COLOSSAL HEAD FORMING BASEMENT OF PYRAMID AT IZAMAL.
Through the whole length and breadth of Anahuac both monuments and cities have entirely disappeared; for the Spaniards were not satisfied with destroying all that reminded them of a former polity, they were also careful to infuse into their young disciples a profound horror for their former religion, while they trained children to report any word or deed they observed in their parents or priests which savoured of their ancient customs. Thanks to these measures, everything that could recall the past to the rising generation was soon blotted out from the Indian mind. But however dilapidated the monuments we observe at Izamal, they prove that there was here a great population at the time of the Conquest; and this being admitted, it follows that their destruction is comparatively recent, due mainly to civil wars, dating a few years before the arrival of the Spaniards.
As for the Perez manuscript, which was written by a native from memory long after the Conquest, purporting to be the faithful rendering of legends handed down from mouth to mouth, in a particular family, it adds nothing to our knowledge, throws no light on the question which perplexes us. The narrative begins from 144 A.D., and goes on to 1560 A.D.; but is it possible to admit seriously the authority of an account so obtained, extending over so many centuries? At the time of its publication all the natives had preserved was a dubious legend; and traditions fared hardly better with the caciques and nobles fallen from their high estate, than they did with the common people, for “the former were often reduced,” says Cogolludo, “to the extreme of poverty; and forty years after the Conquest (1582) the royal descendants of Tutulxiu, and the princely house of Mayapan, were obliged to work for their living like the humblest amongst their ancient subjects.”[119]
MARKET PLACE OF IZAMAL.
This picture, sad as it is, became even worse a few years later, when the conquerors had reduced the whole population to a state of hard bondage. The only difference of any importance between the Perez manuscript and the narratives of Clavigero, Veytia, and Ixtlilxochitl, is in the chronology, which is far too absurd for any serious consideration, for while the latter gives the seventh century as the date of the arrival of the Toltecs at Tula, and their subsequent migration in Central America at the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century; with the former they leave Tula in 144 A.D., and arrive in Yucatan in 217 A.D., nearly five hundred years before the generally accepted date of their arrival at Tula. Moreover he calls Yucatan an island, although the new-comers had penetrated the country through Tabasco and the south without crossing the sea, clearly indicating that it was a peninsula.
The church of Izamal is very fine, but its chief attraction in the eyes of the natives is a statue of the Virgin. Its story runs thus:
A celebrated artist of Guatemala received an order from the towns of Izamal and Merida respectively, for two statues of the Virgin; in their transit, which took place in the rainy season, neither the case containing the images, nor the men conveying them, got a drop of rain. Valladolid, jealous that so small a place as Izamal should possess this fine statue, came in great force and carried it off, but the image proved stronger than all those men put together, for it became so heavy that it had to be abandoned at the outskirts of the little town. The miracle was followed by a great many more, so that the Izamal Virgin was soon the most celebrated in the peninsula, attracting as many pilgrims as did formerly Kab-Ul, of the Miraculous Hand.
We set off at five in the morning for Valladolid, to avoid the overpowering heat of the day; indeed, all traffic between May and September in these tropical regions is done by night, for the greater comfort of both man and beast. We watch the sun rise in the east, but far from enlivening the scene, it seems only to bring out in stronger relief the desolateness of the landscape. A few carts with natives on their way home shivering with the night cold, a wretched tumbledown hamlet called Stilipech, is all we notice on our route; and indeed we have much to do with keeping our seats in these volan cochés, which rattle along at so furious a pace on these atrocious roads, as to make us wonder what power keeps them from being smashed to pieces.