North of the bay of Chetumal on the Atlantic, the Laguna de Terminos on the gulf of Mexico, and latitude 17° 50´ in the interior, lies the peninsula of Yucatan, one of the few exceptions to the general direction of the world's peninsulas, projecting north-eastwardly from the continent, its form approximately a parallelogram whose sides measure two hundred and fifty miles from north to south and two hundred from east to west. Its whole surface, so far as known to geographers, may be termed practically a level plain only slightly elevated above the level of the sea. The coast for the most part, and especially in the north, is low, sandy, and barren, with few indentations affording harbors, and correspondingly few towns and cities of any importance. Crossing the narrow coast region, however, we find the interior fertile and heavily wooded. While there are no mountains that deserve the name, yet there are not entirely wanting ranges of hills to break up and diversify by their elevation of from two hundred to five hundred feet the monotony of a dead level. Chief among these is the Sierra de Yucatan, so called, an offshoot of the southern Peten heights, branching out from the great central Cordillera. It stretches north-eastward nearly parallel with the eastern coast to within some twenty-five miles of Cape Catoche. Another line of hills on the opposite gulf coast extends from the mouth of the River Champoton, also north-eastward, toward Mérida, the capital of the state, about thirty miles south-west of which place it deflects abruptly at right angles from its former direction, and with one or two parallel minor ranges extends south-eastward at least half-way across the state. At some period geologically recent the waves of ocean and gulf doubtless beat against this elbow-shaped sierra, then the coast barrier of the peninsula; since the country lying to the north and west presents everywhere in its limestone formation traces of its comparatively late emergence from beneath the sea. The lack of water on the surface is a remarkable feature in the physical geography of Yucatan. There are no rivers, and the few small streams along the coast extend but few miles inland and disappear as a rule in the dry season. One small lake, whose waters are strongly impregnated with salt, is the only body of water in the broad interior, which is absolutely destitute of streams. From June to October of each year rain falls in torrents, and the sandy, calcareous soil seems to possess a wonderful property of retaining the stored-up moisture, since the ardent rays of the tropical sun beating down through the long rainless summer months, rarely succeed in parching any portion of the surface into any approach to the sterility of a desert. The summer temperature, although high, is modified by sea-breezes from the east and west; consequently the heat is less oppressive and the climate on the whole more healthful than in any other state of the American tierra caliente. The inhabitants, something over half a million in number, of whom a very large proportion are full-blooded natives of the Maya race, are a quiet and peaceful though brave people, living simply on the products of the soil and of the forest, and each community taking but little interest in the affairs of the world away from their own immediate neighborhood. They made a brave but vain resistance to the progress of foreign conquerors, and have since lived for the most part in quiet subjection to the power of a dominant race and the priests of a foreign faith, having lost almost completely the ambitious and haughty spirit for which they were once noted, and forgotten practically the greatness of their civilized ancestors. Since throwing off the power of Spain, they have passed through four or five revolutions,—a noteworthy record when compared with that of other Spanish American states—by which Yucatan has passed successively to and fro from the condition of an independent republic to that of a state in the Mexican Republic, to which it now belongs. Except the northern central portion, which contains the capital and principal towns, and which itself, outside of Mérida and the route to the coast, is only comparatively well known through the writings of a few travelers, and except also some of the ports along the coast visited occasionally by trading vessels of various nations, Yucatan is still essentially a terra incognita. It was more thoroughly explored by the Spanish soldiers and priests in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than at any subsequent time. The eastern interior and the southern bordering on the Guatemalan province of Peten are especially unexplored, little or nothing being known of the latter district away from the trails that lead southward, one to Bacalar, the other to Lake Peten, trodden by the feet of few but natives during the last two centuries.
A RICH ANTIQUARIAN FIELD.
Yucatan presents a rich field for antiquarian exploration, furnishing perhaps finer, and certainly more numerous, specimens of ancient aboriginal architecture, sculpture, and painting than have been discovered in any other section of America. The state is literally dotted, at least in the northern central, or best known, portions with ruined edifices and cities. I shall have occasion to mention, and describe more or less fully, in this chapter, such ruins in between fifty and sixty different localities.[V-1] While these monuments, however, are the most extensive and among the best preserved within the limits of the Pacific States, they were yet among the last to be brought to the knowledge of the modern world. In the voyages, made early in the sixteenth century, which immediately preceded the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, Córdova, Grijalva, and Cortés touched at various points along the Yucatan coast, and were amazed to find there on the borders of a new world which they had supposed to be occupied exclusively by barbarians, a civilized people who served their gods and kept their idols in lofty stone temples. But their stay was brief and they pursued their way northward, bent on the conquest of the richer realms of Montezuma. The excitement of the conquest and the new wonders beheld in Anáhuac blotted practically from the popular mind all memory of the southern tower-temples, although their discovery was recorded in the diaries of the expeditions, from which and from verbal descriptions accounts were inserted in the works of the standard historians of the Indies. Later, in the middle of the century, when the turn came for Yucatan to be overrun with soldiers, stone temples had become too familiar sights to excite much attention; yet the chroniclers of the time included in their annals some brief descriptions of the heathen temples destroyed by the Spanish invaders; and the Yucatan historians of the following century, Landa, Cogolludo, and Villagutierre Soto-Mayor, described and personally visited some of the ruins. These earlier accounts have been utilized in delineating the state of architectural art among the Mayas in a preceding volume, and they will also be used somewhat extensively as illustrative material in the following pages. Since these early times the ruins, shrouded by a dense tropical vegetation, have lain untenanted and unknown, save to the peaceful inhabitants of the northern and more thickly settled portions of the state, who have from time to time become aware of their existence accidentally while in search of water or a favorable locality for a milpa, or cornfield. Only a few of the forty-four ruined towns explored by Mr Stephens were known to exist by the people of Mérida, the state capital.
EXPLORATION OF MAYA RUINS.
STEPHENS AND CATHERWOOD.
Since 1830 the veil has been lifted from the principal ruins of ancient Maya works by the researches of Zavala, Waldeck, Stephens, Catherwood, Norman, Friederichsthal, and Charnay. A general account of the antiquarian explorations and writings of these gentlemen is given in the appended note,[V-2] details and notices of additional visitors to particular localities being reserved until I come to speak of those localities. It will be noticed that all the authors mentioned who write from actual observation, have confined their observations to from one to four of the principal ruins, whose existence was known previous to their visits, excepting Messrs Stephens and Catherwood. These gentlemen boldly left the beaten track and brought to the knowledge of the world about forty ruined cities whose very existence had been previously unknown even to the residents of the larger cities of the very state in whose territory they lie. With a force of natives to aid in clearing away the forest, Mr Stephens spent ten months in surveying, and Mr Catherwood in sketching with the aid of a daguerrean camera, the various groups of ruined structures. The accuracy of both survey and drawings is unquestioned. The visit of these explorers was the first, and has thus far proved in most cases the last. The wrecks of Maya architecture have been left to slumber undisturbed in their forest winding-sheet. "For a brief space the stillness that reigned around them was broken, and they were again left to solitude and silence. Time and the elements are hastening them to utter destruction. It has been the fortune of the author to step between them and the entire destruction to which they are destined; and it is his hope to snatch from oblivion these perishing, but still gigantic memorials of a mysterious people." His hope has been fully realized, and his book may be regarded as a model, both as a journal of travel and personal adventure and as a record of antiquarian research. Mr Stephens is one of the very few travelers who have been able to gaze upon the noble monuments of a past civilization without being drawn into a maze of absurd reasoning and conjecture respecting their builders. His conclusions, if sometimes incorrect in the opinion of other antiquarians entitled to a hearing in the matter, are never groundless or rashly formed.
Notwithstanding the extent of Mr Stephens' explorations, a very large part of Yucatan remains yet untrodden by the antiquary's foot. This is especially true in the east, except on the immediate coast, and in the south toward Guatemala. That extensive ruins yet lie hidden in these unexplored regions, can hardly be doubted; indeed, it is by no means certain that the grandest cities, even in the settled and partially explored part of the peninsula, have yet been described; but the uniformity of such as have been brought to our knowledge does not lead us to expect new developments with respect to the nature, whatever may be proved of the extent, of the Maya antiquities.
By reason of the level surface of the peninsula, uncut by rivers, and unbroken by mountain ranges, the determination of the geographical position of its ruins is reduced to a statement of distances and bearings. The location of the chief cities is moreover indicated on the map which accompanies this volume.[V-3] With respect to the order in which they are to be described there would be little ground for preference in favor of any particular arrangement, were they all equally well known. But this is not the case. Two or three of the principal cities have been carefully examined, described, and sketched, and as for the rest, only their points of contrast with the preceding have been pointed out. All that is known of most of the ruins would be wholly unintelligible at the commencement of my description, but will be found comparatively satisfactory further on. Thus I am not only obliged to describe the best-known ruins first, but fortunately these are also among the grandest and most typical of the whole, being, in fact, the very ones that would be selected for the purpose. To fully describe a few and point out contrasts in the rest is the only method of avoiding a very tiresome monotony in attempting to make known some hundreds of structures very like one to another in most of their details as well as in their general features. The similarity observed among the different monuments is a very great advantage to the antiquarian student, since it will enable me, if I mistake not, to give the reader in this chapter as clear an idea of the antiquities of Yucatan, notwithstanding their great number, as of any portion of the Pacific States.
GROUPS OF RUINS.
For convenience in description, then, I divide the ruins in the interior of the state into four groups; the central group,—placed first that I may begin my account with Uxmal—which, besides the extensive ruins of Uxmal, Kabah, and Labná, embraces relics of the past in at least nineteen other localities; the eastern group, including little besides the famous ruins at Chichen Itza; the northern group, in which I mention Izamal, Aké, Mérida, and Mayapan; and the southern group, comprising five or six ruined towns in the region of Iturbide. I shall finally treat of the antiquities discovered at various points on the eastern and western coasts.