If a hundred people who have not travelled, or whose travels have been confined to the typical Rhine, Switzerland and Riviera tours of modern life, were asked what was their idea of a primeval forest in the tropics, eighty per cent. at least would declare for a woodland notable for giant trees beside which the forests of civilised countries would seem mere park enclosures. Nothing could be further from the truth. The average primeval forest in the tropics, of which the boundless woodlands of Eastern Yucatan are a fair example, are disappointing in the extreme from the very fact that, though dense to a degree that is heartbreaking, you never see really noble trees. One of the largest trees in Yucatan is the sapota (Achras sapota). This is an evergreen with thick shiny leaves, and is said to sometimes reach a height of a hundred feet, but we cannot say that we ever saw one so high. It is from the sapota that there is obtained the chicle, the milky juice of the tree which forms the basis of all American chewing-gums. The chicleros, as the cutters are called, climb the tree, cut broad arrow-shaped grooves through the bark pointing groundward, the shaft of the arrows making a drainage groove down the full length of the tree, a vessel being placed at the foot under this groove to catch the sap. But the Mayans do not care about chicle. They like the sapota because it produces a fruit of which they are passionately fond. And no wonder, for it is really very pleasant eating. About the size of a small apple and the colour of a medlar, the inside is a reddish-brown pulp, which has a delicious flavour.
The woods of Yucatan are full of acacias of many species, among them the logwood (Hæmatoxylon campechianum). Mahogany is found and is especially common in the south, where it is much used by the Indians for canoes, the whole trunk being hollowed out. The leafiest tree in the country is the ceiba (Bombax ceiba), called by the Mayans yaxche or yastse. This noble tree often attains a considerable height, gives an extraordinary shade, and has ever been held as sacred by the Mayans. It figures in their mythology. Their ancestors believed that there were seven heavens, each having a hole in the centre and each immediately above the other. A ceiba was believed to stand in the centre of the earth, and its branches grew through the successive holes in the seven heavens until the leaves reached the highest. By the branches of the tree the dead climbed through the series of heavens until they reached the utmost Mayan paradise. There is a tradition that a ceiba grew in Valladolid. It was cut down but sprouted again, having this time four boughs each directed to a cardinal point. A hawk had its home on the highest branch, and the bird was considered to be the spirit of the tree, its cry of "suki, suki," it is said, having given the ancient Indian town Zaci, on the site of which Valladolid was built, its name. There is another tree which rivals the ceiba in shadiness, but this you only see on the haciendas which have been long in cultivation. It is a laurel introduced into the Peninsula from Cuba some forty years ago by a Spaniard named Cervera. His grandson, appropriately enough, showed us at Yaxche near Merida the finest examples we saw, laurels so large and leafy as to rival in size and shade our forest beech. They were probably the Portugal Laurel (Cerasus lusitanica or Ficus laurifolia).
A fairly large tree is the mamey (Lucuma mammosa), belonging to the same family as the sapota, and bearing a fruit almost rivalling that of the latter in popularity among the Indians. It is egg-shaped, with a rough brown skin, and inside is a pinky pulp tasting like quince marmalade with a distinct flavour of almond-paste about it. By a beneficent dispensation of Providence in a country where grass cannot grow, there does grow a tree, the ramon (Alicastrum Brownei), called by the Mayans ŏs, upon which Yucatecan horses thrive. It is certainly very comforting when you camp for the night in the forest to be able to send the Indians to cut an armful of the branches thus generously provided by Nature's baiting stable, and to hear your cattle contentedly munching it while you sup. The ramon grows fifty to sixty feet high and has an abundance of evergreen leaves which form the fodder. The fruit of the ramon is eaten boiled either alone or mixed with honey or Indian corn, and the milky juice is used medicinally in cases of asthma. Tree-palms grow everywhere in the woods, some of them reaching eighty feet. The more common kinds, notably the Sabal mexicana, called by the Mayans x̆aan, are used to thatch the Indian huts. There are cocoanut palms in plenty, particularly on the islands. From the Lignum vitæ the Indians make bows. From a small tree (Pretium heptaphyllum) the ancient Mayans obtained the incense used in their temples which they called pom and which the Mexicans call copal.
In fruit trees Yucatan is fairly rich. She has the sweet and sour orange in plenty and the lemon and lime, the latter of which often grows wild in the woods. Bananas and plantains are everywhere. A small variety of the former, the banana-apple (Musa paradisiaca), has a flavour finer than the Canary banana. Then there is the Anona squamosa or custard-apple, the Anona muricata or guanabana, the aguacate, alligator pear (Persea gratissima), the caumita and the papay (Carica papaya), called by the Mayans put, of which the fruit is pear-shaped, about a foot long, of an orange-salmon colour and deliciously juicy. The finest pineapples in the whole of the Mexican Republic are said to be those grown in Cozumel, and the cultivation of cocoa, which grows wild throughout Yucatan, is being seriously taken up. There are one or two types of plums cultivated by the Mayans, and figs, tamarinds and mangoes are grown. Camote, a kind of sweet potato, and tomatoes are produced, usually in the milpas with the maize. Tobacco, sugar-cane, and cotton are agricultural products to which increasing attention is being given. Many kinds of gourds are grown by the Mayans. Chief among these is the calabash tree (Crescentia cujete), the gourd of which is universally used in Yucatan in its entirety as a drinking-bottle—the Indians carrying them slung over their backs full of water—and halved as drinking-cups or dippers, and is often elaborately carved or painted. The Spanish name for these drinking-gourds is jicaras, the Mayans calling them luts.
The flowers of Yucatan are disappointing. They suffer, as do the larger plants, from the dryness of the soil, due to the fact that, heavy as the rains are when they come, they rapidly drain away through the porous limestone. In the gardens of cities and villages you see roses, the gorgeous scarlet trumpet-shaped tulipans, magnolias, vari-coloured irises, clematis and other bright-tinted creepers, red and yellow foxglove-like flowers, and over all and everywhere convolvuluses, white, purple, and blue. Some of these latter are cultivated by the Mayans in the fields, as for instance a small white one which they call x̆taventun, from the honey collected from which the Indians distil an alcoholic drink which has a soft aromatic smell of the flower, and the intoxicating effect of which (it is enough to make the mouth of the dipsomaniac water) lasts for three days and leaves no headache behind it!
The wild flowers are for the most part small. Amid the ruined cities you almost always find quantities of the small yellow flower, called by the Mayans x̆canlol, of the Tecoma stans, a shrubby climber. The woodland paths everywhere are bright with the jasmine-like amapola; while the roadsides are made more picturesque by a climber bearing white sweet-smelling flowers. At Chichen there was much Salvia coccinea, a small brilliant scarlet-flowered shrub called by the natives zic x̆in. Here again we saw Heliotropium parviflorum, which the Indians call xnaheax. In the woods you see many orchids growing like mistletoe on the trees. Among the genera met with, the Oncidium and Epidendrum are the commonest, and of these the species Schomburgkia tibicina and the Epidendrum bicoruntum are those oftenest found. We saw very few wild ferns. Here and there are beautiful flowering cactuses.
YUCATAN.
BY THE AUTHORS