The other important towns are San Juan Chamúla, containing 4,000 inhabitants; San Bartoloméo de los Llanos, whose 7,000 people are chiefly engaged in the cultivation of cotton, sugar, tobacco and corn; San Domingo Comitlan; San Jacinto Ocozingo, with 3,000 inhabitants who devote themselves to the care of cattle, and cultivate some cacao and corn; Tuxtla, with 5,000 inhabitants who trade in tobacco and cacao; San Domingo Sinacantan, on the borders of Tabasco in the territory of the Zoques, with 2,500 inhabitants who employ themselves in the culture of silk, of which they weave shawls and other similar fabrics, which are esteemed of a good merchantable quality, and are used in the country or adjacent states; Chiapa de los Indios; Tecpatlan; Ostoacan; Teopixca; Acapala; Capanabastla; Izcuintenango; San Fernando Guadalupe; and Simojovél.
Chiapas is represented to be rich in rivers which rise chiefly in the highlands towards the state of Tabasco and debouche into the Mexican Gulf. The Tabasco river or the Rio de Grijalva; the Usumasinta, the Chicsoi or the Santa Isabella;—the Machaquita, San Pedro, Dolores, Yalchitan, Chacamas, Zeldales, Yeixhihujat, Chatlan, and some others; the Pacaitún or Paicutun; the laguna de Chiapa; some mineral waters; and a valuable salt spring in the vicinity of San Mateo, enrich various portions of this fertile state, whose climate, especially in its higher regions, is said to be delicious and uniform. The number of the population of this state is not officially known. In 1831, a census made by order of the governor Ignacio Gutierrez, which however, did not include fifteen parishes, gave 118,775 inhabitants for the rest of the state. An estimate in a Mexican calendar of 1833 represents the number to be about 96,000, while the government calculation for a basis of representation in Congress in 1842, gives it 141,206, to which about 10 per cent. should be added to give the proximate population in 1850. The Indian tribes of the Zoques, Cendales or Zeldales, Teochiapanécos and Mames are still very numerous, and, of course, form the greater part of the population.
Ancient Remains in Yucatan and Chiapas.
The physical description of these two States, presented in the preceding pages, will have satisfied the reader that they possess a prolific soil and an agreeable climate which would probably attract a large population had they been properly explored and developed by an energetic race. We are sustained in this belief by the fact, that in these States travellers have found the most remarkable remains of an advanced ancient civilization hitherto discovered on our continent. What has existed may exist again under the benignant influence of modern progress; nor is it improbable that as human interests direct the attention of maritime or emigrating nations towards the central portions of the western continent, Yucatan and Chiapas may again become the seat of a population even larger than that which thronged it during the palmy days anterior to the Spanish conquest.
Since the year 1840 three important works have been published in this country relative to these ancient remains of towns, temples, cities, idols and monuments. Two of these are due to the pen and pencil of Mr. John L. Stephens and Mr. Catherwood, while the other and slighter production is the result of a hasty visit paid to Yucatan by Mr. B. M. Norman. These three publications, plentifully illustrated by accurate engravings of the ruins and remains, have been so widely disseminated throughout Europe and America that readers are already familiar with them. In the "long, irregular and devious route" pursued by Stephens and Catherwood, they "discovered the crumbling remains of fifty-four ancient cities, most of them but a short distance apart, though, from the great change that has taken place in the country, and the breaking up of the old roads, having no direct communication with each other. With but few exceptions, all were lost, buried and unknown, never before visited by a stranger, and some of them, perhaps, never looked upon by the eyes of a white man." Leaving Guatemala, the travellers encountered, in Chiapas, remarkable remains at Ocozingo and Palenque; and passing thence into Yucatan, in their second journey to those central regions, they explored and described the architectural and monumental relics at Maxcanu, Uxmal, Sacbey, Xampon, Sanacte, Chunhuhu, Labpahk, Iturbide, Mayapan, San Francisco, Ticul, Nochacab, Xoch, Kabah, Sabatsche, Labna, Kenick, Izamal, Saccacal, Tekax, Akil, Mani, Macoba, Becanchen, Peto, Chichen, in the interior; and at Tuloom, Tancar, and in the Island of Cozumel on the eastern coast.
The simple catalogue of these names, indicating the sites of ancient civilization in the midst of what is at present almost an unexplored wilderness and covering so wide a field of observation, will satisfy the reader that it is impossible to condense a satisfactory review of these architectural remains within the space that we are enabled to appropriate to antiquarian researches. The ruins of Palenque in Chiapas, and of Uxmal and Chichen in Yucatan, are, perhaps, the most wonderful of all that have been explored hitherto in this lonely region; and, while we regret that our duty to the living present will not permit us to dwell longer on the curious past, we shall, nevertheless pause, occasionally, as we pass through the Mexican States, to notice those remains which have either been visited by us personally, or are not described in books as accessible to all classes of enquirers and students as those of Messrs. Stephens, Catherwood and Norman. Mr. Stephens believes, after full investigation, that these towns and cities were occupied by the original builders and their descendants at the period of the Spanish conquest, and our own opinion entirely coincides with his reasoning and judgment. Those who desire a complete and conclusive illustration of this branch of the subject will find an excellent argument thereon in both of his publications.[47]
In the first volume of this work we have given an account of the Mexican or Aztec Calendar; and the proximate identity of the Yucatese or Mayan and Aztec Calendar led Mr. Stephens to the conclusion that both nations had a common origin. This argument is also important in considering the period of the occupation of the Chiapan and Yucatese edifices, inasmuch as we know that the Aztecs of Montezuma's period used the Calendar which we have already illustrated and described.
Yucatan Calendar.
"Our knowledge of the Yucatan Calendar," says Mr. Gallatin,[48] "is derived exclusively from the communications made by Don J. P. Perez to Mr. John L. Stephens, and inserted in the appendix to the first volume of this gentleman's Travels in Yucatan. It is substantially the same with that of the Mexicans, though differing in some important particulars.
"The inhabitants of Yucatan had, like the Mexicans, the two distinct modes of computing time, by months of twenty days, and by periods of thirteen days. They also distinguished the days of the year by a combination of those two series, precisely similar to that of the Mexicans. And their year likewise consisted of 365 days, viz., of eighteen months of twenty days each, to which they added five supplementary days; and also of a corresponding series of twenty-eight periods of thirteen days each, and one day over. The following table exhibits the names of the twenty days of the Yucatan month, with their signification, as far as it has been ascertained by Don J. P. Perez; and also the days of the Chiapa month as given by Boturini; and which, from the similarity of the names of several of the days, appears to have been in its origin nearly identical with that of Yucatan.