented by a few depressed chicle bleeders and contractors, whose business it is to get out as much of the precious chewing gum as they can from the hinterland, which is in the territory of the Santa Cruz Indians. Mule-drawn flat cars still run between Vigia Chica and 28 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND Santa Cruz, chiefly for the purpose of taking in chicle bleeders and their supplies, and bringing out chewing gum. Two of them, with the necessary mules, were kindly lent us by the lieutenant and Messrs. Martin & Martinez, chicle bleeders operating in the interior, and on these we set out for Santa Cruz about 2 p.m. On reaching Kilometre 9 from Virgia everyone had to get off, and with the assistance of the mules carry all the luggage over to Kilometre II, where two fresh cars awaited us, as the rails had been torn up across this interval to prevent the Santa Cruz Indians making sudden incursions upon the town. At dusk we arrived at Central, thirty-four kilometres from Vigia Chica, formerly a considerable military depdt, the only relic of which is a large tin-roofed house, the former cuartel, or barracks, now used by Messrs. Martin & Martinez as quarters for their chicleros. These chicleros, recruited from the scum of the Mexican peonage, are probably the dirtiest people on earth, and as the cwartel was crowded with them and a large pack of their mangy dogs, I erected my folding cot and mosquito curtain on one of the flat cars, which I had pushed about half a mile up the line in order to escape what might be termed the odoriferous zone which surrounded the house. Unfortunately, in the early hours of the morning it came on to pour with rain, and I had to make a break for the house in a tangle of mosquito curtains and blankets, arriving wet through. I found Muddy and Held sitting sadly and wakefully in chairs. The former, who had tried to woo sleep on a blanket in the hall, said he had at last got tired of picking dog fleas off himself, while Held every time he dozed off had been awakened by the incursion into his room of some picturesque brigand apparently in the last stages of consumption—a fairly apt description, for chicleros in their immense wide-brimmed conical hats, machetes, revolvers, bandoliers, cotton shirt and trousers, red blankets and sandals, are certainly picturesque, and all keep up a constant staccato coughing and expectoration upon the floor, while wandering about IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 29 at intervals during the night smoking innumerable cigarettes. Next morning we found a small party of Santa Cruz Indians had arrived during the night with a letter from their chief, General Mai, for Mr. Martin. They are small brown men, shy, uncommunicative, and rather anxious-looking, dressed in short bell-shaped trousers, shirtlike coats of cotton, palm-leaf hats and sandals, all of native manufacture. We were exceedingly anxious to meet their chief, as we wished to obtain from him guides and an escort to extensive ruins in the interior of his territory, never before visited by Europeans. The Indians, however, refused to carry a letter to the chief. Neither money nor argument—the latter perhaps not very lucid, as they could only understand Maya—moved them, their contention being that the chief had given them a letter to deliver, which they had accom- plished, but had said nothing about bringing a letter back, and if they exceeded their instructions by doing this they might on their return be macheted—or chopped to death by a machete—and would undoubtedly be flogged. We pointed out, however, that if they refused our request we should certainly inform the chief of their discourtesy when we met him. This opened up an unpleasant probability of punishment whatever course they took, and proved so disconcerting that while we were at breakfast the whole party decamped incontinently into the bush, and we saw them no more. The place was full of sullen, swarthy, unclean Mexican chicleros, who, now that the season was over, and chicle would no longer run from incisions in the bark, had several months of enforced leisure to look forward to, though in order to keep his working force together the employer is obliged to feed them, and even advance them money on account of next year’s work. The chicle bleeder’s is a hard life, and only the toughest element of a pretty tough population will sign on for it. It necessitates living all through the rainy season in the 30 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND heart of the virgin bush, soaked by day and crowded into dirty palm-leaf shelters by night, with poor and insufficient food. The work, which consists in climbing the sapodilla trees and cutting spiral grooves in the bark, along which the sap runs out, to be caught in receptacles at the base of the tree, is not devoid of danger, and many accidents from falls, cuts, and snake bites occur where the patients are separated from the nearest doctor by one hundred miles or more of virgin forest. The easiest part of the work is boiling down the semi- liquid sap in great iron kettles, to drive off the water, till it becomes a tough, plastic solid, which is put up in oblong blocks, which are carried on mule back to the nearest river or port. In purchasing these blocks, “‘ Caveat emptor”’ is the motto of the employer, for the ingenuous chiclero frequently inserts a core of wood bark, or even dirt, and sometimes the block consists of a mere skin of chicle, enclos- ing a core of judiciously weighted alien material. Later in the day we started on a mule-drawn plataforma, or flat car, for Santa Cruz de Bravo. On reaching Kilometre 48 we found the line torn up, and walked on to 49, where we expected to find another car ready to take us on to Santa Cruz. This, however, owing to some misunderstanding, had not been provided, and we were obliged to walk the seven kilometres into Santa Cruz over a very bad and muddy path. The town of Santa Cruz has a curious history. Founded, as indicated by the old church, towards the end of the sixteenth century by the Spanish conquistadores of Yucatan, it appears to have led the placid, uneventful life of a Spanish provincial town up to the year 1848, when in the general uprising of the Maya Indians, driven to desperation by the cruelty and oppression of their Spanish masters, the inhabit- ants were all either massacred or driven out. From 1848 to 1902 the town was occupied by the Maya, but in the latter year was reconquered by General Bravo on behalf of the Mexican Government. General Bravo renamed the IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 31 town Santa Cruz de Bravo, built the railroad over which we had just come to the town from the port of Vigia Chica, projected railroads to Payo Obispo in the south and Merida in the north, imported large numbers of convicts for forced work from Mexico, held out every inducement to merchants and settlers, and actually succeeded in creating within a few years a prosperous Mexican town of 4,000 or so inhabitants in the heart of the mid-Yucatecan wilderness. The Indians, however, though driven into the fastnesses of the bush, never ceased a guerilla warfare against the garrison and inhabitants. Whenever they encountered a party of soldiers or civilians in the bush, not too formidable to be dealt with, they promptly chopped them to pieces, and on one occasion, on securing a corporal and three soldiers, tied them securely in a little palm-leaf house, saturated them with kerosene, and set fire to the house. The Mexicans, on their side, whenever they came across an Indian settlement in the bush promptly wiped out the inhabitants and destroyed their corn plantations. Not- withstanding the fact that the bush had been cleared for two or three hundred metres on either side of the railroad, the Indians constantly attacked the trains, massacring soldiers and civilians and looting baggage. Finding at last that the land in the vicinity was of little agricultural value, that the town itself was cut off from communication with other places on all sides by dense bush, and that the Indians were a constant menace, the Mexicans determined to abandon the town and hand it over again to the Santa Cruz Indians, though its acquisition had cost them rivers of blood and millions of dollars. The following year this abandonment was effected ; soldiers, convicts, and civilians were withdrawn, and, scattering over various parts of the Republic, left the town without a single inhabitant. It was in this town, abandoned for over a year, that we now arrived. The wooden houses, some of them really magnifi- cent structures, were falling into decay, the streets and the 32 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND beautiful little plaza (with its stone fountains, promenades, and seats, surrounded by an orange grove) were choked with bush and weeds, the fountains were dry and filled with leaves, and the town was occupied by a single family of Santa Cruz Indians, who had taken up their abode in a two roomed mud-floored shack, though they might have occupied the Governor’s palace, and were gradually pulling down the wooden houses to use the lumber as firewood. The fine old sixteenth century Spanish church was the only building which stood forth unaltered among the ruins of the modern gingerbread Mexican city ; it is 105 ft. by 36 ft., and 80 ft. high, with massive walls 8 ft. thick. During the Maya occupa- tion of the city it was the centre of that remarkable religious cult, the worship of the Santa Cruz, or Holy Cross, from which the Santa Cruz Indians derive their name. Between the expulsion of the Spaniards by the Indians and the conquest of the latter by the Mexicans in 1902 no priest of any denomination was permitted to enter the Santa Cruz country. The Indians, however, appointed priests from among their own number, who carried out a sort of travesty of the rites of the Roman Catholic Church, freely inter- spersed with those of their ancient religion. The head- quarters of the cult was at the capital, and centred round what was known as the Santa Cruz, a plain wooden cross some two to three feet high, probably removed from some church after the expulsion of the Spaniards. It was gifted with the power of speech—probably owing to the ventri- loquial power of one of the priests—and acted as an oracle, to whom all matters of importance, civil, military, or religious, were referred. It need hardly be said that the cross never failed to return an answer to any of these questions in entire conformity with the wishes of the chief, In 1859 a mission was despatched by the Superintendent of British Honduras to the chiefs of the Santa Cruz Indians, with the object of endeavouring to rescue some Spanish prisoners held by them. One of the members of the SANTA CRUZ DE BRAVO: OLD CATHOLIC CHURCH. - LP. 32 BACALAR : RUINS OF THE OLD CHURCH WHERE THE MASSACRES OF SPANIARDS TOOK PLACE BY THE SANTA CRUZ INDIANS. Ip. 34 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 33 expedition, in a manuscript account left of its failure, says : “ That night all the available Indians arrived in front of the house where the Santa Cruz is kept. The boy attendants, or sentries of the idol, called “ angels,’’ with the subordinate chiefs and soldiers, knelt outside, and did not rise till the service was over, when they crossed themselves, and rubbed their foreheads in the dust. About 11 o'clock the Indians were heard running back- ward and forward, and an order was given to bring out the prisoners, who were placed in a line before the Santa Cruz, and a large body of soldiers was placed with them. They all knelt down in the road. There were about forty female prisoners with one arm tied to the side, and twelve or fourteen men pinioned by both arms. All were calm except the children, although it was known that Santa Cruz was pronouncing their doom. A squeaking, whistling noise was heard proceeding from the oracle, and when it ceased it was known that the Santa Cruz wanted a higher ransom for prisoners.”’ This, apparently, was not forthcoming, for later the chronicler says : ‘““ Some of the women and children were separated from the rest, amongst whom was a young Spanish girl well known in high circles. A procession was then formed, and marched off to the east gate; first came a strong body of troops, and then alternately, in Indian file, a male prisoner and his executioner, who drove him on with his machete, holding him by arope. Next came the women, thirty-five in number, driven and held in a similar manner ; then another body of soldiers closed the rear. The Englishmen were not allowed to follow. The pro- cession halted under a clump of trees about 150 yds. off CL 34. IN AN UNKNOWN LAND Soon the butchery commenced and shrieks were heard, but in ten minutes all was over. “The Santa Cruz was mixed up with some Catholic rites, but retains the leading characteristics of the god, who was best propitiated by placing bleeding human hearts within his lips.” As we contemplated this solid, ugly old church, still standing square and uncompromising amidst the surround- ing ruin and desolation, we could not help thinking, if an aura of the human emotions experienced within them clings to buildings, what a black cloud of misery and despair must environ and fill it ; first of victims of the Holy Office under the Spanish occupation; later of unfortunate wretches brought for the judgment upon them of the Santa Cruz, which almost invariably in its squeaking whisper condemned them to death by machetazos, or being chopped in pieces by a machete ; and last, and perhaps worst, of the miserable prisoners under the Mexican occupation, when the church was used as a gaol, and hundreds of prisoners were crowded promiscuously into the nave—men, women, and children— with the offscourings of the criminal population from Mexico City, locked in together at night. Free fights were common, and often wound-covered corpses were removed in the morning, while filth, vermin, and immorality were rampant always. With these thoughts running through our minds we entered the lofty nave, silent, gloomy, acrid with the smell of bats, dank and cold by contrast with the warm sun outside. We did not remain long, however, but, chilled and depressed, soon made for the open air again, and hunted up the single Indian family left in charge of the deserted city. None of them could understand a word of any language but Maya. Our wants, however, were easily indicated—food, plenty of it, and right away. We were soon provided with a sort of omelette made from eggs and tiny round tomatoes fried together, with plenty of tortillas, or corn cake, and sacha, gf ‘d] VE -d] "yYystu Aq 9JIT 0} BUIOD 07 PAL 94} AQ PoAOT[Oq oe saInsy oy "STTEM 94} UO 3[ISIA [[I}S ete pooyq Fo seyozoTds pue ¢ ACU 9} JO Opis ‘ATQUNOD ZNID JUS VY} JNOYSNoIY} SioqumNuU siqeiapisuoos UT puno,; auo uo desy yeors & ur paid Aj}UsdeI []} etaM Souod ITey} ‘ grgI “MANUNEA ASNAONI ul Sprletueds ay} Jo sueIpuy oy} Aq atoesseut vy} VoeTd Yoo. a19FT MOIMH EINE HOS AVIVoVa b4 % IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 35 a very unattractive drink made from ground corn and water. The tomatoes were delicious, and sweet as sugar, though it was not till later that we discovered the plants from which they came climbing luxuriantly over the graves in the churchyard. CHAPTER III Leave Santa Cruz—A lazy Mule—A Maya Shrine—Its Origin—Beliefs of the modern Indians regarding these Shrines—A Dance Platform— A Sunken Stone Cistern—Traces of the three Civilisations of Yucatan— Start for the Coast—We meet the Commander-in-Chief of the Santa Cruz Army—wWe entertain him and the General’s Nephew—Useful Maya Phrases—Fatal Complaint amongst the Indians—Description of Maya—Origin of the Maya—Appearance—The Women—Costume —The Women’s Work—Their Indifference to Money—Food—Traps for Game—Dangerous Hammocks—Marriage—Armlets worn by the Children—Drunkenness—Effects of Alcohol—Method of appointing Chiefs—Methods of Punishment—Executions—Flogging—Witchcraft —Feeble hold on Life—Smallpox—Bleeding—Remedies—The Cha Chac Ceremony. WE left Santa Cruz without regret, and were agreeably surprised to find a flataforma awaiting us at the railhead. Harnessed to it, however, was a gaunt mule ominously named “‘ Floja’’ (lazy)—a name which her conduct did not belie, for never at any stage of the journey could we get more than three miles an hour out of her, though the driver tried every device known to muleteers, pulling the car up by the traces so that its front edge caught her hind legs, which manceuvre she lazily met by trotting a few paces to escape the car, and when she felt the-strain on the traces aiming a murderous flying kick at the driver over the top of the car during the manceuvre. We coaxed her with sticks, stones, and even scraps of burning palm leaf, while the driver, after cursing her by all the saints in the calendar without avail, tried carivo, or soft sawder, calling her “Chula Mula,’ ‘‘ Dulce corazon’’ (sweetheart), “Multa bonita’’ (pretty little lady mule), till at last, hoarse and tired, even he resigned himself to the inevitable. While we plodded slowly along, Don Julio Martin told us of a graveyard where were situated some old tombs, a 36 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 37 few miles outside Central, and next morning early we set out to visit them. After retracing our route of the previous day for a few miles up the tram-line, we turned off into a milpa, or maize plantation, where we found a number of small tumuli, built of earth and large boulders, probably burial mounds of the ancient Maya. Passing through this, we soon entered the forest, and after a quarter of an hour’s walk came upon the first “tomb,” which proved to be a little two-storied Maya shrine, standing upon a stone platform 2oft. by 15ft. It was constructed of roughly squared stones held together by very tough mortar. The upper story was 3ft. 4in. high, 4ft. long, and 3ft. Ioin. broad, and possessed a single small doorway facing due west ; the lower was 6ft. gin. long and 6ft. 4in. broad, and had doorways in all four walls, over each of which were oblong recesses 5in. deep. Small Maya Shrine. The figure shows the ground plan of the building, with a median core or column of masonry passing up through its centre, and rounded interior angles, leaving a narrow oval passage into which opened a small doorway on each side of the building. The whole structure was covered through- out with hard, smooth stucco, which at the bottom of the recesses above the doorway, where it had been protected from the weather, still showed traces of red, black, and white pigments. Don Julio informed us that some years ago this little shrine was surmounted by a stone cross about 2ft. 6in. in height, which had been thrown down and smashed in pieces by the Mexican soldiers stationed at Central, to whom the sight of a cross is as ared rag toa bull. His story was pro- bably true, as on the roof of the upper storey we found a 38 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND depression surrounded by cement, evidently made to support a square column. This opens up a very interesting problem: was the building erected by the Maya, after they had become Christianised, as a shrine, such as one sees at the stations of the cross which surround many modern Indian villages, their old style of architecture remaining unaltered, except by the addition of a cross ; was it erected in pre-Columbian days, and later adapted to Christian uses; or was it (as Don Julio supposed) a tomb built over one of their chiefs who had embraced Christianity? Interesting but unfor- tunately futile speculations, which can now probably never be answered. The Santa Cruz Indians, degenerate, traditionless descend- ants of the ancient Maya, call these shrines “ Kahtal alux,” “houses of the little people.”” All through this territory are found in considerable numbers large pottery incense burners, upon the outside of which are sculptured in high relief human figures, two to three feet high, covered by a wealth of ornament and decoration. The Indians firmly believe that at night these figures come to life, leave the vases to which they are attached, and visit these little houses, the scene of their former life, returning by day to lifeless pottery. There were four more of these shrines scattered through the bush within a radius of half a mile, all replicas of the one described, but none in quite such a perfect state of preservation. Returning to Central, we passed a dance platform built of stone, with flat, cement-covered top, 274ft. long by 16ft. broad, and 34ft. high. These platforms are found at even the smallest ancient Maya sites, and were used by the people for ceremonial dances and dramatic entertainments, of which they were inordinately fond, for, according to the ancient chroniclers, the Maya of Yucatan were at the time of the conquest at once the gayest and most pleasure-loving people, and the most fettered by religious observance, possible to conceive IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 39 Close to the platform we came across a stone-faced pond, or cistern, 30ft. in diameter, still containing good drinking water, though much silted up with the mud and the vegetal accumulation of several centuries. These sunken stone-lined cisterns are fairly common in this part of Yucatan, and probably form the solution of the problem of how the former inhabitants obtained their water-supply in a country void of rivers and springs, where for four months in the year it hardly rains at all. Within twenty-four hours we had been brought in contact with relics of the three civilisations which during the last thirteen centuries had dominated Yucatan—the Maya represented, by the shrines, the dance platform, and the cistern, lasting from the sixth to the sixteenth century ; the Spanish represented by the old church at Santa Cruz, from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth ; and the Mexican, represented by the ruined city of Santa Cruz, from the end of the Spanish occupation to the present day. While the works of the Maya and Spanish architects stand to-day almost untouched by the hand of time, practically in the same condition as on the day when they were first completed, the meretricious remains of the modern civilisation, though only deserted for a few years, are rapidly falling into decay, and in but a few more years will have disappeared com- pletely—streets and plazas, private houses and _ public buildings, stucco and woodwork—before the all-devouring bush, leaving no smallest trace of their existence. The same afternoon we started back from Central for the coast in a single flat car, seven of us perched insecurely and uncomfortably on top of our mountains of impedimenta. Five kilometres from Central two Indians dodged out of a little bush path on to the track, and on coming up with them we were delighted to find that they were First Captain Desiderio Cochua, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of General Mai, the head chief of all the Santa Cruz Indians, together with the General’s nephew, a precocious youth whom I had encountered before, when he formed one of a 40 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND deputation sent to interview the Governor of British Honduras on behalf of the Santa Cruz Indians. Their clothes gave no indication of their high rank, consisting merely of sandals, straw hats, loose, shirt-like cotton coats and bell-shaped trousers rolled up to the knee, while their modest luggage, consisting of a hammock and roll of foto- poste (large, hard, thin corn cakes, specially made to carry on a journey) slung in a net over the shoulders by a strap passing round the forehead, put our own vast carload of bags, boxes, suit-cases, pots, pans, firearms, canned goods, wraps, etc., completely to shame. We all got off the car, and, sitting on the railroad embankment, formed ourselves into an entertainment committee for the two Indians with the help of Scotch whisky and cigars for the Captain, and chocolate creams and cigarettes for the boy, to the accom- paniment of American ragtime on the horrible, cheap little gramophone, the delight of Morley’s heart, which ac- companied us on all our travels by land or sea. The Captain spoke only his native language, so our sobs means of communication with him was through Muddy, my knowledge of Maya being Ollendorfian, and confined to such useful commercial phrases as: ‘‘ Yan tech ha, he, chicken caax, wmixua’’—‘‘ Have you any water, eggs, chickens, corn cake?” and “ Bahux takin hakatiola ?’’—“ How much do you want for them?” with “‘ Tech hach kichpan Xchupal’’—“ You are a very pretty girl’—‘ Tzaten, tzetic, tzutz’’—‘‘ Will you give me a kiss? ’’—for social small coin. The Captain informed us that he was going to Central to transact some business for the chief, who was laid up with whooping cough in a village a couple of days’ journey offin the bush. Whooping cough, like measles, mumps, and scarlatina, is an extremely fatal complaint amongst the Indians, to whom it is a comparatively new disease, against which the immunity acquired after centuries by European has not yet come as a protection. He was very friendly and cordial, expressing unbounded admiration for the IN AN UNKNOWN LAND AI English—amongst whom Morley, notwithstanding his New England accent, was included—and promised that if he could possibly manage it he would meet us with a guard a week from the following Sunday, and take us to a ruined city behind Tuluum, far larger, finer, and in better preserva- tion than the latter ; in any case, if he could not turn up, he promised that the chief should send messages to the head man at Acumal, the nearest village to Tuluum on the coast, instructing him to have guides ready to take us to the ruins. We were greatly elated at these promises, as no European had ever been permitted by the Indians to approach these ruins, rumours of whose good state of preservation and extent had already reached us. Unfortunately, as it turned out, we were not to visit them on this occasion, as, though we waited three days at Tuluum for Desiderio, he did not turn up, being detained at Central, and on reaching Acumal we were unable to get the Lilian Y in through the opening in the reef, which is here very narrow. Our visit, however, is only postponed, not abandoned. Before leaving them for good some description of the Santa Cruz Indians, with whom we had probably come in closer contact in this and former expeditions than any other Europeans, may prove of interest. They are the last in- dependent tribe of aboriginal Indians in Central America, and are probably the purest representatives of that great Maya race, written records of whose civilisation have been found antedating the Christian era. The territory at pre- sent occupied by them reaches from Acumal, in the north of Yucatan, to the head of the Bacalar Lagoon in the south, a distance of approximately 200 kilometres, extending inland for about 70 kilometres. They are the direct de- scendants of those Maya who, about the middle of the fifteenth century, after the fall of Mayapan, emigrated to the east coast of Yucatan, and founded what may be called the east coast civilisation, whose ruins it was our object on - this trip to explore. Physically these Indians, though short, are robust and 42 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND well-proportioned, the men averaging 5ft. 2in. to 5ft. 3in. in height—the women perhaps a couple of inches less. The hair in both sexes is long, coarse, black, and luxuriant on the head, but absent on other parts of the body. The complexion varies from nearly white to chocolate colour, the skull is very broad, the features and extremities small and finely modelled, and the eyes large, dark brown, and (except in the younger girls, where they are sometimes languishing, but more frequently mischievous) sad, or merely bovine in expression. The teeth are beautiful, but in middle life get worn down very much from constantly eating corn cake impregnated with grit from the rubbing- stone—indeed, they say themselves that every old man or woman eats a rubbing-stone and three bvazos (the stone with which the corn is ground) in the course of their lives. Many of the younger women are extremely handsome, measured even by the most exacting standard, though they reach maturity at a very early age, and when a European woman would hardly have begun to show the ravages of time they are wrinkled hags. Bow-legs (xkulok) are usually common amongst them, due probably to the fact that the children from the time they can toddle are taught to carry the macapal, a netted bag slung from the forehead, resting on the shoulders, and not (as the early chroniclers supposed) because they were carried as infants riding astride their mother’s hip. The constant carrying of a macapal has given them a curious and characteristic gait—the upper part of the body bent forwards, eyes on the ground, toes turned in—and so used have they become to it that often on going a journey with no luggage to carry they put a few stones in the macapal to act as a counterpoise. Nearly all the Santa Cruz have a peculiar faint, not un- pleasant odour, somewhat suggestive of peat smoke, and not affected by washing. It rather reminds one of the peaty smell of the West of Ireland peasant, and, like this, is no doubt due to frequent exposure to wood smoke in the chimneyless room. IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 43 The women are much superior in looks and physique to the men, and when got up in gala costume they present a very attractive appearance, with exquisitely embroidered white cotton Awipil (a loose, sleeveless garment cut very low at the neck and back, closely resembling the feminine evening dress of modern civilisation, but leaving more to the imagination), gold chains, pendants, and earrings of native workmanship, and often a small coronet of fire beetles, resembling tiny electric lamps, in their magnificent hair. When quarrelling amongst themselves the women and girls use the most disgusting and obscene language, im- provising as they go along with remarkable quick-witted- ness, not bound down, like more civilised people, by stereo- typed forms in oath and invective, but pouring out a ceaseless stream of vituperation and obscenity to meet each case, which strikes with unerring fidelity the weak points morally, physically, and ancestrally in their opponents’ armour. They are very industrious, usually arising between three and four every morning to prepare the day’s supply of corn cake for their lord and master’s early breakfast. During the day they have few idle moments, as they cure tobacco, make cigarettes, gather cotton, which they spin and weave, make palm-leaf mats and liana baskets, cotton and hempen string, and rope hammocks, nets, and cooking and other utensils of pottery—in fact, every conceivable household article, for which her less adaptable civilised sister would have to send to half a dozen different stores, the Maya woman has to manufacture herself from such materials as the bush provides. Nor is she imbued with any tincture of the modern movement for emancipating women from the care of the household, for, in addition to her other multifarious duties, she does the family cooking and washing, and even helps her husband with the livestock. Most of these independent Indians are utterly lacking in any ambition to accumulate wealth. It occasionally happens, however, that one of them does acquire it, as in 44 | IN AN UNKNOWN LAND the case of the Head Chief of the Icaiche Indians—neigh- bours of the Santa Cruz, but much more pacificos than they —who was paid a salary by the Mexican Government to keep his people quiet, in addition to royalties on chicle cut on his tribal lands by various contractors. He accumulated no less than two demijohns full of gold coin, which, having no wants requiring money for their satisfaction, he simply buried in the bush, where presumably they still remain, as before his death, which was sudden, and due to a growing unpopularity amongst his people, he neglected to confide the secret of their location to his family. The Santa Cruz’s real god is his milpa, or corn plantation, for he knows that if the corn crop fails from any cause actual starvation menaces him and his family till the next crop comes in. The plantation consists merely of a small clearing in the virgin bush, made about December. The vegetation, which is thoroughly dry about May, the end of the dry season, is then burnt, and the corn planted by making holes with a sharp stick in the soil at fairly regular intervals, dropping in a few grains of corn, covering them over, and leaving the rest to Providence. When the corn begins to ripen, about the end of October, the owner constructs a country residence of a couple of dozen or so large palm leaves in his milpa, and practically takes up his abode there till the crop is harvested, as deer and wild hog are ex- tremely fond of corn, while the pigs of neighbouring landed proprietors, and even the proprietors themselves, have to be closely guarded against. In the Indian menu ixim, as he calls maize, is the piéce de résistance. Corn cakes are prepared from it in the fol- lowing manner. The grain is soaked overnight in a lye of wood ashes, which softens the kernel and removes the outer husk. The softened kernel is next ground to a paste on a slightly concave oblong stone by means of a stone rolling- pin. This process takes considerable time and labour, and one is always awakened between 3 and 4 a.m. in an Indian hut by the clank, clank of the rubbing-stone, vigorously IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 45 wielded by a half-naked woman, who literally waters the bread with the sweat of her brow. The mass of ground corn, when finished, is flattened out by hand into little round, thin cakes, which are baked on a pottery or iron disc, and must be eaten very hot—a fact which precludes the possibility of the whole family ever dining together, as the women have to keep preparing the cakes one at a time and handing them to the men as fast as they can prepare and bake them. They sit, when eating, at little round tables about 2ft. high on small blocks of wood. In addition to these cakes, they make a great variety of drinks from ground corn and water, flavoured with honey, or cacao ; one of them, known as #znol, is made from parched corn, and has almost exactly the colour and flavour of coffee, from which it is practically indistinguishable. This pinol, a true “ coffee substitute,’ was probably used by the Maya centuries before the genuine coffee-bean was em- ployed in the East. They obtain fire by means of a flint and steel, or by swiftly rotating a sharp-pointed shaft of hard wood—generally dogwood—in a hole made in a small dry slab of some very soft wood—usually gumbolimbo. A great variety of game is found in the Santa Cruz country, including deer, antelope, wild hog, armadillo, gibnut, wild turkey, quam, corrasow, quail, pigeon, and partridge. Besides these, iguana, woula—a large species of constrictor snake—and other snakes are eaten, and turtles are often captured along the coast and adjacent islands, while their eggs in the breeding season form a great delicacy for the Santa Cruz in the neighbourhood of Tuluum. The jaguar, puma, picote, monkey, tapir, and squirrel are also hunted from time to time for their skins or flesh. Traps of two kinds are in common use. One is constructed by digging a deep pit with outward sloping sides, the top of which is covered with branches, into which the animal falls and is unable to get out. Another, also used for catching large game, is constructed in the following way. A path frequented by 46 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND game in going to and from a watering-place is found. Along this is dug a shallow trench opposite a good, springy young sapling. Two stakes are driven in, one on each side of the trench, the one farthest from the sapling being crooked at the top. A piece of hempen cord provided with a noose at one end, and with a stick long enough to extend from one stake to the other, firmly tied by its middle above the noose, is attached to the top of the sapling by its other end. The sapling is then bent down and held in place by the stick above the noose, which is fixed lightly between the crook in one stake and the stake opposite to it, the loop hanging suspended between the two. Lastly a number of sticks and leaves are scattered lightly over the trench, and beside the stakes and loop. An animal coming along the run is very apt to thrust its neck through the loop, and by pulling on this to release the cross stick, whereupon it is immediately jerked into the air by the recoil of the sapling. Animals of all sizes are caught in traps of this kind, the strength and adaptability of which vary with the size of the bent tree and the adjustment of the noose. The houses are single-roomed affairs, the wells constructed of tasistas, or small palm sticks, the roof of palm-leaf thatch, and the floor of hard earth. They contain no furniture beyond the family hammocks, as eating, cooking, and most of the important business of life is carried on in the kitchen. It is difficult to navigate the room without coming in contact with the hammocks, but these should be touched with great caution, as in many cases countless livestock leave the body of the hammock during the day, and secrete themselves in the knots at the junction of the body and arms, a strategic position for night raids and for a transfer to the garments of the unwary at any time. Privacy under these conditions is naturally impossible, but they never seem to feel the need of it, and in the presence of strangers, equally with their own men, the women and girls are quite natural and un- ashamed, though by no means shameless. Indian girls married formerly at about fourteen or fifteen IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 47 boys at seventeen or eighteen years. After the conquest of Bacalar and Santa Cruz, however, and the expulsion of the Yucatecans from Indian territory, a law came into force making marriage compulsory for all girls of twelve years of age and upwards. This was probably done with a view to increasing the population, which had been considerably depleted by the long-continued war. One would have imagined that, as it was the fighting male population which had suffered chiefly by the war, polygamy would have been ‘the natural remedy to suggest itself, but, curiously enough, this practice seems always to have been repugnant to the Maya, and at no time during their centuries-long history do we find it prevalent. Even the chiefs, kings, and caciques rarely indulged in more than one wife, official or otherwise, while the priests were not permitted to marry at all. The Maya are by no means an amorous race, notwith- standing the fact that at the coming of the Spaniards they practised certain dithyrambic dances for which the Spanish priests insisted on substituting the ungraceful shuffle known as the “ Mestisada,’’ in which the men and women prance solemnly and stiltedly about like marionettes in front of each other, without even circling or touching. I have frequently watched the course of young love in Maya lovers from genesis to consummation, but never have I been able to detect that longing for physical contact as experienced in kissing, hand holding, and waist clasping, or for psychic contact to the exclusion of the rest of the world, as expressed in glances, smiles, and unintelligible mumbles, so characteristic in more civilised lovers. On the contrary, they seem to take it all as a purely business proposition ; the man wants someone to help him in the house, the woman wants someone to provide food—and that is all there is to it. In one particular only do they conform to the code of Venus ; the mating season is almost invariably in the spring. Formerly amongst the Santa Cruz the first question of a father to his daughter’s prospective suitor was, “‘ Hz tzak 48 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND a kul, lt tzak Taman ?’’—“ How many macates of corn and cotton have you?” At the present day, however, there are not enough men to go round, and he is glad to see anything in the way of a prospective son-in-law turn up. The babies and small children are pretty, merry little things, generally seen rolling or toddling about in the sun and dust, unclothed save for a string of beads, dried seeds, shells, and stone, clay or wood figures, worn round their necks. Many of these are worn as charms or amulets to protect the wearer from diseases, accidents, and evil spirits, and to bring good luck. A charm worn by nearly all children consists of a small cross of the bark of the tancasche, regarded as a sovereign remedy for flatulence, a complaint from which, owing to the nature of their diet, nearly all suffer. A tiny gold key is worn by unbaptised children, with which, should they die without baptism, they may themselves open the gates of paradise. The ancient chroniclers frequently mention the fact that, at the time of the Spanish conquest, drunkenness was the curse of the Indians, and the cause of many crimes among them, including murder, rape, and arson. These remarks apply equally well to the present day ; indeed, drunkenness is probably even more prevalent now than then, as the rum made by the Indians of to-day is far more intoxicating than the balché, a drink made from fermented honey, water, and roots, used by their ancestors. Moreover, the people drink rum practically whenever they can get it, whereas both the preparation and consumption of balché were to some extent ceremonial, as was the resulting intoxication. Drunkenness is not regarded as in any sense a disgrace, but rather as a beatific state, for which those who reach it are to be envied rather than criticised. The women, especially the older ones, drink a good deal, but they usually do so in the privacy of their own houses. I have, however, seen a little girl of fourteen or fifteen purchase a pint of rum in a village liquor shop, go out on the plaza, swallow it in a few gulps, and then, lying down deliberately in the hot sun, lapse into a state of IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 49 alcoholic coma. Alcohol effects an extraordinarily rapid change for the worse in the Indian temperament. From a quiet, polite, rather servile individual, he is metamorphosed almost in an instant into a maudlin idiot, staggering about singing foolish snatches of native songs, howling, shrieking, and endeavouring to embrace everyone he comes in contact with. When thwarted while in this condition his temper is likely to flare up at the slightest provocation, whereupon the thin veneer of civilisation and restraint is sloughed in a moment, and he becomes savage, insolent, overbearing, and contemptuous towards the stranger, and ready to draw his machete and fight to kill, with friend or foe alike. On the death of a head chief of the Santa Cruz Indians the oldest of the sub-chiefs is supposed to succeed him ; as a matter of fact, there are always rival claimants for the chieftainship, and the sub-chief with the _ strongest personality or greatest popularity amongst the soldiers usually succeeds in grasping the office. There are nearly always rival factions endeavouring to oust the chief in power, and the latter rarely dies in his bed. The power of the head chief is practically unlimited over the whole tribe. Some time ago, when Roman Pec was head chief, one of the sub-chiefs came to Corozal (the nearest settlement to the Santa Cruz country in British Honduras) for the purpose of purchasing powder, shot, and other supplies. He remained some time, as he had many friends in the place, and purchased, amongst other things, a bottle of laudanum to relieve toothache. On returning to his village he was met by three soldiers, who informed him that he was to go at once with them to the head chief, as the latter was angry with him on account of his long absence from the country. Aware that this was equivalent to a sentence of death, he asked permission to retire to his home for a few minutes to prepare for the journey, and, taking advantage of the opportunity, swallowed the entire contents of the bottle of laudanum. This began to take effect very shortly, and, notwithstanding the best efforts of the soldiers, who dragged DL 50 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND him along, prodding him vigorously with the points of their machetes, long before reaching the capital and the presence of the head chief he was dead. The method of executing those sentenced to death is curious. The accused does not undergo a formal trial, but the evidence against him is placed before the head chief ; if he is convicted he has an opportunity of defending himself, and of producing witnesses in his behalf. Three or four soldiers are chosen by the chief to carry out the sentence, which they do by chopping the victim to death with their machetes when they catch him asleep or off his guard. Several men always “execute the orders of the court,” all chopping the victim at the same time, so that no single individual may be held responsible for his death. Imprison- ment as a punishment for crime is unknown, fine, flogging, and death being the only three methods employed in dealing with criminals. The severity of the flogging is regulated by the nature of the offence, and after it is over the recipient is compelled publicly to express sorrow for his offence, and go around humbly kissing the hands of all the spectators, after which, by way of consolation, he is given a large calabash of anisado (rum with an anise flavour) to drink. The heaviest punishment is meted out for sorcery or witch- craft, as the pulya, or sorceress, is greatly dreaded by the Indians. She is literally chopped limb from limb, but whereas the bodies of other victims executed in this way are always buried, that of the pulya is left for the dogs and vultures to dispose of. Both men and women when attacked by any serious malady, are found to be lacking in stamina and vitality ; they relax their hold on life very easily, seeming to regard it as hardly worth a fight to retain. An elderly man or woman will sometimes take to their hammock without apparent physical symptoms of disease beyond the anemia from which nearly all suffer, and quietly announce to his or her relatives: “‘ He im cimli’’—“I am going to die.” They refuse to eat, drink, or talk, wrap themselves in a IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 51 sheet from head to foot, and finally, in a very short time, do succumb, apparently from sheer distaste of life and absence of desire to go on living. This point of view is well recognised by the friends and relatives, and they rarely worry the patient with food, drink, medicine, or cheering or encouraging conversation, holding that when an indivi- dual is tired of life, he is, if he feels so inclined, perfectly at liberty to leave it. Smallpox, known as “ kak,” or fire, invading an Indian village is a terrible scourge, far worse than in a more civilised community of the same size, where partial immunity has been conferred by the presence of the disease for many centuries. Sometimes the whole unaffected population departs from the village en masse, leaving the dead unburied, and the stricken lying in their hammocks with a supply of food and water, to perish or recover unaided as best they can. Their treatment for this disease is similar to that employed by them in malaria, namely, the production of profuse sweating, followed by sudden immersion in cold water— the colder the better. It need hardly be said that the patient, who might have overcome the disease unaided, not unfrequently succumbs to the remedy. Bleeding is a very favourite remedy, especially for headache and any febrile disorder. Usually the temporal vein above and in front of the ear is opened, but sometimes one of the veins of the forearm, which has first been distended with blood by tying a ligature round the arm higher up. A chip of obsidian, a sharp splinter of bone, ora snake’s tooth serves as a lancet, the last being the favourite, as, though more painful than the other two, it is supposed to possess some esoteric virtue, which helps out the cure of the disease. Decoctions from the carcasses of dried and mummified animals form no inconsiderable part of the Indian pharmacopceia, certain animals being regarded as specifics for certain diseases, During an epidemic of whooping cough which I witnessed a decoction of the charred remains of the cane rat was almost exclusively given to the children to relieve the cough. 52 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND In this case it is very hard to trace any connection between the remedy and the disease, but some remedies are undoubtedly used on the assumption that “ Similia similibus curantur,’’ as in the case of Xhudub pek, twin seeds closely resembling enlarged glands, the milky juice from which is regarded as specific for glandular swellings in all parts of the body. The Maya Indians are extremely superstitious, believing that the air is full of pishan, or souls of the dead, who are at liberty at all times to return to their old haunts on earth, and at certain seasons are compelled to do so. The pishan are capable of enjoying the spirit, though not the substance of human food, especially for some time just after they have left the body ; hence the provision by friends and relatives of food and drink for the dead, sometimes in their houses, sometimes on their graves. Some fishan are believed to be friendly to mortals, others inimical. They believe also in spirits known as Xtabai, who have never undergone incarnation on earth. These are always harmful, or at best mischievous, and often take the form of a beautiful woman, whose chief desire is to lead men astray, often luring the victim on into the bush with enchanting voice and backward glances, half disclosing her supernatural beauty, till he is irretrievably lost, and wanders about half demented to die of hunger and thirst. At other times the victim is allowed to overtake and grasp the beautiful Xtabai, but the first touch is death, consequently the cause usually assigned for the demise of anyone found dead on the trails, or in the bush, without any external marks of violence, is “touched by a Xtabai.”’ Another belief commonly held bv the Indians is that the images of Christian saints, like the clay images of their ancient gods upon the incensarios already mentioned, are at times endowed with life, and the powers of speech and locomotion, and that on these occasions they are capable of actively aiding their faithful devotees. A celebrated wooden image supposed to represent San Bernardo, was IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 53 credited with considerable powers in this respect, and when an Indian wanted rain for his milpa, the return of an errant wife, good hunting, or any similar blessing, he would come and pray to the image to obtain it for him. On one occasion a devotee arrived from a distant village imploring the saint to aid him in the recovery of his pigs, which had been lost, and on returning to his village found to his joy that the pigs had arrived home before him. Next day he returned, with the intention of making an offering to the saint for his good offices, and incidentally, a present to the owner of the house where the saint dwelt. He found the poor santo much dishevelled, with torn clothes, and burrs and thorns sticking all over him. On enquiring how this had come about he was informed that the saint had been out in the bush hunting for pigs, a quest which had given him a great deal of trouble before he could find and drive them home, and that when he got back he was tired out, his face scratched, and his clothes torn by thorns and covered with burrs—an explanation which completely satisfied the Indian, and naturally called for a very handsome present to the saint. The image of San Isidro now reposing at Bacalar is even more celebrated. Some years ago the Santa Cruz Indians wished to remove the saint from his little shrine in Bacalar to the great church in Santa Cruz, a resting-place more in accord with his dignity. or this purpose he was laid in a hammock, and carried by relays of Indians to a swamp dividing the two places, where a halt was made for the night. Next morning, to the consternation of the bearers, the image of the saint was found to be missing. On returning to Bacalar to report the disappearance, they were overjoyed to find him standing as usual in his lowly shrine, crook in hand, halo on head, looking benevolently down on them. Three times in all they tried to remove him, but on each occasion at the night halt the saint returned to his old quarters at Bacalar, till they realised that he preferred his own shrine to the great church at Santa Cruz, and, with 54 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND reputation greatly enhanced, he was after that left in peace. Many curious superstitions are associated with the ruins found throughout this country. Iwas assured by an Indian that he had gone on one occasion to the ruins situated near the village of Benque Viego, and, seeing a pigeon seated on a tree, raised his gun to shoot it. Before he could do so, however, the pigeon changed into a cock, and then almost instantaneously into an eagle, which flew at him and drove him away. There is a further superstition connected with these ruins to the effect that when the first settlers came to Benque Viego, they wished to build the village near the ruins, where plenty of cut stone is available, and land is excellent for corn growing. They were, however, repeatedly driven off by a little old man with a long grey beard, who appeared when anyone tried to dig a post hole on the new site, and whose appearance was so threatening and terrible that they finally gave up the idea, and contented themselves with the present site, which, it must be admitted, is in many ways inferior. Nominally they are Christians, but the more one sees of them, and the better one gets to know them, the more one realises that their Christianity is merely a thin veneer, and that fundamentally their religious conceptions, and even their ritual and ceremonies, are survivals—degenerate, much altered, and with most of their significance lost, but still survivals of those of their ancestors in pre-Columbian days. To Christianity, not as a separate faith, but as a welcome addition to their ancient religion, they took kindly from the first. The innumerable saints of the Roman Catholic Church were grafted on the not very extensive Maya pantheon, and at the present day the Sun God, the Wind God, the Rain God, Our Lady of Guadelupe, Saint Lawrence, and Santa Clara, may all be invoked in the same prayer, while the cross is substituted in most of the cere- monies for the images of the old gods, though many of the MAYA INDIAN CHILDREN. PRIEST BEFORE ALTAR IN THE CHA CHAC CEREMONY. Lp. 55 p. 48 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 55 latter are called on by name, and offerings are made to them. The Cha Chac ceremony, which we witnessed from beginning to end, whose object is to procure sufficient rain for the ripening of the corn, will be briefly described, as it embraces most of the offerings and procedure of all the other ceremonies. The day previous to the ceremony the men of the village dug the #7), or oven in which the food offerings were to be baked. This consisted of an oblong hole in the ground some 6ft. by 4ft. and 2ft. deep, filled with dry wood, on which were placed a number of large stones. The women worked hard all night at their rubbing-stones, grinding great quantities of masa, a thick paste of ground corn, and stkil, a thin paste of roast pumpkin seeds, from which their offerings were to be made. Early in the morning of the day of the ceremony the priest arrived with his assistant. He was a thin, solemn, ascetic individual of pure Maya type and evidently unmixed blood, clad in immaculate white cotton shirt and trousers, with sandals on his feet. A site was chosen in the midst of a grove of large trees, in which a circular space 25ft. in diameter had been completely cleared of trees and undergrowth. In this were erected two rude huts, one 12ft. the other 6ft. square, of freshly-cut sticks, thatched with huano leaf. In the centre of the larger hut was erected an altar of sticks, bound together with liana, and arched over with branches of the sacred shrub known as jabin. On the altar were placed a number of small calabashes for drinking from, and a cross. Beneath it in large gourds, were placed the corn and pumpkin seed paste made the night before, with a large jar of balché, the sacred drink of the Maya, made from fermented honey, in which has been steeped the bark of certain trees. The gourds of corn and pumpkin seed paste were next removed to the smaller hut, where they were dumped out on the floor, which had been covered with wild plantain leaves. The priest and his assistant soon converted the paste into cakes, 56 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND each of which was wrapped in an outer coat of palm leaf and an inner jacket of wild plantain leaf, and tied up securely with liana. The firewood in the #70, or oven, had been meanwhile set light to, and the hole was now half filled with glowing ashes and red-hot stones, in which the leaf- wrapped cakes were half buried, the earth taken from the pib when it was dug out being raked on top of them, while the priest sprinkled a little balché to the four cardinal points with a branch of sacred jabin, repeating four times the prayer: “‘In kubic ti at epalob, ti noh yum kab yetel nahmetan”’ —‘I offer to the majestic ones, to the great Lord, cakes of corn.”’ Meanwhile a turkey and four fowls had been placed in front of the altar. The priest and his assistant seized the turkey, placed a wreath of sacred jabin leaves round its neck, and poured a little balché down its throat, murmuring meanwhile : “ In kubic t1 hahnal kichpan kolel tt San Pedro, San Pablo, San Franctsco.’”’—‘I1 offer a repast to the beautiful Virgin, to San Pedro, San Pablo, San Francisco.” The turkey and fowls then had their necks wrung, and were sent away to be cooked by the women, after which all returned to the #7b, which was opened up, and the red hot, leaf-wrapped bundles of corn bread removed to the small shed, where their wrappings were removed, and they were placed upon the altar. The fowls and turkey, roasted and dismembered, were also placed on the altar, together with a large calabash of balché, and some freshly made corn husk cigarettes. All the offerings to the gods were now in place— bread, meat, tobacco, and wine. The priest, standing directly in front of the altar facing the people sitting round in a semicircle, took some burning incense in a piece of plantain bark, and, waving it towards the four cardinal points, placed it upon the altar; next he took a little of the balché, and scattered some of it towards the north, east, and west, repeating at the same time in a low, solemn, droning undertone this dedicatory prayer to the gods to whom the offerings were made: IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 57 “Now my beautiful lady of the yellow-leafed breadnut, as well as you, my handsome father, San Isidro, tiller of the earth ; as well as you, Lord Sun, who art seated in the middle of the Heavens, in the east ; as well as you, Yumceanchaacoob (Lord of all the Chacs) ; I deliver (these things) to you with the majestic servants in the middle of the Heavens. As well as to you, my handsome father Cakaal Uxmaal ; as well as you, my beautiful Lady Santa Clara, as well as you, my handsome father Xualakinck (a male wind god), as well as you, my beautiful Lady Xhekik (a female wind god), as well as you, my handsome father San Lorenzo ; as well as you, my beautiful lady of Guadelupe, as well as you, Lord Mosonicoob, that blows within the milpa when it is burnt, I deliver to you this holy grace that you may taste it, and because you are the greatest santos on earth. That is all, my masters. Pardon my sins. You have not to follow the holy souls, because I have made this holy offering.” After this the balché was passed round in calabashes and drunk by the participants, while the corn bread and fowls were divided up amongst them, a very insignificant portion of bread, meat, and balché being reserved for the women who were, of course, not permitted to participate in the ceremony, but on whom by far the most arduous part of the labour of preparing for it had fallen. After this the priest distributed the new-made corn husk cigarettes from the altar, and finally everything used in the ceremony including sheds, altar, and vessels, was burnt, and very carefully reduced to ashes. It is absolutely essential in performing the ceremony that everything employed in it be fresh and unused. The huts and oven are made specially for the occasion; the gourd cups and bowls have never been used before ; the pottery is new, and even the incense, corn husk cigarettes, and black native wax candles are specially prepared for the ceremony. After the ceremony it is equally important that everything 58 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND employed in it be completely destroyed, generally by fire. The Cha Chac would appear to be primarily an offering of food, drink, incense, and tobacco, made to the Christian, santos and to their own ancient gods by the Indians, which after they have been presented to the gods, may be con- sumed by the participants in the ceremony. Its chief function, no doubt, was to secure the goodwill of the saints and gods, and so ensure a satisfactory rainfall during the ripening of the maize crop, but this was not its sole function, for by the side of the hut containing the principal altar was placed a small wooden table, or subsidiary altar, with a string of gourds, in which were placed small portions of food, drink, and tobacco, at the same time that these were placed on the large altar. The priest also made offerings from this small altar to the gods, which he explained were on behalf of the ¢twyun pishan—literally “ solitary souls,”’ meaning souls of the dead—who had not as yet reached paradise, but were wandering about the earth disconsolate and alone—a state obviously suggested by the Christian idea of purgatory. CHAPTER IV A Mad Mule—Arrival in Vigia—Boca Paila—A Sportsman’s Paradise— Arrival in Cozumel—Carnival Celebrations—The Administration— The Island of Cozumel—An Ideal Life—Mexican Officials—A Native Dance—Vino del Pais—Island Ladies—Savage Dogs—An ancient Church—Cortez’ visit to Cozumel—Vaults and Graves opened by Treasure Seekers—Grijalva’s visit to Cozumel—The Buildings found there by Him—He takes Possession in the Name of the King of Spain— Sitting on a Jerisco—The Pests of Yucatan—Salubrity of the Island— We engage a Pilot—He knows of a hitherto unvisited Ruined City— Arrival off Ascension Bay—We Land to Sleep—Tracks in the Sand— Good Fishing and Sport—Wonderful Flotsam on the Beach— Discovery of the Ruined City. ON leaving Desiderio Cochua we made an uneventful passage as far as the break in the railroad nearest to Vigia, and on portaging our luggage over this found a flat car and fresh mule awaiting us, the latter an evil-tempered, irritable animal, known as ‘“ Lunatico.’ Curiously enough, all the mules on this line appear to possess names descriptive of their most prominent characteristics. All, without exception, are evil, and, so far as our experience went, well merited. Lunatico did not take kindly to the harness, emphasising his disapproval directly anyone approached him to put it on by well-directed kicks. At last, however, by tying him up short and blindfolding him, we succeeded in getting it on, only, however, to encounter a fresh obstacle, as our old muleteer, known to us only as hombre—.e. ““ man ”’ —who was obviously suffering from a bad attack of cold feet, refused point blank to fasten the traces to the flat car, saying he felt sure the blank, blank son of ten million blank, blank diablos would run away, overturn the car, and prove his finish. A compromise was reached by his agreeing to give the traces one turn round a central hook at the front of the car, holding the end in his hand, so that 59 60 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND any moment he might, so to speak, slip his cable, the reins meanwhile being handed over to a compadre. We galloped along in fine style for a mile or two, for Lunatico, whatever his other faults, had not a lazy hair on his carcass. Suddenly, however, for no apparent reason beyond justifying his name, he took it into his head to bolt, on which poor old hombre completely lost his head, loosed the traces, while compadre let go the reins, and we were left gazing at the gradually diminishing back view of Lunatico disappearing down the line, a tangle of ropes trailing behind him. Meanwhile our flat car, its momentum exhausted, soon came to a stop, and we found ourselves marooned in the middle of a swamp, eight kilometres from anywhere, night coming on rapidly, and battalions of mosquitoes concentrat- ing for the assault. Disgustedly we drove hombre and his compadre off down the line, in the faint hope that the mule might have got hitched up by the traces or reins, failing which they were to make their way to Vigia and bring back first aid in the form of a fresh mule. In half an hour or so we were rejoiced to see them returning, leading Lunatico, and accompanied by a third man, who had encountered the beast pelting down the line, and, guessing what had happened, promptly stopped him. This time we fastened the traces firmly on each side of the flat car, handing over the reins to the old muleteer with the warning that if anything further happened he and compadre should act as mules, and drag the car into Vigia, with a liberal ration of whip. Lunatico set off at a magnifi- cent gallop, the light car swaying, bumping, and lurching over the uneven road bed, and threatening every moment to upset us into the vile smelling swamp on either side. Poor old hombre’s time was divided about equally between petitioning the saints for a safe deliverance, cursing the gringos—Americans—holding the reins, and endeavouring to retain his seat on the car. Indeed, the latter feat gave us all as much to do as we could accomplish, for the great IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 6I pile of baggage, to the top of which we were clinging, endeavouring to keep its component parts from being jerked off into the swamp, everyone grasping his own most valued possessions, swayed about like a ship in a heavy swell, shedding along our track here a pot, there a calabash, and anon a string of dry corn cake, whose loss the darkness temporarily hid from their owners. With no worse losses than these we reached Vigia between 8 and 9 p.m., where we were treated by Messrs. Martin & Martinez to a real dinner, no single item of which had ever dwelt in a tin. Next morning early we boarded the Lilian Y, and, passing the wreck of the Independencia, and the lighthouse at Ascension, arrived at Boca Paila about 4 p.m. This is a narrow inlet through which runs a five-knot current, against which we had great difficulty in taking the pram in. It opens up into a vast shallow lagoon studded with mangrove cays, connected to the south with the Chetumal Bay, and to the north, it is said, by devious waterways, even with Yalahau Lagoon, in the extreme north of the peninsula. This vast shallow lagoon is a sportsman’s paradise, as the water is literally swarming with fish—snapper, stone bass, mullet, and many other varieties, which in turn attract sharks, barracouda, and larger fish, with myriads of aquatic birds. We saw great numbers of cranes, spoonbills, curlew, and plover, flocks of the beautiful scarlet ibis, and even considerable numbers of egrets, now becoming year by year shyer and rarer in most places, by reason of the constant war waged against them for their plumes, but in this remote spot, where the foot—or rather the keel—of man hardly ever passes, still common, and comparatively tame. Opening into this lagoon is a little creek navigable only for small canoes. It leads to the fresh water lagoon of Chunyancha, by the side of which dwell the last few representatives of the Chunyancha tribe of Indians, a branch of the Maya, their miserable hovels of sticks and 62 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND palm-leaf thatch being placed within a stone’s throw of the stone-walled ruins of their more noble ancestors’ dwellings. We left Boca Paila with regret, and, indeed, one might pass an ideal holiday here, camping out on the fine white sandy beach, under the glorious tropical sun, the heat tempered by the almost constant cool breezes from the Caribbean ; fish and fowl in great variety to be had for the taking, driftwood in abundance for the camp-fire, and no troublesome human to break the peace of nature from year’s end to year’s end. About I a.m. next morning we made San Migue, the capital of the island of Cozumel. Pandemonium seemed to have broken loose on the island, singing, howling, shouting, drums beating, bands braying, guns exploding, dogs barking, all tortured the quiet night, and proclaimed the strenuous observance of the last day of carnival. The noise was so terrific that we could not go to sleep, and so lay on and off some distance from the shore till about 7 a.m., when we landed for an interview with the Administrador del Aduana, or Chief of Customs, an educated Mexican, dressed in nicely- pressed grey silk suit, tight, highly-polished grey kid boots, with silk stockings to match, a grey figured shirt, and—no collar or tie. The little plaza, or public square, facing the sea contains a pretentious statue of President Juares, and a fine stone clock tower, but is neglected and overgrown with weeds and rank vegetation. These two—the Administrador and the plaza—epitomise in themselves what may be termed the Neo Mexican culture, the keynote of which is meretricious- ness—a constant striving after the grandiose and impressive in architecture, institutions, and culture, a lamentable falling short, and attainment only of the ridiculous. The island, which is about 50 kilometres long by 20 broad, when Stephens visited it in 1841 was absolutely uninhabited ; now, however, it supports a population of probably 1,500 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 63 souls, mostly Yucatan and Indian fishermen, some of whom also cultivate patches of henequen and coco-nuts. The life is an easy one. Dinner can be caught off the end of the wharf at any time in ten minutes ; corn cake is cheap ; and the coco-nuts, which require practically no tending on this wonderful sandy soil, provide the rum, tobacco, and cotton for a pair of trousers and shirt, which are all most of the inhabitants demand of existence. The one fly in the ointment is the swarm of Mexican federal officials—the Judges, the Captain of the Port, the Paymaster, the Administrador, with their numerous staffs— who have to be supported—and handsomely supported at that. It must, however, be admitted that, except in very lean times, these prey rather off the stranger within their gates than off the native—a custom prevalent in most small Mexican ports, where high titled officials with expensive tastes but very meagre salaries have to supplement the latter to the best of their ability in order to gratify the former. We realised this when we had to pay over 200 dollars in port dues of various sorts in our progress from Payo Obispo to Progreso, though we had cleared directly from the former to the latter place, with permission to call wherever we wished en route. Next day, with true Mexican hospitality, our new friends refused to let us go till we had attended a dance they were getting up in our honour that night. We pointed out that the night of Ash Wednesday was no time for good Catolicos to get up a dance; they replied that, having had a hot time during the carnival, they felt like keeping it up a little while longer, for which our presence offered an excellent excuse. Messengers were sent round to warn the sefioritas of the pueblo, and about 8 p.m. a considerable crowd had collected in the dance house on the plaza, open on all sides to the winds of heaven, and to various mirones, or onlookers, without whom no Yucatecan dance is complete. These consist of dogs, children, loafers, the aged female relatives of the performers, and, indeed, of all the inhabitants of the 64 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND pueblo with nothing particular to do. Most of the guests, in deference to the day, had a smear of ashes on their heads or foreheads; later on, however, as in response to the stimulus of the vino del pais, things became more lively, Held (whose abilities at quick-fire portraiture and carica- ture proved of inestimable assistance to us throughout the trip), with the aid of a little charcoal, red ochre, and grease, transformed them into a company of demons. This vino del pais—wine of the country—new native white rum, is an insidious liquor, producing, when taken in moderation, merely a gentle exhilaration and sense of bien étre, but leaving, even with the strictest moderation, a most evil head and stomach on the “ morning after ’”’ to those not broken in to it. Like all Spaniards both men and women were excellent dancers, and performed danza, danzon, and Spanish quadrilles as if their hearts were in the business. The island ladies are fine, sltummocky, upstanding young women, perhaps not so slim, graceful, and alluring as the mestizas of the mainland. The few hours’ sleep we had that night were taken on the beach, to avoid the noise of the dogs, which are the curse of all Yucatecan villages, where they take complete charge at night, wandering about in bands, rendering sleep impossible for the stranger and a stroll in the streets after dark not unattended with danger, as, though great cowards, they will, when reinforced by numbers, and under cover of dark- ness, attack anyone they do not know. Next morning, after a bathe and tea, we started for the ruins of the ancient church situated about a mile from the village, and now buried in the bush. We were particularly anxious to see this venerable building, which is generally regarded as the first Christian church erected upon the American continent, as it stands upon the traditional site of the chapel erected by Cortez on his way to the conquest of Mexico in 1519. The incident as related by Bernal Diaz, IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 65 who accompanied the conqueror, and was an eye-witness of the occurrence, is as follows: “ The Island of Cozumel, it seems, was a place to which the Indians made pilgrimages, for the neighbouring tribes of the promontory of Cotoche, and other districts of Yucatan, came hither in great numbers to sacrifice to some abominable idols which stood in a temple there. One morning we perceived that the place where these horrible images stood was crowded with Indians and their wives. They burnt a species of resin, which very much resembled our incense, and as such a sight was so novel to us, we paid particular attention to all that went forward. Upon this an old man, who had on a wide cloak, and was a priest, mounted on the very top of the temple, and began preaching something to the Indians. We were all very curious to know what the purport of this sermon was, and Cortez desired Mechorego to inter- pret it to him. Finding that all he had been saying tended to ungodliness, Cortez ordered the caziques and the principal men among them, with the priest, into his presence, giving them to understand as well as he could, by means of our interpreter, that if they were desirous of becoming our brethren they must give up sacrificing to these idols, which were no gods, but evil beings by which they were led into error and their souls sent to hell. He then presented them with the image of the Virgin Mary and a cross, which he desired them to put up instead. These would prove a blessing to them at all times, make their seeds grow, and preserve their souls from eternal perdition. This and many other things respecting our holy religion Cortez explained to them in a very excellent manner. The caziques and priests answered that their forefathers had prayed to their idols before them, because they were good gods, and that they were determined to follow their example, adding that we should experience what power they possessed ; as soon as we had left them EL 66 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND we should certainly all of us go to the bottom of the sea. Cortez, however, took very little heed of their threats, but commanded the idols to be pulled down and broken to pieces, which was accordingly done without any further ceremony. He then ordered a quantity of lime to be collected, which is here in abundance, and with the assistance of the Indian masons a very pretty altar was constructed, on which we placed the image of the Holy Virgin. At the same time two of the carpenters, Alonzo Yanez and Alvaro Lopez, made a cross of new wood which lay at hand ; this was set up in a kind of chapel, which we built behind the altar. After all this was completed, Father Juan Diaz said Mass in front of the new altar, the caziques and priests looking on with the greatest attention.” The ruins of the church, measuring 98ft. in length and 36ft. 2in. in breadth, face east and west. The roof has entirely fallen in, while the west wall has completely disappeared. i Gd | Stucco-covered remains of the other - walls still stand, varying in height IL ty from two to ten feet. Inside we discovered six large and one small | overground vaults, built of stone I and mortar, shaped something like AY eae rates Gh an inverted iron bath-tub. These Ancient Olirch oa tes had all been opened, probably by Island of Cozumel. treasure seekers. Inside one we A. Altar. B'S BOvopreund Veen found the complete skeleton of a C.C.C. windows. young Mestisa woman, which had been buried for from sixty to eighty years. This secondary use of the church as a burial- place had taken place since Stephen’s visit in 1841, as he makes no mention of these vaults, and states that the island was at that time entirely uninhabited. The altar—probably the identical one which Cortez erected IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 67 in 1519—is now in ruins; just to the west of it the floor of the Church has been dug up, doubtless by treasure-hunters, exposing a row of seven small, stone-lined chambers, possibly the burial-place of successive heads of the church in the island. Benito Perez, a priest who accom- panied the expedition of Grijalva to Cozumel in the year 1518, the first occasion upon which Europeans had ever touched there, applied to the King of Spain for the bishopric of the island, but was put off with the bishopric of Culhua, or Mexico, while the Bishopric of Cozumel was conferred upon a churchman of far greater eminence, whose remains, for all one knows, may have rested peacefully in one of these stone cysts till disturbed by the sacrilegious hands of greedy seekers after buried treasure, who throughout Yucatan have left their mark alike on Christian church and heathen temple. The island was discovered accidentally by Grijalva while endeavouring to follow the course taken by Cordova in the previous year along the north coast of Yucatan towards Mexico. An itinerary of the voyage was kept by Grijalva’s chaplain, who records the landing at Cozumel in the following words : “On Friday, the sixth of May, the Commandant ordered one hundred men to arm themselves. They embarked in boats and landed. They were accompanied by a priest and expected to be attacked by a great number of Indians. Being prepared for defence, they arranged themselves in good order, and came to a tower where they found no one, and in all the environs did not see a single man. The Commandant mounted upon the tower with the standard bearer, the flag unfurled. He planted the standard upon one of the facades of the tower, took possession in the name of the King in the presence of witnesses, and drew up a declaration of such taking possession. The ascent to this tower was by eighteen steps; the base was very massive, one hundred and 68 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND eighty feet in circumference. At the top rose a small tower of the height of two men placed one upon the other. Within were figures, bones, and idols they adored. From these marks we supposed they were idolaters. “While the commandant was at the top of the tower with many of our people, an Indian, followed by three others who kept the doors, put in the interior a vase with very odoriferous perfume, which seemed of storax. This Indian was old ; he burnt many perfumes before the idols which were in the tower, and sang in a loud voice a song, which was always in the same tone. We supposed that he was invoking his idols. . . . These Indians carried our Commandant with ten or twelve Spaniards, and gave them to eat in a hall constructed of stones very close together, and covered with straw. Before the hall was a large well from which everybody drank. ... They then left us alone, and we entered the village, where all the houses were built of stone. Among others we saw five very well made, and commanded by small towers. The base of these edifices is very large and massive ; the building is very small at the top. They appeared to have been built a long time, but there are also modern ones.” This temple, standing on a stone-faced pyramid, from which Grijalva coolly took possession of the whole country in the name of the King of Spain by the simple process of proclamation, and from which the great Cortez himself threw down the idols of the Indians, and erected close to its base the first Christian Church in the New World, possesses associations with the conquest and the conquistadores unequalled possibly by any other spot on the American continent. When Stephens visited the island in 1841 it was still standing, and in a fair state of preservation, if one may judge by Catherwood’s drawing. Now, however, the little temple is a heap of ruins, and nothing remains but the great IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 69 ¢ mound upon which it stood, the “ very massive base” of Grijalva ; yet one can almost visualise the scene as it occurred four hundred years ago—the little group of armour-clad Spaniards, swordsmen, crossbowmen, and arquebusiers, standing at the base of the pyramid; farther off great crowds of half naked Maya, led by their priests, in long, blood-soaked cotton robes, and their caciques, with immense feather-decorated headdresses and elaborate ornaments of gold and jade; Grijalva, mounting solemnly the stone steps of the pyramid, and proclaiming through his herald the sovereignty of the King of Spain over those lands, which for three centuries were to prove the brightest jewel in the diadem of Spain, without a thought to the claims of the unfortunate aborigines, whose native land was _ being torn from them, standing round listening to the proclama- tion, entirely ignorant of what it portended. On returning to the coast from our visit to the ruins of the church, hot, tired, and irritated by prickly heat and encounters with mosquitoes and coloradillos—a micro- scopic abomination which bores under the skin and causes intolerable itching, well named béfe rouge by the French— we found ourselves on a flat, rock-bound coast, dotted with deep, clear, sandy-bottomed pools, with edges upholstered in soft yellow seaweed, suggesting simultaneously to Morley, Held, and myself the same idea—a bathe. In two minutes we were experiencing the delightfully soothing sensation of cold salt water on our tortured skins. Before going in the guide had told us to ‘‘ Cuzdadojerisos,” or ““ Beware of 7ertsos,” but as jevisos was a new word to us in Spanish, of whose meaning we had not the faintest conception, and as there seemed nothing to be afraid of in a clear, rock-bound, sandy-bottomed pool, where neither sharks nor barracouda could enter, we plunged gaily in. I was the first to discover the meaning of the word erzso, for on sitting down on the rim of the pool I located one at once, concealed in the seaweed. They are small sea-urchins, or sea-porcupines, hemispherical in shape, and 70 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND covered with long, sharp black spines, which when sat upon penetrate for a considerable distance into one’s anatomy. Almost every member of the fauna and flora of Yucatan, and the sea surrounding its coast, is armed with some weapon, offensive or defensive—tooth, claw, spine, spike, sting, or poisonous juice. Nearly every bush and tree in the low scrub is provided with its own variety of Spine or thorn, one of the worst offenders being the Agave Americana, which is cultivated in vast fields all over the peninsula for the henequen fibre obtained from its leaves, each of these leaves being tipped with a gigantic black thorn, sometimes used as pins by the natives, capable of putting one’s eye out with the greatest ease. An even worse offender is a low bush covered with double curved thorns, which not only holds back the traveller through the bush, but vomits over him a stream of vicious stinging ants, who have their homes in the hollow interiors of the thorns, and sally out to the assault on the slightest provocation. Insect pests include ticks, mosquitoes, sand-flies, wasps— especially in the ruins, where they love to build their nests from the roofs of still intact rooms, and settle in a cloud on the invader—hornets, doctor-flies, various blood-sucking tabanide, centipedes, chiggers or sand-fleas, tarantulas, and beef and screw worm flies. Beef worm, so named from its prevalence amongst cattle, is the larva of a fly, which, deposited on the skin, soon burrows its way through, and rapidly develops into a fat, hairy maggot, about one inch in length, which in its uneasy wrigglings and protrusions of its head through the blow-hole it has left in the skin is a constant source of irritation. They seldom attain any size in humans, except on the back, where they are not visible, as the accepted treatment (a plug of wet tobacco over their blow-hole for a few minutes, followed by a vigorous squeeze) usually gets rid of them before they get — very large, but to dogs, cattle, and other animals, who may harbour hundreds of them, they occasionally prove fatal. Screw worm is also the larva of a fly resembling a large grey IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 71 house fly, which crawls up the nose of sleepers and lays its eggs in hundreds over the mucous membrane. The larve burrow into this, and grow to about half an inch in length, causing the membrane to slough off in great patches, and usually bringing about the death of the sufferer. Poisonous snakes are found in considerable numbers. Fortunately, however, they usually get out of one’s way. The commonest are the rattlesnake, tomagoff, coral snake, and barber’s pole—a beautiful striped red and black snake, whose bite is particularly venomous. Nearly every village has its own snake-doctor, who, as he treats poisonous and non-poisonous snake-bites alike, and the proportion is about one of the former to ten of the latter, naturally soon acquires a considerable reputation, and is able to raise his fees from the eggs, chicken, and corn basis to that of real money. Nor are the denizens of the sea far behind those of the land in objectionable qualities. Shark and barracouda are found all round the coast, awaiting the bather who ventures into over two feet of water, while in the shallows numerous stinging jelly-fish guard the surface, leaving the patrolling of the bottom to innumerable sea-urchins, sea-scorpions, and sea-centipedes. If I have perhaps dwelt unduly on these pests by land and sea, my excuse must be that I have suffered deeply, while the experience of the sea-urchin was a particularly harrowing one, treated, moreover, by Morley and Held, not with the sympathy due it, but with gusts of ribald mirth. Cozumel possesses no medical practitioner, and, whether despite or on account of this fact, is undoubtedly a most remarkably salubrious place. Epidemics of yellow fever and dysentery, such as ravage the mainland, are unknown here, while malaria and hook-worm are rare indeed. To die from any other cause than old age is looked upon by the inhabitants as abnormal, and somehow not quite comme tl faut. We encountered a large proportion of ancients, both men and women, in our walks abroad, some of such hoary 72 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND antiquity as to lead one to believe they must have been contemporaneous with the last of the congquistadores. We obtained in Cozumel a pilot for the north and north- east coasts named Miguel Polanco—a silent, reserved, not undignified individual, with greying hair and face criss- crossed in all directions by a million little wrinkles, and tanned to the colour of saddle-leather by constant exposure to sun and wind. He was reported not only to be an excel- lent pilot, but to have discovered by accident the ruins of an ancient Maya city not very far inland from the coast. On interviewing him, this rumour was confirmed. Four years previously, when hunting a deer which he had wounded near Punta Santa Rosa, between the Chetumal and Espiritu Santo Bays, he followed it inland for about a mile, and there, buried in the virgin bush, suddenly came upon extensive ruined buildings, which even from his imperfect description we had no difficulty in identifying as Tuluum style Maya ruins. We were greatly elated over this find, and, though all of us had been taken in many a time and oft by natives whose swans had turned out to be geese—and poor geese at that—there was something so circumstantial about Polanco’s account, and the details varied so little on repeti- tion, that we were convinced there must be a good backing of truth behind it. Next morning early we set sail from Cozumel, with nearly 100 miles of our route to retrace in order to reach Punta Santa Rosa. Our pilot, as I have remarked, was reserved and dignified both in manner and appearance. Indeed, clad in steel morion and breastplate, he might well have passed as a reincarnation of one of those intrepid pilots, equally at home with an astrolobe or a sword, who accom- panied the conquistadores to the New World. No sooner were we under way than I could see Morley’s speculative eye upon him, and I knew his hour had come, for Morley has a perfect genius for extracting what he calls “info” from everyone with whom he comes in contact who seems to have any of that valuable commodity to give up. He IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 73 promptly seated himself beside Migail on the deck-house, and with a bland and ingratiating smile, the New England accent toned down to the gentleness of a sucking dove, commenced the cross-examination. Miguel stood it pretty well for a time; then, taking advan- tage of a lull in the barrage of questions, he bolted incon- tinently forward, though the spindrift,and the smoke from the galley fire combined to render this the least desirable part of the ship. Morley returned to his deck chair and pondered deeply, till in about half an hour I could see he had formulated in his mind a fresh set of questions, when Miguel was again summoned aft to be pumped ; and so it went on all day, till Miguel, with a wild and harassed look, lapsed gloomily into monosyllables. Both wind and current being against us, we did not make the southern point of Ascension Bay till nearly 7 p.m. Though the night was dark, with a mere nail-paring of moon showing, Morley and I determined at all costs to sleep ashore, and escape for once the horrible rolling of the Lilian Y. We bundled our cots, mosquito nets, bedding, and hurricane lamps into the pita and, taking Alfredo and George, rowed ashore. A hundred yards Saath land the water shoaled off so badly that even the pram could not be shoved in any farther, and we had to get out and wade to the low, 2S \ sandy shore. We soon had our cots W and mosquito curtains up, though 1 baton aa the latter flapped and bellied so in — Tiger tracks following a the brisk breeze that sleep appeared 7°” Psi OP Ne doubtful under them. On returning to the pram with a lighted lantern, Alfredo discovered tracks on the soft sand, and, of course, had to call our attention immediately to them. They had obviously been made within a very few hours, as they-were sharply out- lined, and situated well below ordinary high-water mark. The little sketch will give the reader a better idea of their 74 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND appearance than a page of description. The front tracks are those of a gigantic racoon ; the back those of a good- sized tiger, obviously trailing him. They had both emerged from the bush, we found, about 100 yds. to the south of our camp, and as there was a great inlet of the sea a mile or so to the north of this, it appeared probable that the tiger, with the racoon stowed inside, would sooner or later pass our camp to regain the bush. We sent back to the Lian Y for more hurricane lamps, and with a ring of these around the cots, and the mosquito curtains flapping and cracking in the wind, we lay down, I with a shotgun, and Morley with a revolver handy. We found it difficult to get to sleep, owing partly to the flapping of the mosquito curtains, but chiefly, I imagine, to the proximity of the tiger. Nor was our condition improved by Morley, who kept recalling instances which he had read, or heard, or imagined, of the Central American puma, or jaguar, when driven desperate by hunger, attacking humans. I pointed out, however, that our tiger was probably peacefully sleeping off the effects of a large fat coon, and, in any case, an army of tigers would not dare investigate two flapping mosquito curtains encircled by a constellation of hurricane lamps. We struck camp before six next morning, having seen no signs of the tiger. Miguel thought the best place to land for the ruins was about ten miles south of our present location, so we kept on a course nearly due south close in to the reef. Someone thought of fresh fish for breakfast, and we remembered we had a couple of spinners on board, one of which was immediately thrown overboard. In twenty minutes we had caught two barracoudas, one of 3lbs., one of rolbs., and two rock fish, one of 12lbs. and one of 30lbs. This strip of coast is a sporting paradise, as the neighbour- . hood of the reef swarms with fish, some of them affording almost as good sport to the angler as the tarpon, while the bush is full of deer, peccari, jaguar, puma, gibunt, wild turkey, and curassow, and the swamps and lagoons abound IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 78 in duck, plover, snipe, and innumerable flocks of aquatic birds. We landed on a beautiful sandy beach, along which we walked in a southerly direction, the pilot carefully scanning the bush to try and locate the spot where he had entered in pursuit of the wounded deer. We passed in the course of a mile eight mahogany logs, worth at least 50 dollars each, two oars, quantities of wreckage, and a lifebuoy with s.s. ~ Iaqua upon it, in addition to strange seeds, fruit stones, and beans of all sizes and shapes, corals, sponges, multi-coloured seaweeds, gorgeous shells, and all the wonderful flotsam and jetsam of the Caribbean, laid out before us on a counter of sparkling sand. | It would seem as if this strip of coast has never been visited by a boat of any size, as there must be thousands of dollars’ worth of mahogany logs along its whole extent, driven in by the prevailing east winds, from wrecks, and from rafts being towed to the embarking point which, encountering heavy weather, have got broken up and scattered. We seriously contemplated a beachcombing expedition later on to exploit the find. The pilot at last thought he had located the right spot, and we turned into the bush, which here consisted of low dense scrub, chiefly pimento, buttonwood, and logwood trees, interspersed with the beds of shallow lagoons, now dry, and patches of mangrove swamp. These latter, on account of their arching aerial roots, rendered walking through them a very tedious process. The beds of the dry lagoons were criss-crossed in all directions with the tracks of game, deer, peccari, gibunt, tiger, wild turkey, and many others, some of them quite recent, but we were hunting more important game than these, and had not even brought our guns. After over an hour’s walk in a generally $.S.W. direction we determined to lie down for a rest, and let the pilot continue the search with Muddy, as it was obvious he did not know in the least where he was. In a little more than 76 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND half an hour we heard shouts to the south of us, and found they had discovered the ruins about a quarter of a mile away. We all set out with great eagerness, and soon stood face to face with the ruined temples, palaces, and public buildings of what had evidently been a good-sized Maya city, now buried in the midst of this dense, impenetrable bush, all tradition of it perished, its very name forgotten, and now being viewed probably for the first time by European eyes. SEA. THE TOWN OF SAN MIGUEL COZUMEL, FROM THE PLAN OF THE MAIN GROUP OF RUINS. CHACMOOL [p. 78 CHAPTER V Soldier Crabs and Bats—Clearing the Bush round the Ruins—Hubert lives up to his Reputation—Maya never discovered the Principle of the Arch—Description of the Temples—A Chacmool’s Offerings found buried beside it—Market-place—Curious Stucco Ornaments—Cere- monies Performed at these Temples—The Builders of this and other East Coast Cities. WE had noticed an unusual number of soldier crabs crawling about in the bush as we came along, but at the ruins they swarmed in countless thousands, from little fellows the size of a periwinkle to giants nearing four inches in diameter. They crawled over one if one kept quiet for a few minutes, dropped on one from the roofs, and crept up the legs of one’s trousers. Why such swarms of them should have invaded the ruins where there was apparently absolutely nothing edible is impossible to imagine, unless, as the pilot suggested, they were the souls of ancient Maya citizens come back in this incarnation to drive the first white invader back from their ancient city, reinforced by bats, scores of which fluttered past us and flew in our faces as we entered the dark little temple rooms, where for centuries they and their ancestors had remained undisturbed. We at once started measuring and planning the ruins, sending the pilot and Esquivel off to the Lilian Y to bring back all hands with machetes and axes to clean as much of the bush as possible round the ruined buildings, in order to let the light in, and admit of their being photographed. All hands were back in under two hours, having cut a track from the beach to the ruins about a couple of miles below our first landing-place, where the distance proved to be under half a mile. They had improved the time during our absence by catching a 4olbs. rock fish with the spinner, 77 78 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND and harpooning an immense 8ft. June fish, which, however, got away by breaking the harpoon. For the first time during the trip we were rejoiced to see Hubert with a kettle in which to boil water, as we were parched with thirst after our morning’s work, having had nothing since early tea. Hubert, however, lived nobly up to his reputation as a food spoiler, though it seemed hard to uphold with only tea to prepare, but he accomplished it successfully by smoking the water so badly that, notwith- standing our thirst, we could hardly swallow the tea. Breakfast over, the men, setting briskly to work with axe and machete, soon had a clearing made round the main group of ruins large enough to admit of our taking photo- graphs of them. A ground plan of this group, which com- prises nine buildings, is shown in the figure. Temple A is a little sanctuary almost exactly similar in size and con- struction to that already described at Central, except that in this case there is no trace of an upper story having existed. The building is 6ft. gin. in length by 6ft. roin. in breadth. The roof is supported by a square column in the centre of the building, surrounded by a narrow gallery, into which small doorways, 2ft. lin. high, open at each of the four sides. Above each doorway is a recessed panel, the bottoms of which still show traces of paint. The whole structure was originally covered with smooth stucco, and painted. A triangular stone cornice passes all round the building just above the doors. The original height cannot be ascertained, as the upper part of the building has been broken down by the root of a good-sized tree growing from the roof, but it was under 5ft. Temple B, 23ft. 3in. long, by 17ft. 7in. broad, and oft. high, is entered by a broad doorway, on its western side divided into three entrances by two circular stone columns surmounted by square capitals. Above these were originally placed sapodilla lintels, traces of which, much decayed, may still be seen in situ. The roof is flat. The whole building is covered externally with smooth IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 79 stucco, upon which are still to be seen in several places traces of the “red hand,” imprinted by the living member dipped in fresh red paint. Round the entire building, 6ft. from the ground, runs an ornamental stone cornice. The interior of the building is supported on two oblong stone columns. The roof, as in all Maya buildings, is supported by a false, or corbal, arch formed by the overlapping of successive courses of masonry till the interval between— usually less than a foot—can be joined by capstones. The walls are constructed of thick masses of cement, in which stones are firmly embedded, the whole forming practically a monolithic arch. It would appear that the Maya never discovered the secret of the keystone, which is a remarkable circumstance in people who had made such strides in architecture, who erected such vast stone palaces, temples, and monoliths, and the beauty and finish of whose sculpture is unsurpassed to this day. Temples A and B stand on a stone-faced platform, or truncated pyramid, 7ft. 4in. high, approached by two terraces, each of which is 3ft. in breadth. On the west side, immediately facing the entrance to Temple B, the summit of the platform is reached by a flight of stone steps. Temple C very closely resembles Temple B, except that it is somewhat longer and narrower. The entrance, as in B, faces the west, and is divided into three by two circular columns capped by square capitals. The whole structure, inside and out, is covered with hard stucco; the roof, formed by the usual corbel arch, is supported on two oblong columns. Against the centre of the back wall was a small bench, or altar, of stone, ft. 3in. high, 6ft. 3in. long, and aft. 3in. deep. One half of this was broken, showing that the interior had been hollow. We carefully raised the flat flag which covered the top of the other half, and found beneath it a cavity of considerable size, perfectly empty. Temple D.—This temple was in ruins, the roof having 80 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND fallen in, leaving only part of the walls and the columns supporting the entrance standing. The outline could easily be traced, and it was found that the building had originally been 4oft. long by oft. broad, approached by two entrances, one on the north supported by two stone columns, and a small narrow one on the west side. The walls were thinner and of more flimsy construction than those of the other temples, while the building itself was evidently of much later date than Temple C, against whose southern wall it had been built, as between the two, where the north wall of D had partly separated from it, the older wall of C, covered with weathered stucco, was plainly in sight. A single circular supporting column was found towards the west end of this temple. Round the outside wall, 6ft. 3in. from the ground level, were the remains of a plain square stone cornice, upon which were carved circular indentations, the only attempt at this kind of ornament in the whole city. Temple E was a small, roughly-constructed, one-roomed structure, with a single entrance, 2ft. 8in. wide, on the north side. The room into which this led was 5ft 4in. long, 4ft. 6in. broad, and 4ft. high, from the highest point of the corbel arch to the floor, which was covered with hard cement. In the east and west walls were small oblong slits for windows. Temple F, though only roft. 8in. by 8ft. gin. in external measurement, was probably the most important sanctuary in the group, as it contained the image of the god to whom apparently the entire group was dedicated. This statue represents a Chacmool, a human figure reclining on its back and elbows, the knees drawn up to the buttocks, the forearms and hands extended along the outer sides of the thighs, the head raised and turned to the left. It is con- structed of hard stucco, and represents a man of about 8ft. in height, with chest, arms, and legs of heroic porportions. At the navel is a saucer-shaped depression in which to burn incense. The figure is clothed in a cotton breast-plate, with CHACMOOL: FACADE OF TEMPLE “‘C’’:. ON THE RIGHT IS SEEN PART OF THE RUINED TEMPLE “D.”’ [p. 79 THE CHACMOOL, YUCATAN, [p. 8r pe IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 8I elaborate collar or neck ornament, and a maxtli, or narrow apron, falling between the legs in front. The arms are ornamented with shoulder tabs and gauntlet-like objects above the wrists. Just below the knees are scalloped bands, while on the feet are elaborate sandals. The whole figure was originally painted yellow, decorated in red and black geometrical designs. The head, which was a good deal mutilated, had been broken off at the neck, and was found by the side of the statue. These Chacmool figures are of Nahua, or Mexican origin, and are found at only one other Maya site, namely Chichen Itza, where Mexican artistic and religious influence is found strongly developed, having been introduced about the beginning of the thirteenth century by Aztec mercenaries employed by the King of Mayapan in his wars against the ruler of Chichen Itza. It was by the merest accident that we discovered this Chacmool statue, as it had been completely buried by the accumulated dirt and rubbish of centuries, leaving only the tops of the knees projecting for a few inches. These were discovered by George, who with racial curiosity com- menced excavating with his machete around them, bringing to light the brightly-painted stucco covering the legs. He called our attention to these, and, setting all hands to work, we soon had the whole statue uncovered down to the stucco floor with which it was incorporated. In removing the débris from around the figure we found buried in it at one place a shell gorget, two greenstone beads, an ear-plug, some fragments of the bones of a large animal (probably a tapir) and a small pottery incense burner, with a human head in high relief on its outer surface. Some devotee, faithful even after the fall and destruction of his god and its supersedure by the God of the Christians, must have made this little offering, probably at some period after the mutilation had taken place, but before dirt and débris had begun to accumulate around the statue. The offering itself, consisting of flesh, now represented by dry bones, burning incense, now but a few charred fragments at FL 82 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND the bottom of the incense burner, and personal jewellery, is a typical Maya one of the period, such as are found by the thousand in the great cenote, or sacred well, at Chichen Itza, the Mecca of the Maya religion, to which pilgrimages were made from the remotest parts of Yucatan. We learn from the early Spanish Fathers that it was no uncommon thing for the Indians baptised into the Catholic Church to apostasize and revert to their ancient gods, making offerings at their shrines, and carrying out the rites and ceremonies of their ancient religion in the depths of the forest, far from prying Christian eyes. Such practices were naturally strongly discouraged by the padres, and the images of the old gods were, where and whenever found, destroyed and mutilated, while the manuscripts of the Maya, handed down in the priesthood for hundreds of years, and containing the history, religious ceremonies, system of medicine, and calendar of the people, painted in their glyphic system on paper made of the fibre of the American aloe, were ruthlessly burnt, so that of the thousands of them existing at the time of the conquest but three remain to-day. The western opening of Temple F towards which the Chacmool faces is 7ft. 6in. wide, while the eastern opening is only 4ft. wide. The feet of the image occupy nearly the centre of the wider opening, but the head does not come within a couple of feet of the narrower one, so that a pro- cession coming through the temple would naturally divide into two streams at the feet of the image, one passing on either side, meeting again at its head, to emerge from the eastern door. Temple G, immediately to the south of Temple F, is 15ft. gin. long by 13ft. wide, and 5ft. high from the top of the roof to the stucco floor. It possesses a single opening on the western side, 5ft. 1oin. wide, divided into two by a circular stone column. Like the other buildings, it is faced inside and out with hard stucco. Temple G has evidently (as shown in the plan) been built tHe CHACMOOL IN SITU WITHIN A LITTLE TEMPLE IN MAIN LINE OF APPROACH TO CHIEF TEMPLE, [p. 80 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 83 around a much smaller building, which measured but 7fit. 5in. by 7ft. The junction between the walls of\the old and the newer structures is very clearly indicated. No attempt had been made to destroy the older building, and it still stands entire, with its narrow doorway, 2ft. wide, within the newer one. Structure H is a dance platform, measuring 23ft. by r8ft. 9in. It is approached by flights of stone steps, each 8ft. 5in. broad, on the east and west sides. The original platform, the outline of which can still easily be traced, measured 17ft. 6in. by 13ft. 3in. This, however, was enlarged by the construction on all four sides of it of a wall aft. 8in. in width. The great colonnaded structure shown in the plan is much ruined. The whole roof has caved in, and many of the circular columns which supported it have given way. The corner walls, aa, at the western extremity have fallen down, while the terraces of the platform upon which it stood are so covered with detritus and vegetal earth, upon which has grown up a thick growth of bush, as to be hardly distinguishable. The building itself was ro2ft. long by 27ft. roin. broad. It was bounded at each angle by rectangular walls, aa, a@ a, measuring 12ft. 7in. on the east and west sides and 14ft. on the north and south. The walls were built of squared stones filled in with rubble, and were 3ft. 3in. thick. _ At the points 0d on the east and west sides are doorways ait. 8in. wide, which leads one to suppose that the north and south sides, now completely open, were at one time either boarded up or walled with adobe, otherwise, two sides of the building being quite open, doors would have been unnecessary. The roof was apparently flat, probably of thatch, sup- ported on sapodilla beams, which rested on the twenty- four stone columns, many of which are still intact. The building is approached by three broad, stone-faced terraces, and when complete must have been a very imposing 84 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND structure. It was probably used as a market-place or assembly hall, for either of which purposes it was eminently fitted by its spaciousness, and the coolness which, owing to its high situation, well exposed to the sea breeze, and its palm-leaf roof, it must have possessed. In the open space between Temples C and D was found the sugarloaf-shaped object shown in the illustration. This was 2ft. 6in. high, made of cement and stone, and covered with a layer of hard stucco. Traces of red paint still remained upon it. It had originally formed the head- Oh dress of a human figure, as the acmool—Stucco incense ; ; holder and headdress. typical Maya ear-plugs can still be plainly seen on either side of the blank space (shaded in the figure) from which the face has been broken away. The upper part of the headdress is ornamented with rows of spines about Iin. in length. A similar object was found to the east of Temple F, but no trace of the figures from which they had been broken. The curious T-shaped object was discovered between Temples C and F. It is 3ft. high, but has been detached below from its base along the line cc. The arms have been broken off at the points aa, but the two T-shaped prolonga- tions bb were discovered close to the figure. These are evidently meant to represent small double incense burners, as the pellets of incense, as used by the Maya, may be seen moulded in the stucco on either side of them at dd. Five yards west of Temple G were found six remarkable objects, all constructed of extremely hard concrete, covered with a layer of smooth stucco, and all firmly rooted in the ground on concrete bases. They consist of : 1. A concrete stool, with supports of the same material at each angle. 2. A cube of concrete resting on a larger concrete base, and supporting a circular column, the top of which has been broken off. IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 85 3. A pyramidal column surmounted by a cup-shaped cap, the total height being rft. gin. 4. A square concrete pedestal, 6in. high by rft. gin. in diameter. 5. A square column 8in. high, on two sides of which are still visible traces of human heads moulded in stucco, which had been attached to it. 6. A low square pedestal 16in. in diameter. These curious objects are unique, as they have been found at no other Maya site either in Yucatan or the south, and they probably belong to the very last phase of the Maya culture before its final extinction by the Spaniards. The actual use to which they were put is doubtful, though they were almost certainly connected with the ritual employed in the worship of the Chacmool, and while two of them were probably used to contain the burning incense, the others may have served as altars, or tables upon which to place the vessels of balché and corn made drinks, the cakes of ground corn, beans, and pumpkin seeds, the roast meats, and other offerings such as we have seen the modern Maya offer to their ancient gods. The incense burners seen above, containing pellets of artificial incense, have their counterparts in those candelabra which one sometimes sees in churches, in which small electric bulbs at the end of the counterfeit candles supply the illumination. The group of buildings A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H was almost certainly religious in character, the earliest of them, with the platform upon which they stand, being A and B; F containing the Chacmool image, the small simple structure within G, and the original dance platform now forming the core of the enlarged platform H. In the light of our knowledge of the religious ceremonies of the ancient Maya, derived from their own records and contemporary accounts of the Spanish conquerors, one can easily visualise what took place along this via sacra from the dance platform, through the Chacmool temple, up the 86 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND flight of steps, to the main temple, at some special celebra- tion some five hundred years ago. The procession of wild- looking, half-crazy, unwashed priests, smelling horribly, their gory hair matted, and their white cotton robes smeared with the blood of countless previous sacrifices, marched up the western steps of the dance platform, where certain chants were sung and dithyrambic dances performed, marching down to the eastern steps of the platform. At the conclusion of the dances the procession would come to the Chacmool temple, where at the feet of the god it would split in two as it entered by the broad western gate, to unite again at the head of the god before leaving by the narrow eastern gate. Meanwhile incense was being burnt, food offerings made, and prayers and petitions chanted to the god outside Temple G, and in times of stress—as famine, drought, pestilence, invasions by barbarous Caribs from the south, and later by enemies from the north—the human victim, or victims, the choicest youths of both sexes, were added, bound and partly stupefied by drugs, to the proces- sion of priests. Leaving the eastern gate of the Chacmool temple, the procession, leading the victims, would slowly mount the steps of the great main platform which lay directly in front of it, and then, on the summit of the plat- form, in front of the main temple, and in full sight of all the people, assembled in their thousands at a respectful distance from the sacred enclosure, and no doubt, after the manner of their kind all the world over, using the great market- place and its terraces as a grand stand from which to view the proceedings, the victim would be sacrificed after the cruel Mexican fashion—stretched on his back on an altar of wood or stone, two priests holding each leg, while two supported each arm high above his head, and a fifth plunged a sharp triangular blade of flint or obsidian deep into his chest well over the region of the heart, and, inserting one hand into the opening, dragged that organ out of the chest cavity and severed it from its attachment of blood vessels, being deluged in the process with a stream of hot arterial IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 87 blood. The heart was taken, still palpitating, to B, the main temple, where it was offered to the god, and the ceremonies connected with sacrifice were concluded. Meanwhile, in front of the temple the corpse was decapi- tated by the priests, the head being their special perquisite, while the body, rolled down the steps of the platform, was eagerly hacked in pieces by the people, who scrambled each for a fragment like starving dogs for a bone, for this quasi- ceremonial religious cannibalism was one of the many evil practices introduced among the Maya by the Mexicans. How many times these ancient buildings have witnessed such cruel and bloody rites it is impossible to tell yet, as we have seen, after the fall of the deity one poor worshipper at least retained faith enough to return and make his offering at the deserted shrine—a faith not always inspired by more beneficent gods. Structures D and E, with the enclosing walls of G, and the enlargement of the dance platform H, are all of more recent construction than the main group, though what period elapsed between the building of the two it is impos- sible to say. Cis almost certainly a temple, possibly dedicat- ed to one of the two principal gods of the Maya proper, Itzamna, or Cuculcan, while D may well have been the dwelling-place of some of the priests. A was obviously one of those little shrines peculiar to this east coast civilisation, which we have met with before at Espiritu Santo Bay and Central, and will meet with again farther north. We dis- covered two more of them at Chacmool before we left— one between the ruins and the sea, the other at some distance to the west of the main group. In order to obtain some clue as to the identity of the builders of these ruins, and of other similar groups along the east coast of Yucatan, all conforming closely to the Tuluum style, it is necessary to give a brief account of the history of the Maya who occupied Yucatan. This we obtain from the early Spanish historians, from their own records— known as the books of Chilam Balaam, which were kept 88 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND originally by several cities in their own hieroglyphic writings and later transcribed into Maya, written in Latin characters by natives who acquired a knowledge of the Spanish language—and lastly, to a small extent, from their hieroglyphic records on stone still extant at many of the ruins. CHAPTER VI Maya History—Its Sources—Methods of Reckoning the Passage of Time— History of the Old Empire—History of the New Empire—Foundation of the Various Cities in the Maya Area—Reasons for Maya deserting their Old Cities for Yucatan—Settlement of New Empire—Founding of New Cities—Itzamna, the Hero God—Migration from Chichen Itza to Champoton—Return to Chichen Itza—Entry of the Tutul Xiu to Yucatan—The Hero God Cuculcan—The Maya Renaissance—The Breaking-up of the Maya Triple Alliance—Its Cause—Mexican Mer- cenaries called into Yucatan—The Cocomes Rule in Yucatan for 250 Years—They are overcome by the Tutul Xiu—The Country is divided up into a Number of Small States constantly at War till the Coming of the Spaniards—Naming the new City Chacmool—The Period to which these Ruins belong—Uncomfortable Quarters—We take leave of Chacmool. DurinG the first fifteen centuries of the Christian era the Maya developed what was undoubtedly the highest abori- ginal civilisation of the New World. Maya history has been divided by Sylvanus G. Morley, of the Carnegie Institution, into two main epochs, the Old Empire, or Empire of the South, and the New Empire, or Empire of Yucatan. Each of these is again sub-divided into several periods. i, vi. vii. Vili. PERIODS OF MAYA HISTORY OLD EMPIRE Archaic Period Earliest Times Down To 9.10.0.0.0.! 1 Ahau 8 Kayab. 360 A.D. (circa) Middle Period g.10.0.0.0. I Ahau To 9.15.0.0.0. 4 Ahau 8 Kayab. 360 A.D. 13 Yax. 460 A.D. (circa) Great Period g.15.0.0.0. 1 Ahau To 10.2.0.0.0. 3 Ahau 13 Yax. 460 A.D. 3 Ceh. 600 A.D. (circa) NEw EMPIRE Colonisation Period Katun 6 Ahau To Katun 1 Ahau 420 A.D. 620 A.D. (circa) Transitional Period Katun 12 Ahau To Katun 4 Ahau 620 A.D. 980 A.D. (circa) Renaissance Period Katun 2 Ahau To Katun 8 Ahau 980 A.D. II90 A D.. (circa) Toltec Period Katun 8 Ahau To Katun 8 Ahau II9O A.D. 1450 A.D. (circa) Final Period Katun 8 Ahau To Katun 13 Ahau 1450 A.D, 1537 A.D. (ctrca) 19 Cycles ro Katuns o Tuns o Uinals o Kins after the starting-point of Maya Chronology, which occurred on a certain 4 Ahau the ninth day of the month Cumhu, approximately in the year 3400 B.c. of our era. 89 90 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND It will be observed that in the Old Empire the passage of time was recorded by the lapse of so many cycles (400-year periods), katuns (20-year periods), tuns (360-day periods), uinals (months; eighteen of 20 days, one of 5 days), and kins (days), from the starting-point of Maya chronology, while during the New Empire it was reckoned by the pas- sage of so many katuns, or 20-year periods, numbered, in order to distinguish them from each other, from I to 13. The Old Empire flourished during the first six centuries of the Christian era in Southern Mexico, Guatemala, and the western part of Honduras; the New Empire, which was gradually evolved from the old, flourished in the peninsula of Yucatan from the early years of the sixth century to the Spanish conquest. The history of the Old Empire is derived exclusively from the hieroglyphic inscriptions found chiefly on monoliths still standing among its ruined cities. The history of the New Empire is derived chiefly from native chronicles, which give brief synopses of the chief events occurring during every katun, or 20-year period. Of the origin of the Maya civilisation nothing is known. The accurate calendar system, the complicated hierogly- phics, and the wonderful astronomical knowledge, postulat- ing centuries of effort, emerge from the womb of time, and greet us fully developed about the first century before our era. Where and when their civilisation originated, and how developed, are probably among the many mysteries surrounding this remarkable people which will never be solved. The earliest dated Maya object was found, curiously enough, outside the region where the Maya civilisation as known to us flourished, namely, at San Andres Tuxtla, in the state of Vera Cruz, Mexico. It is a small nephrite statue, and bears a date in the early part of cycle 8 in Maya chronology, or about 100 B.c. If this statuette were made where it was found, it would indicate that we must look for the birthplace of the Maya civilisation in this region IN AN UNKNOWN LAND gl rather than 200 miles to the south, where it attained its highest development. We have ample proof, in ruined cities still extant, that during the first century of the Christian era the Maya were firmly established in Northern Guatemala, Southern Mexico, and Western Honduras. The earliest dated object from this region is a small jadeite plate from the department of Yzabal, in Guatemala, close to the Rio Graciosa. It bears a date towards the end of cycle 8 of Maya chronology, or about 50 A.D., while of the larger remains the earliest dated monument, or stele, was discovered by Morley at Uaxactun, and is nearly contem- poraneous with the Yzabel plate. The next earliest is not found till 170 years later. It was erected at the city of Tikal, in Guatemala, in the third katun, or 20-year period, of cycle 9, or about 210 A.D. After this, in rapid succession, we find at Copan stele, 250 A.D., Piedras Negras, 350 A.D., and finally Naranjo, 360 A.D., the last city erected during the archaic period. Numbers of cities were founded during the middle period of the First Empire, of which the two most important are Palenque and Yaxchilan. The former, founded at the end of the 11th katun of the gth cycle (about 370 A.D.), is, owing to the magnificence of its temples and palaces, the beauty of its stucco moulding, and perhaps more than all to the presence of the cross as an emblem of worship on several of the tablets, probably the best known of all the Maya ruins. Towards the end of this period, in the 15th katun of the oth cycle (about 450 A.D.), was founded the city of Quirigua, an offshoot or colony from Copan. Here was discovered the largest monument in the Maya area—a gigantic monolith weighing fifty tons, covered with elaborate carving, and projecting above ground to a height of twenty-six feet. This stele, ever since its discovery, has leaned twelve feet from the perpendicular, but a few months before the destruc- tion of the city of Guatemala by the earthquake shocks of 92 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 1917, as if to give warning of the impending catastrophe, it fell flat upon its face, though no slightest seismic tremor had as yet been apparent in the vicinity. During the third or great period of the Old Empire large numbers of cities were founded, including the important centres of Nakum, Seibal, and Ixkun, while all the older cities continued to flourish. This was the golden age of the Maya—the flood-tide of their artistic development and commercial greatness. The country was covered with great cities, and, judging by their architectural output, the population must have been a very large one, to support whom the land (now a sea of virgin forest, buried beneath which from time to time are found the ruined temples and palaces of its former rulers) must have then been intensively cultivated. Hundreds of great monoliths were erected during this era throughout the country to mark the passage of 5-year periods, or hotuns, and to record the principal events occurring in them—a fortunate thing for posterity, as it is on these tables of stone that our knowledge of this period of Maya history now exclusively rests. Early in the Great Period an important event occurred— the colonisation by emigrants from the Old Empire of the province of Bakhalal, in Southern Yucatan, which they occupied from about 460 to 580 A.D., when moving farther north. They founded the city of Chichen Itza, later to become the capital city of the New Empire. From the stele and monuments we are able to form a fairly accurate idea of the customs, religious observances, dress, and appearance of the people of the Old Empire. The cities have been dated with great accuracy, their system of numeration, calendar system, and astronomical know- ledge have been worked out, while some idea of the ancient population is to be obtained from the number and extent of the ruined cities scattered throughout the region, and the elaborate sculptural decorations which they contain. Here, however, our knowledge ceases, for the names of their rulers IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 93 and priests, of the gods they worshipped, of the cities they dwelt in and the events which occurred in them—pestilence, famine, war, dynastic changes—of the origin and growth of their civilisation, in fact, of practically every particular which lends human interest to the history of a people, we are densely ignorant, the reason being that up to the present only about one-third of the hieroglyphic characters inscribed upon the stele and monoliths have been deciphered, and these deal almost exclusively with time counts, and the fixation of the date recorded on the stone in its proper place in the solar and lunar calendar. The same eager workers, however, who after years of patient research succeeded in elucidating the glyphs already known to us, are patiently at work on the undeciphered glyphs, of which many more have been discovered, and accurately photographed and drawn, in recent years, and it is almost certain that within the next few years we shall be able to obtain from these a pretty accurate idea, not only of the main events which occurred during the 700 to 800 years which the Old Empire, as known to us, existed, but also of the history of the Maya previous to the opening of the Old Empire, when—as previously stated—we find their civilisation already fully developed. Early in cycle 10 the Maya had entirely deserted their southern cities, and the first katun, or 20-year period, of this cycle is recorded only at three cities—Tikal, Seibal, and Flores—after which complete silence and darkness close down on these once magnificent cities for a period of over a thousand years, and, indeed, in many cases to the present century. The city of Uaxactum, discovered by Dr. Morley as recently as 1915, contains a stele recording as a contem- poraneous date the 14th katun of the 8th cycle, or about 60 A.D., indicating that its ruins have been buried in the virgin forest, unvisited by man, the haunt of the monkey, the jaguar, and the snake, for a period of nearly nineteen centuries. 94 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND Why the Maya should suddenly have deserted their cities practically within one katun, or 20-year period, representing, as they must have done, such an immense capital expendi- ture in labour alone, in the construction of palaces and public buildings, and the erection and sculpture of stele, steeped, as they were, in the history and traditions of their ancestors for nearly a thousand years, hallowed by the temples of their gods and outward symbols of their religion, is one of those inexplicable mysteries which one constantly encounters in the history of this remarkable people. Imagine the inhabitants of England south of Yorkshire migrating en masse to the north of Scotland within a period of twenty years or so, leaving their old homes deserted, and settling down permanently in their new environment, and one has a fair picture of what occurred on a smaller scale in Central America in the sixth century of our era. Various explanations have been put forward to account for this sudden exodus, one being that the primitive agri- cultural methods of the Maya reduced the land to such a condition that ultimately it became untillable under their system of cultivation, which consisted simply in felling and burning the forest during the dry season, and planting, at the beginning of the rains, a process which in time allows perennial grasses to take the place of the woody growths and renders cultivation impossible. A second theory is that during the closing years of the Old Empire profound climatic changes took place in this part of Central America, resulting in a great increase in the rainfall, which not only rendered the climate unhealthy, but increased the growth of bush to such an extent as to interfere with agriculture. The third theory advanced by Spinden is that the deca- dence in art which became manifest towards the close of the Old Empire was accompanied by moral and physical degenerative changes, which led to its disruption. My own opinion is that this exodus took place at the command of the gods as voiced by the priests, for we shall IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 95 see the same mysterious desertion of their cities, and emigra- tion to new localities, without apparent reason, taking place, not once, but many times, amongst the Maya of the New Empire. Whatever the cause, we find about the year 600 A.D. the southern cities entirely deserted, and the New Empire well under way. The first settlement was made at Bakalal, in Spanish colonial times known as Bacalar, now a deserted city, with the ruins of stately churches, convents, monasteries forts, and palaces, extending on all sides through the all- conquering bush, having been overthrown in the 1848 war of the castes by the descendants of those very Maya whose ancestors the Spaniards had subdued. The blood of the Spaniards who in this rising paid the penalty for their cruelty and oppression of their ancestors, is still to be seen staining the walls of the church, in the nave of which their bones were till recently piled in a gigantic mound. Bakalal was occupied from about 520 to 580 A.D., and towards the close of its occupancy the city of Chichen Itza was founded by the Chanes, a branch of the Maya, destined later, under the name of Itzas, to become the most prominent nation in the New Empire. In their march northward along the east coast of Yucatan from Bacalar to Chichen Itza, the Itzas no doubt founded the first city of Tuluum, where, nearly a thousand years later, their descendants founded the later city, whose ruins, shrouded in bush, now overlook the Caribbean Sea from this desolate coast. This migration was led by Lakin Chan, a priest and leader, deified under the name of Itzamna after his death, and later to become perhaps the most widely worshipped hero god throughout Yucatan. It is from him that the Chanes, whom he led in person, derived their later name of Itzas. Meanwhile other tribes of the Chanes related to the Itzas, wandering up from the south, founded the great cities of Motul and Izamal. Towards the end of the seventh century A.D. the Itzas, for some reason unknown to us, suddenly left their capital 96 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND city of Chichen Itza, migrated in a south-westerly direction across the peninsula to Champoton, on the west coast, where, having conquered the inhabitants, they settled down in the land, completely abandoning the magnificent palaces and temples, on the erection of which they must have expended a vast amount of time and labour, as their ruined remains prove to-day. The Itzas remained in Champoton for nearly three hundred years, when, towards the close of the tenth century A.D.— again apparently without rhyme or reason—they returned to their old city of Chichen Itza, which they rebuilt and reoccupied, many of them remaining behind at Mayapan, where they founded a new city of that name, later to become the capital city of the New Empire. During the passage of the Itzas back to Chichen, a second immigration was taking place into Yucatan from the westward of a tribe called the Tutul Xiu, under the leader- ship of the chief, Ahmekat Tutul Xiu. They came from Chiapas and Tabasco in Mexico, and spread over the southern and western parts of Yucatan, founding the cities of Xkabukin, Kaba, Labna, Uxmal, and many others, and finally, at Chichen Itza, coming in contact with the Itzas. Towards the end of the tenth century A.D. the colonisa- tion and transitional periods of the New Empire were over. For five centuries a stream of Maya immigrants had been pouring into Yucatan from the south and west, till practically the entire peninsula was now occupied. The people had become accustomed to their new environment ; the constant shifting and changing from one locality to another had ceased. They were settling down to build themselves permanent cities, which provided an outlet for the expression of their artistic and architectural ideals so long denied by a nomadic life in a new and sterile environment—in fact the Great, or Renaissance Period, of the New Empire had commenced. About 1000 A.D. the three great cities of Uxmal, Chichen IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 97 Itza, and Mayapan, each ruled by its independent governor, formed a triple alliance, by the terms of which each was to participate equally in the government of the country. This alliance lasted for nearly two hundred years, until the last decade of the twelfth century, A.D. It marks the high tide in the prosperity and artistic development of the Maya of Yucatan, and constitutes their golden age, during which most of the innumerable cities—now mere masses of ruins buried in the bush—were built and flourished ; a period of unparalleled artistic development in both the painters’ and the sculptors’ art, and under wise, beneficent rulers a period of peace and prosperity, free alike from internecine wars and dissensions, and from invasion from without. During this period there entered Yucatan from the west a great priest and leader known as Cuculcan (or feathered serpent). He is described as a venerable old man with a long white beard, dressed in a loose robe and sandals. After a residence in Yucatan of some years, preaching peace, concord, and well-doing, he left it by way of Champoton, promising, however, that in after years he and his followers would return. 3 The coming of the Spaniards (teules, or gods, as they were termed by the Mexicans) was—unfortunately for them- selves—regarded by the natives as the fulfilment of this prophecy. Cuculcan soon after his departure underwent an apotheosis, and with the other great priest and leader, Itzamna, already referred to, divided divine honours about equally throughout the land. The disruption of the triple alliance, the plunging of the whole country into war, and the end of the golden age, was brought about by an event which is to a certain extent wrapped in mystery, as no two accounts of it exactly coincide. The quarrel—a matter of cherchez la femme—arose between Chac-Xib-Chac, King of Chichen Itza, and Hunnac Ceel, King of Mayapan. It would appear that the latter was deeply enamoured of GL 98 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND the Princess who was betrothed to the former. Notwith- standing this, however, he attended the wedding ceremony with a number of his followers. At the conclusion of the feast, while the retainers of the King of Chichen Itza were lying about on the mat-strewn floor sleeping off the effect of their potations of balché (the Maya wine, on which it was considered good form to get intoxicated after a feast), according to the usual custom, the King of Mayapan, with a party of armed men, invaded the bridal chamber and bore off the bride. Chac-Xib-Chac, on recovering from his debauch, was naturally incensed at such a base betrayal of hospitality by a friend and ally, and at once began to collect his people with a view to making war on the King of Mayapan. He was joined by the rulers of Izamal and Ulmil, two smaller cities, but the King of Uxmal wisely kept out of the quarrel between his allies. The war at first went strongly in favour of Chac-Xib- Chan, till at length Hunnac Ceel, finding himself on the verge of defeat, called in to his assistance Toltec mercenaries from the Mexican provinces of Chiapas and Tabasco, adjoining Yucatan on the west. With their assistance he rapidly overcame the King of Chichen Itza, and drove him from his city, killing and enslaving many of his subjects, and driving the rest out to the sparsely-populated eastern coast of the peninsula, where for years they led a miserable and hunted existence. On the fall of Chichen Itza and the dissolution of the triple alliance the supreme command of the country fell into the hands of the Cocomes, the ruling family of Mayapan. The city of Chichen Itza was handed over by them to their Toltec mercenaries, in consequence of which we find here in the more recent buildings, the strongest Toltec architec- tural influence of any city in Yucatan. For nearly two and a half centuries the Cocomes succeeded, chiefly by the aid of their warlike Toltec allies, in holding the overlordship of the peninsula. The ruling families and nobility of each district were compelled to have some of their members in IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 99 : residence as hostages at Mayapan all the year round, where, within a great walled enclosure, ground was allotted to each for the construction of their temples and palaces, while outside the walls the vast number of their stewards, personal retainers, and attendants, with their families, formed a respectable sized city in itself. About the year 1450 A.D. the Maya nobles, disgusted with the arrogance of the Cocomes, humiliated at being compelled to reside within the precincts of Mayapan, and oppressed by the heavy taxes, payment of which was enforced by the Toltec invaders, at last entered into an offensive alliance against their enemies, and under the leadership of the reigning Tutul Xiu, King of Uxmal, declared war against the Cocomes. Hostilities were carried on with varying fortunes for a number of years, till in Katun 8 Ahau, or 1468 A.D., the army of the Tutul Xiu besieged and captured the city of Mayapan, completely razing it to the ground, and putting to death every member of the Cocom family, with the exception of one son, who was absent in Honduras, and a distant relative, Cocom Cat. After the conquest of Mayapan the whole country became divided up into a number of small cacicazgos, or states, each governed by a separate cacique, or ruler, over whom the King of Uxmal exercised a merely nominal suzerainty. Even the last surviving Cocom, returning from Honduras, was permitted to set up a cacicazgo at Sotuta, his principal town being Tbuloon. Ah Moo Chel, a priest of Mayapan, who had married his high priest’s daughter, fled to the east after the sacking of the city, with a considerable number of retainers, where round Izamal he founded the cacicazgo of Ah Kinchel. Nine brothers of the Canules, a Toltec tribe, retired to Acanul, where they founded the cacicazgo of that name, though, being regarded as outlanders and barbarians, they were not permitted to intermarry with their Maya neighbours. Noh Capal Peck, a lord of Mayapan, fled to the north, where he founded the cacicazgo of Ceh Peck. The Cupules, a Maya tribe, returned and ruled in Chichen 100 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND Itza, while the Itza themselves retired en masse to Peten, in Guatemala, the former home of their ancestors, and there, under the name of Peten Itzas, formed the last important stronghold of the Maya Indians against the Spanish invaders, by whom they were not conquered till the last decade of the seventeenth century. The Tutul Xiu returned to their strongholds in the Sierra, but for some inexplicable reason deserted their capital of Uxmal, perhaps the largest and most beautiful city, and certainly that containing the most exquisitely sculptured buildings throughout Yucatan, as its wonderful remains still evidence to-day. They retired to the insignifi- cant town of Mani, leaving the vast temples, palaces, and public buildings of their capital completely deserted, as they were found nearly a century later, to be the wonder and admiration of the first conquistadores. Yucatan was now divided into a great number of caci- cazgos, all engaged in almost constant strife one with another. The Cocomes of Sotuta, the Tutul Xius of Mani, and the Cheles of Ticoh, were mortal enemies ; the Peches of Motul were at war with the Cheles and Cupules, as were the Cochuas of Tehomeo with the Chanes of Bacalar. These internecine wars continued till the coming of the Spaniards. Nevertheless, so rapidly did the population increase that at the time of the conquest, in the words of one of the congustadores, “the whole country appeared like a single pueblo,” while ‘throughout the whole of it there is not a palm of land which has not been cultivated.” It must be remembered that though split up into so many small states at the time of the conquest, the people of Yucatan were in reality all of one race, speaking one language, and descendants of the two tribes who, as we have seen, originally entered the peninsula, the one from the south-east, the other from the south-west. The Chanes (the tribe from the south-west), at the coming of Itzamna, changed their name to Itzas, and ultimately overran the IN AN UNKNOWN LAND IOI eastern part of Yucatan. The Tutul Xiu from the south- west settled in the Sierra and western part of the peninsula, forming later, with the Itza, the confederation of Mayapan, and it is from this last name that people, country, and language derived their title of Maya. We claimed by right of discovery the honour of rechristen- ing this ancient Maya city, and opinions were divided between “ The City of the Wounded Deer” and “ The Stronghold of Soldier Crabs”? as suitable names. On discovery, however, that the former, when rendered into Maya, is “ U kahal tsonan ceh,”’ while the latter is still more impossible as a place name, we compromised by naming it “ Chacmool ”’ in honour of the tutelary deity of the place. These ruins almost certainly date back to the period between the fall of Mayapan, in the middle of the fifteenth century, and the coming of the Spaniards about a century later. They are of the same type as all the other ruins along the east coast and on the islands, and were evidently the work of Maya, strongly imbued, as the Chacmool indicates, with Toltec culture. The masonry is coarser, and lacks the finish noticeable in the earlier Maya building. Sculpture is absent, and stucco takes the place of cut stone. They are, in fact, evidently the work of a considerable body of people suddenly thrown into a new environment, who endeavoured to construct as quickly as possible temples and other buildings as closely resembling those they had left behind them as might be compassed with the materials at hand. Whether they would ever again have reached the architectural or sculptural perfection of the Great Period is doubtful, as a subtle degenerative change, moral and artistic, seems to have eaten into the life of the Maya, beginning nearly three and a half centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards, manifesting itself in architectural and artistic decadence, in the development of cruelty, treachery, and pugnacity, and the introduction of human sacrifices, amongst this once peaceful, happy, joyous, religious people. 102 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND The fall of the Maya civilisation, though possibly has- tened by, was not due to, the coming of strangers, but to something inherent in itself—possibly the fact that for nearly fifteen centuries it had come in contact with no outside influence, and of its own initiative had apparently neither advanced nor retrograded, a stationary condition in human affairs as repugnant to the high gods as a vacuum in nature, for no civilisation can mark time for ever. We spent two strenuous days clearing bush, measuring and photographing buildings, Morley and I sleeping ashore, while the others returned at night to the Lian Y. We were supposed to be at the height of the dry season, yet on both the nights we slept at the edge of the beach it rained briskly, saturating our beds, bedding and mosquito curtains. We both felt, however, that anything was preferable to the oily roll of the Lilian Y, the nearest she ever attained to stability even anchored inside the reef. Interesting and exciting as the work had been, we were not sorry when it was finished, for between sleepless nights, hard-driven days, and Hubert’s unspeakable cookery (his omelettes were like greasy leather, and his beans things to dream of—in a nightmare !), we were nearly allin. More- over, the heat in the low-lying, bush-encircled ruins was terrific, while the aborigines—mosquitoes, bats, and soldier crabs—united in their efforts to eject us from the rooms and temples, till even the Lilian Y seemed a haven of rest as, on the morning of the 16th February, we weighed anchor and bade a long farewell to the city of Chacmool. The tops of the ruins could easily be distinguished from the mast-head as we steamed out, standing sentinel-like above the bush, and gradually diminishing in size as we left them further and further behind, and so, after the first visit from strangers in nearly five centuries, the silence of the bush closed down once more over this once flourishing town, to be broken only by the scream of a parrot and the howl of a monkey. It seemed incredible that thousands of people had once IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 103 lived here, loving and hating, marrying and giving in marriage, fighting their enemies, worshipping their gods, bartering with their neighbours, sowing and reaping their crops, holding their feasts and fasts, rejoicing and mourning, and at last dying, and leaving no trace beyond the ruins of _ their city, the very name of which is now forgotten. It brought home to us the impermanence of all human institu- tions and the insignificance and futility of human effort. From this melancholy reverie of the past Morley and I were aroused by the strains of ‘‘ Oh, Johnnie! Oh, Johnnie ! ” started by Held in the unspeakable gramophone, and the smell of burning beans resulting from Hubert’s efforts to prepare breakfast. CHAPTER VII Camp out at Nohku—Arrival at Tuluum—The Town first sighted by Grijalva in 1518—Revisited by Stephens in 1841—Subsequent Visits— Reading the Date on the Stele—The Castillo from the Sea—Difficulties in Landing—We find no Trace of the Stele—Landing the Camping Outfit—We Camp in the Castillo—Description of the Castillo—An Uncomfortable Night—We Find the Stele—Description of the Sculpture on the Stele—Maya Chronology. ON resuming our journey north we put in at Point Nohku, the southern lip of Ascension Bay, as we had heard that the ruins of an old Spanish church were to be found there. Disappointment, however, awaited us, as the ruin proved to be that of a small Maya temple, or shrine, such as have already been described. It was in a very bad state of preservation, and in this lonely and desolate situation had probably been used by fishermen, hunters, or travellers as an altar upon which to sacrifice to their tutelary deities. The name Nohku in Maya means “ ancient temple,’ and might, of course, refer equally well to a heathen temple or a Christian church. We camped out that night on the sandy beach under the stars, about three miles north of Ascension Bay, and with a tiny breeze gently swaying our mosquito nets, the aromatic smells of the bush coming faintly to our nostrils, and the lapping of the little wavelets on the shore forming a gentle lullaby, we realised what a paradise Yucatan may be under favourable conditions. Next morning we were under way early, and about 10.30 a.m., passing in through an opening in the reef, we anchored under the ruins of Tuluum. These ruins are by far the largest and best preserved of all the groups known to us up to the present along the east coast of Yucatan and amongst the adjacent islands. A certain air of mystery—partly, no doubt, due to their 104 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 105 inaccessible position—has always clung to them, investing them with a special interest in the eyes of students of Maya archeology. The first European notice we have of Tuluum is found in the itinerary of Juan de Grijalva’s voyage along © this coast in 1518, kept by Padre Juan Diaz, chaplain to the expedition. He writes: “ After leaving Cozumel we ran along the coast a day and a night, and the next day towards sunset we saw a bourg, or village, so large that Seville would not have seemed larger or better. We saw there a very high tower. There was upon the bank a crowd of Indians, who carried two standards, which they raised and lowered to us as signs to come and join them, but the Commander did not wish it.” The distance from Cozumel, the high tower, and the size, point unmistakably to Tuluum as the “ bourg, or village, so large that Seville would not have seemed larger or better ”’ of Grijalva. For the next 324 years the history of Tuluum is a blank, till in 1841 it was revisited by the American explorer, John L. Stephens, who discovered on the floor of one of the temples the fragments of a stele, or monolith, covered with Maya hieroglyphs.