A queerer occupant of this ancient temple was a huge hermit crab, which by a miracle of persistence had climbed the pyramid and was hidden under a tree-root. These uncanny creatures are everywhere on the islands and along the coast of Yucatan. They live in large whelk-shells, moving from one to another as their growth demands a larger tenement. All you can see of them is a great red hairy claw, which is used to close the entrance of the shell. When disturbed they make a shrill noise like the faint chirping of a bird—by rubbing, it is said, the ridged surface of the last joint of the right great claw against the sharp edge of the second joint. The woodlands of the islands were full of them, and of course they were frequent on the beaches; but it did seem curious to find this big fellow so much up in the world. His family removals, necessitating a descent of the pyramid and a journey of at least half a mile through the bush to the beach, where he would have a choice of whelk-shells, must have been undertakings before which all but the stoutest crab hearts would have quailed.
Climbing out on to the face of the ruin, we found its height to be 48 feet. Descending, we discovered on the south side of the pyramid on the ground-level a tiny chamber 5 feet high and 8 feet long, the door about 3 feet high and 2-1/2 wide. Remains of such a room existed on the left. In other ruins we were struck again and again with the smallness of the doorways and the lowness of the roofs. There are so many buildings of the kind in Yucatan that a ludicrous belief is current among the natives that the builders of the ruins were dwarfs. There is of course nothing in such a theory. These tiny rooms at El Meco were probably sleeping-chambers for the guardian priests. In the woods around we found three other buildings much ruined, the pillars formed of rounded monoliths each some 6 feet high. Our investigations had taken some time, and it would be quite unsafe to estimate how many times we had been bitten. Some idea may be gained of the number of mosquitoes "engaged" by the fact that we counted over three dozen on one coat-sleeve. We were right glad to reach the shore and get on board, though with smarting faces and itching hands.
A run of an hour down the coast brought us to the northern end of Cancun Island. Seaward, owing to surf and coral, it is difficult to land, but it is separated from the mainland by a series of narrow channels opening into several broad bays, almost land-locked sea lakes. At the entrance are sandspits running out from island and shore, forming the narrowest of channels, perhaps six feet wide. It is such difficulties of navigation and the discomforts of small-boat life which have kept other travellers away and permitted us the privilege of being the first to thoroughly explore these islands. Once past the sandspits you enter a truly tropic creek. The water is a beech-leaf green and clear as glass; the laurel-hued mangrove trees grow far into the stream, their brown snake-like roots showing feet above the water. Perched upon these weird trees are wildfowl and fishing-birds, while, where the mud has silted up between the roots and formed a ledge, lie alligators blinking their evil-looking eyes in the blazing light. Below you in the green crystal depths you see turtle floating, and the giant picuda, with pike-like jaws, chasing the little fishes.
This picuda, full-grown specimens of which weigh their fifteen or twenty pounds, makes exciting fishing. There is no science about it, for he is a regular sea glutton, and with a fresh fish (the picuda insists on this: he is no refuse-eater) as bait on a string quite ropelike in its thickness you are almost certain to hook one just about here. The monster comes on board with a regular hullabaloo, flapping and leaping like a veritable tarpon and inflicting ugly bites if you give him the chance. The sailors kill him by hitting him over the head with a wooden mallet; but this weapon proved ineffective in the hands of the lad Dolores, who, apparently in the hope of hastening the fish's escape from his sufferings, pressed his two brown fingers into the creature's eye-sockets. We were ashamed of the cruelty of the action, and motioned to him to stop. But Yucatecans have no humanity, and the boy, his handsome face lit up with a bewitching smile, went on gouging out the fish's eyes.
We had a shot or two at an alligator and bagged a few birds as we sailed out of this creek into a wide stretch of water, its thickly wooded shores making it look like an English lake. Towards evening we ran into another channel, and there at an inlet, tree-shrouded, we ran the boat into the boggy bank. The only inhabitant of the island is an old Indian, a regular Mayan Robinson Crusoe, nearly blind through a splinter of wood flying up into his face while he was chopping. We were greeted by the barking of some half a dozen dogs which came bounding down from the hut, followed by their master who could only just distinguish night from day, and yet made his way to the water edge with extraordinary confidence. He welcomed us with true Mayan hospitality, and in a little time we were dining like princes off roasted picuda, biscuit and rice, washed down with Cadbury's cocoa. There was one drawback to our new quarters: the mosquitoes were in possession.
Cancun is a sixteen-mile stretch, mostly dense bush; at the northern end one of the artificial mounds, examples of which we examined higher up the coast by Cape Catoche. Our old Mayan host was called Patricio Pat, quite probably a descendant of the cacique Naum Pat with whom, it will be remembered, the Spaniards made such friends on their first visits to Cozumel. He had two huts in a clearing near the water edge, surrounded by a grove of cocoa palms for the fruit of which a dory came periodically from the other islands. There was a certain distinction about the old man's face as he crouched in front of the fire on the earth floor of his hut and held his lean brown hands out to where he could half see the red flame. He had queer stories to tell of haunted ruins in the bush here; of how he had heard his name called several times, and cocks crowing and all the other noises of a village; and how, long ago, a Yucatecan fisherman, wantonly breaking up a stone that had fallen from an Indian palace front, had been struck from behind by an unseen foe, and after hours of unconsciousness had crawled to the sea beach and for weeks had been on the point of death. It was all very quaint, and the old man's droning voice and his clearcut, wizened, hairless face in the glare of the fire made just such a figure as must have crouched round the fires when Naum Pat was lord hereabouts and the caravels of Spain had yet to be sighted from the wooded shores. We early tumbled into our hammocks, but long after, in the flickering light of the fire, Robinson Crusoe squatted in front of a small stool on which stood an earthenware pot, into which he laboriously scraped and squeezed with a broken fragment of cocoanut shell the meat of a pile of cocoanuts from which he was thus extracting the oil.
We were up at dawn hoping to steal a march on the enemy; but even at that early hour the insect curses of the tropics had taken down the shutters and started business. While we breakfasted, Crusoe squatted on his haunches in true Mayan fashion, meditatively rubbing his thin hands and giving us the best directions he could for our coming hunt in the bush. By seven, accompanied by Lucio and Pedro, we were off. As we dived into the woodlands at the back of the hut, the old fellow, machete on shoulder, in sack shift and patched striped cotton trousers, surrounded by a pack of leaping, barking dogs, started for the eastern shore, where he expected a dory to fetch a cargo of cocoanuts.