There is hardly a soul to be met on the road, save at rare intervals some carts loaded with henequen; some natives returning from the next village, the women veiling their faces or turning their backs upon us at our approach; now a company of reserve on their way to the front or homeward-bound, for the borders are strictly guarded against a coup de main from the revolted natives.
We stop at Cacalchen; for our early start, the crisp morning air, and the jolting of the road, have sharpened our appetites. We breakfast under a shaded verandah opening into a central court planted with cocoa-trees. We are waited upon by a very pretty Meztiza, whose fair complexion, rosy mouth, large black eyes, and exquisite figure, are shown to the utmost advantage in her transparent uipil, doing her work with simple, quiet grace, while her presence and her bewitching smile seem to light up the whole place. What dish would not have tasted sweet, offered by her shapely hands?
Izamal, where we arrive at three o’clock, is an important place numbering some five or six thousand souls. It looks beautifully white, for it has just undergone its annual cleaning, when every building is whitewashed in honour of the patron saint.
It has been urged by some writers that the civilisation of Yucatan and Tabasco belonged to a remote past; but these writers often speak from mere hearsay, accepting everything without the slightest criticism; their accounts, however valuable, are filled with uncertainties, are often obscure and contradictory, so that they may be made to square with the idiosyncrasy of all or any particular man. Consequently the difficulties in arriving at the truth are almost insuperable, unless it is one who has visited the regions he writes upon, studied the monuments, collated ethnographical documents, compared the various manners and customs, fitting himself to catch a word or a sentence which from time to time shoots across the darkness of their undigested narratives, and correcting with their help errors with which they abound. But the general neglect by ancient writers of monuments which everywhere met their gaze makes me unjust, while our gratitude is due to such industrious writers as Bernal Diaz, Sahagun, Torquemada, and many more.
Izamal, like many other places in the peninsula, was built on the site of an Indian city; here, as elsewhere, the chief care of the Spaniards was to destroy alike palaces, temples, and written documents, bidding the natives forget their ancient traditions. Landa, who wrote forty-five years after the Conquest (1566), speaks of the edifices at Izamal as twelve in number, adding that the founders were unknown; whilst Lizana, sixty years later (1626), with fewer opportunities for collecting legends, gives their history in full, together with the Indian names and their signification; but unfortunately in his time the monuments had dwindled down to five.
Landa, as we have remarked, says these monuments are of unknown origin, yet in another place he affirms they are the work of the existing race, since he writes: “Among the remains of monuments which were destroyed are found fragments of human figures and other decorations, such as the natives make even now with very hard cement.” He further mentions having found in a tomb “stone ornaments artistically wrought, similar to the currency in present use among the natives.”
At Merida he demolished an Indian temple, which crowned the upper part of the great mound, giving a ground plan and describing it as “built with square blocks, beautifully carved, and of such height as to produce a feeling of awe in the beholder” (its real height is 80 feet); thus proving the monument to have been entire when he wrote. Nevertheless it is from an assertion such as this that judgment has been passed on the monuments, and from documents like the Perez manuscript that a chronology has been deduced. The monuments are imposing, no doubt, to judge from the few that remain; but we should err if, following Landa and others, we pronounced them “colossal, gigantic, magnificent, to which nothing in the world can be compared.”
The whole extent of the Yucatec monuments would not represent in cubic metres the works achieved in Paris during the last twenty-five years; consequently they should be viewed as the unpretending outcome of a semi-civilised people, and this estimate need not lessen their interest, while the mysterious silence which surrounds them forms a void in the history of the human race.
The great mound to the north is called Kinich-Kakmó, “The Sun’s face with fiery rays,” from an idol which stood in the temple crowning its summit. The monument consists of two parts: the basement, nearly 650 feet, surmounted by an immense platform, and the small pyramid to the north. “Great veneration was felt for the idol or deity of Kinich-Kakmó, and in times of public calamity, the entire population flocked to this shrine with peace-offerings, when at mid-day a fire descended and consumed the sacrifice, in the presence of the assembled multitude. Then the officiating priest notified the will of the deity whether for good or for evil, and prophesied more or less the secret longings of their hearts: but as they could not always guess aright, it not unfrequently happened that their expectations were not fulfilled.”[114]