In these entertainments may be traced the customs of the ancient Indians which are unconsciously kept up by their descendants. We read in Landa: “They often spent in one banquet what they had been a long time earning with difficulty. Banquets were of two kinds: those given by the caciques and great nobles to their friends for the mere pleasure of showing their hospitality, when they expected to be asked in return. The table on all such occasions was well provided with meats, game, vegetables, and fruit of every kind, and at the conclusion of the entertainment, the guests were presented with rich dresses and ornaments, when they withdrew after midnight.” “If one died before the debt of his obligation had been paid, the duty fell to his family. Next came the occasions when a marriage occurred in a family, or when the illustrious deeds of an ancestor were celebrated by the whole clan. On such occasions the necessity of returning the banquet was not enforced; but if a person belonging to another family had been asked, he was expected to invite them all again when he married.”[120]
There is positively nothing worthy of remark with regard to our road, save here and there a palm or cedar-tree towering like a giant over the thick underwood overrun with flowering lianas, peopled with great sky-blue butterflies, whose wings are tipped with black; for the whole country to the east and south of Citas is a vast scene of desolation. Pisté, where we arrive, stands on the extreme border of the state; it has been so often sacked and burnt by the revolted natives, that the only building left is the church, occupied by a company of twenty-five men. It looks a forsaken, God-forgotten place, a veritable exile for the small garrison quartered here in turn for three months in the year; not that there is any immediate danger, for the natives, who first rose to conquer their liberties, fell to massacring from a spirit of revenge, and now only take the field for the sake of plunder. We have nothing to tempt their cupidity, consequently our escort of fifty men is a measure of prudence rather than of necessity.
CHURCH AND SQUARE, CITAS.
EL CASTILLO OF CHICHEN-ITZA.