As a rule it may be said that the Yucatecan is a benevolent master. It pays him better to be so, and every Yucatecan's one rule in life is to do what pays him. Indeed there is really no reason for him to be harsh. The average Indian is as submissive as a well-whipped hound, creeping up after a thrashing to kiss his master's hand. This Stephens actually witnessed, and the miserable slaves are always made to do it.[16] He seldom disobeys: he works uncomplainingly all his life for no pay; and he breeds pretty daughters for his lord's gratification. The Yucatecan would indeed be hard to please if he quarrelled with such an exemplary beast of burden. And the habit of submission learnt through centuries of tyranny has affected the Mayan women. They exhibit a complacency towards their Yucatecan lovers which suggests, what alas! cannot be denied, that chastity means little to them to-day. Visiting a large place, a little incident struck us as very significant. The haciendado was showing us his kitchens. Many Indian women were busied at trays and tables preparing meal and so forth. One beautiful girl, about eighteen perhaps, was bending over her task, and as our host passed her he grasped her plump brown neck, squeezing it as one would pet a dog. If we lived a century we should not forget the way that girl looked up at him. It was a mixture of animal submission and feminine coquetry which there was no mistaking. There was in the girl's eyes something which told volumes, and they were not very pleasant reading for any men who have learnt that the love of women is a prize which should be earned.

In truth, Mayan morality is very, very lax, and the blame lies on the "Christians" who came four centuries back to Yucatan to civilise and preach the love of God to the Indians. They cannot wriggle out of that blame: they cannot shirk it. Even if doubt could be entertained as to the ancient Mayan laws we have quoted in Chapter XIV. showing the sanctity attached by them to chastity, there can be no ground for disbelieving the Spanish historians. They bear united testimony to the evils which resulted from the Conquest. They state that the Mayan women dearly prized their chastity, but that all high ideals were lost on the arrival of the Spaniards. Yes, the "Christians" have changed all that. Who will be the thrower of the first stone at the humble Indian lassie who prefers the kisses of a lover to the whip and starvation? It is all very sad, but so natural. They have learnt their lesson. Their masters, their priests even, have taught them not to value chastity. What avails it for them to struggle, even if they had the wit to do so?

From our balcony at Tizimin we watched one morning played that comedy of life which so often turns to tragedy. An Indian girl, a beautiful young creature of about twelve, her soft white huipil clinging round the dainty brown calves, her basket of fruit balanced on her small black head, pattered down the dusty road. There met her a Yucatecan, young, tall, with big black moustache and fine eyes: just the face to win her simple heart. A look, a glance, a giggle. They stopped to speak. By the pretty toss of her head you knew he was pressing her to see him, and she was refusing. But she would, of course. Her heart, simple as a bird's, would be aflutter till she had given her handsome lover all, till she had run eager to meet Life and its secrets half-way. For him it was the merest incident. A month or two and she would be forgotten. What did it matter? She's only an Indian!

TYPES OF MAYAN WOMEN AND MEN.

Perhaps he is right: perhaps it does not really matter. Perhaps, as she clasps closer to her brown breast the baby clinging with greedy lips to her nipple, she, too, will think it does not matter: perhaps she will not think at all. She is a mother: it matters little by whom. She has done her duty to God Who willed her maker of men. She has done her duty to her master who bids her make him slaves. Perhaps in the black head, bending, crooning, over the morsel of brown flesh, there will be no feeling, more or less, than the apathetic mother-love of the cow as it licks with loving tongue each spot on its new born calf. Perhaps, perhaps not. He would be bold indeed who would dare to say that man has a right to command that apathy.

And so, after centuries of oppression, the race is dead, a chattel, body and soul, of a corrupt and degraded people. When the task of revivifying these poor Mayans with the elixir of freedom is undertaken, if it ever is (and pray God it be), by the United States of America, it will be as difficult as nursing back to convalescence a patient sick unto death. No beings will at first understand freedom so ill. They are like prisoners who have been for weary years in the darkness of unlighted dungeons. The glare of the sunlight of freedom will be too dazzling for their poor atrophied eyes. They will shade them and cringe back into the gloom.

Well, on p. 324 we left our Indians returning from their day's work as the sun is sinking. There is little more for them to do. The cattle to tend, their humble meal to eat; and then from the little stucco chapel rings out the bell for vespers. The blue of the heavens has changed to a steel, fading on the western horizon into the palest lemon. Over the baked earth steals the cool breath of night: the silence is broken only by the hum of some night-moth, the cry of an owl in the distant woods, the lowing of the cattle in the corral. It is very wonderful, this first half-hour of the tropic night. In the stillness, sitting on the broad stone verandah, we presently all silently stand when the vesper bell's monotonous tinkle stops, and, like a funeral toll, nine solemn notes sound for the Nine Mysteries. As the echo of the ninth dies away, the hacienda day is done. In the darkness the white-clothed, brown-legged figures glide up, hat in hand, and greet the haciendado and his guests with "Buenas noches!" ("Good-night!").