[CHAPTER X]
IN SEARCH OF THE MAYAN MECCA
The island of Cozumel lies twelve miles from the easternmost shore of Yucatan in the Caribbean Sea between 20° and 21° north lat. and 86° and 87° west long. Its name in Mayan means "Isle of Swallows," in allusion, tradition relates, to a Mayan deity Tel Cuzaan (the swallow-legged) who was here chiefly worshipped. But the history of the island contradicts this tradition, for Tel Cuzaan appears to have been quite a minor god in the Mayan Olympus; while a religious importance, exceeding that of any other spot in the Mayan countries of Central America, seems to have attached to this island.
According to the earliest Spanish chroniclers of the Conquest it was Isla Sagrada, the Sacred Isle of the Mayan race. To it four centuries back the tribes from the mainland of Yucatan, from Tabasco and Chiapas, from Guatemala and what is today British Honduras, made yearly pilgrimage. In its centre rose—say the Spanish annalists of the sixteenth century—a grand temple, the Mecca of the Mayan race. Towards Cozumel we had always eagerly looked because of this undoubted ancient sanctity, and because we hoped that deep in her impenetrable forests, this Holy of Holies might still exist. Cortes, in 1519 (Bernal Dias is the chronicler), destroyed a towered temple, and threw down the idols; but it is more than likely that this was not Mecca, for the Spanish account does not admit of doubt that the shrines so destroyed stood upon the beach, and there is some evidence for our belief that the Mayan Mecca was in the heart of the island. Moreover our hopes of a "find" were strengthened by the knowledge that the Spaniards never thoroughly explored the island; that to this day it has never been explored. Four centuries back it was practically what it is now—one vast dense virgin forest, through the gloomy tangle of which even Indians could scarce find their way.
On our return to Isla de Mujeres from our explorations of Cancun and the adjoining coast, misfortune overtook one of us in the shape of a sharp attack of malaria, doubtless contracted as a result of our combats with mosquitoes in Cancun. Mujeres was about the most unfortunate place in the world for such an illness, as it was absolutely barren of all fruits or fresh food, and our dietary consisted of tea, biscuits, and rice. But we had to make the best of a week or more's delay, till the fever abated, when, giving up all idea of covering the fifty-four miles of open sea, which lay between us and Cozumel, in the small open boat we had so far used, we hired a 25-ton schooner for the voyage. The hold of this vessel was fitted up with a bed for the invalid, and early one morning we made a start.
The communication between these islands of the Caribbean Sea is very erratic. A regular postal system does not exist, and any passing boat is pressed into the service of the Post Office and made to carry any letters or papers which may be waiting delivery. On our voyage from Holboch we had been raised to the dignity of mail-carriers; and now we learnt that our little schooner was to be coolly used as a general passenger boat. For when we got on board we found in addition to our crew that the Jefe had calmly saddled us with four passengers in addition to the mails. But if he had tried to make an excursion steamer of us, we really should not have objected, for it was such an intense relief to see the last of Mujeres. Our enforced sojourn there had been a real martyrdom. Napoleon at Elba was really not in it with us. Perched up on our rocky-terraced hut with a westward view of the coast around El Meco, we had been literally like rats in a trap; no books, no papers, nothing to see, nowhere to go; sand and fan-palms, rocks and more sand. The Israelites never longed for the Promised Land, for the Canaan of milk and honey fame, as we had for Cozumel and our escape from the Isle of Women. Thus when we found that only four Yucatecans were to be made happy by getting something for nothing (the Ultima Thule of all the devout of their race), viz.: a passage at our expense—our only feeling was really one of wonder at the Jefe's moderation.
With a fair wind Cozumel can be reached in twelve hours from Mujeres; but the trade winds hereabouts seem to drop as the sun gets high, and midday saw us lying idly by, our sails flapping gently as the boom swung backwards and forwards in time with the rocking of the vessel on the long, slow underswell which was scarcely noticeable on the almost oily-still surface of the water. The blistering heat was so intense that it seemed to draw from the water a mist-like steaming vapour. For hours we lay
"As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean."
But with the afternoon, sure enough, there came a gentle gusty breeze, rising from nowhere. The brown sails for a moment belly out like well-filled corn-sacks. The boom swings over with a creaking, jerky, grating noise. The dark, clear, oily blue water breaks up into little gentle ripples at our bow, and we are once more moving. As darkness falls and the clear azure of the sea turns to a leaden grey, we run past Cancun, this time to seaward, at five or six knots. But it is dawn before we see the coast of Cozumel, which is what sailors call "raw" and is not one to be approached at night time if it can be avoided. So we stand off until the morning; for if one cannot describe the island's shore as one "whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tide," it is true enough that that "foot" is fearsomely shod with coral. As you make your way into the little natural bay and peer down through fathoms of water clear as crystal, you see those ghastly spikes, those evil-looking spires and towers, rising from the bottom, their blackness in the clear water suggestive of their murderous meaning for mariners. As we anchor some five hundred yards from the shore the little island town of San Miguel rings the bay. A few palm-thatched huts, a wooden store, an open space, a custom house with a flagstaff, a few small boat-shelters of palm-leaves to save boats from cracking in the sun, and a jetty, three feet wide, running out into water waist-deep. Northward a grove of palm trees; southward stretches, as far as the eye can see, the rocky coral beach.