Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. I.

by John L. Stephens

In the interest of the work, I did not discover that thousands of garrapatas were crawling over me. These insects are the scourge of Yucatan, and altogether they were a more constant source of annoyance and suffering than any we encountered in the country. I had seen something of them in Central America, but at a different season, when the hot sun had killed off the immensity of their numbers, and those left had attained such a size that a single one could easily be seen and picked off. These, in colour, size, and numbers, were like grains of sand. They disperse themselves all over the body, get into the seams of the clothes, and, like the insect known among us as the tick, bury themselves in the flesh, causing an irritation that is almost intolerable. The only way to get rid of them effectually is by changing all the clothes. In Uxmal we had not been troubled with them, for they are said to breed only in those woods where cattle pasture, and the grounds about Uxmal had been used as a milpa, or plantation of corn. It was the first time I had ever had them upon me in such profusion, and their presence disturbed most materially the equanimity with which I examined the paintings. In fact I did not remain long on the ground.

It is particularly unfortunate that, while so many apartments have remained free, this most curious and interesting one has become filled up. It is probable that the walls, as well as the arch, are plastered and painted. It would have cost a week's labour to clear it out, and my impression was, that, in consequence of the dirt having been piled up against the walls for an unknown length of time, through a long succession of rainy seasons, the colours were so completely effaced that nothing would have been discovered to compensate for the labour.

It was now nearly dark. My day's work had been a severe one. I was tired and covered with garrapatas, but the next day was Sunday, the last of the fiesta, and I determined on returning to the village that night. There was a brilliant moonlight, and, hurrying on, at eleven o'clock I saw, at the end of a long straight road, the illuminated front of the church of Jalacho. Very soon, amid the shining lights and congregated thousands, I forgot desolations and ruins, and my sympathies once more moved with the living. I passed by the tables of the gamblers, worked my way through the plaza and through a crowd of Indians, who fell back in deference to the colour of my skin, and, unexpectedly to my friends, presented myself at the baile. This time I had no disposition to sleep. For the last night of the fiesta the neighbouring villages had sent forth their all; the ball was larger and gayer of whites and those in whose veins white blood ran, while outside, leaning upon the railing, looking in, but not presuming to enter, were close files of Indians, and beyond, in the plaza, was a dense mass of them—natives of the land and lords of the soil, that strange people in whose ruined cities I had just been wandering, submitting quietly to the dominion of strangers, bound down and trained to the most abject submission, and looking up to the white man as a superior being. Could these be the descendants of that fierce people who had made such bloody resistance to the Spanish conquerors?

At eleven o'clock the ball broke up and fireworks were let off from the balustrade of the church. These ended with the national piece of El Castillo, and at twelve o'clock, when we went away, the plaza was as full of Indians as at midday. At no time since my arrival in the country had I been so struck with the peculiar constitution of things in Yucatan. Originally portioned out as slaves, the Indians remain as servants. Veneration for masters is the first lesson they learn, and these masters, the descendants of the terrible conquerors, in centuries of uninterrupted peace have lost all the fierceness of their ancestors. Gentle, and averse to labour themselves, they impose no heavy burdens upon the Indians, but understand and humour their ways, and the two races move on harmoniously together, with nothing to apprehend from each other, forming a simple, primitive, and almost patriarchal state of society; and so strong is the sense of personal security, that, notwithstanding the crowds of strangers, and although every day Don Simon had sat with doors open and piles of money on the table, so little apprehension was there of robbery, that we slept without a door or window locked.

[CHAPTER X.]

Sunday.—Mass.—A grand Procession.—Intoxicated Indians.—Set out for Mazcanú.—A Caricoché.—Scenery.—Arrival at Maxcanú.—Care of Mazcanú.—Threading a Labyrinth.—An Alarm.—An abrupt Termination.—Important Discovery.—Labyrinth not subterraneous.—More Mounds.—Journey continued.—Grand View.—Another Mound.—An Accident.—Village of Opocheque.—View from the Sierra.—More Ruins.—Return to Uxmal.—Change of Quarters.—An Addition to the Household.—Beautiful Scene.

The next day was Sunday. The church was thronged for grand mass; candles were burned, and offerings were made to the amount of many medios, and at nine o'clock the bells tolled for the procession, the crowning scene of the fiesta. The church was emptied of its votaries, and the plaza was alive with people hurrying to take a place in the procession, or to see it pass. I climbed up into the Plaza de Toros, and had a whole box to myself.

The space along the side of the bull-ring was thronged; and first came a long procession of Indians with lighted candles; then the ministro with the large silver salver, and money upon it, presenting it on either side to receive additional offerings. As it passed, a woman walked up and put upon it two reales, probably her all. Then came, borne on a barrow above the heads of the crowd, the figure which had attracted so much veneration in the church, Santiago on horseback, with his scarlet and embroidered mantle and green velvet pantaloons bordered with gold. This was followed by the cura, a fat, yellow-looking half-bred, with his two dirty-faced assistants. Directly under me the procession stopped, and the priests, turning toward the figure of the saint, set up a chant. This over, the figure moved on, and stopping from time to time, continued to work its way around the church, until finally it was restored to its place on the altar. So ended the fair of Jalacho and the fête of Santiago, the second which I had seen since my arrival in the country, and both exhibiting the powerful influence of the ceremonials of the church over the minds of the Indians. Throughout the state, this class of the inhabitants pays annually a tax of twelve reales per head for the support of the cura; and it was said on the ground that the Indians at this fiesta had paid eight hundred dollars for salves, five hundred for aves, and six hundred for masses, which, if true, was an enormous sum out of their small earnings.

But the fiesta was over, and almost immediately the crowd was in motion, preparing to set out for home. At three o'clock every street was lined with people, some less and others more heavily laden than they came, and some carrying home the respectable head of a family in a state of brutal intoxication; and here I particularly remarked, what I had frequently observed before, that among all the intoxication of the Indians, it was a rare thing to see a woman in that state; it was really an interesting spectacle to see these poor women, with their children around them, supporting and conducting homeward their intoxicated husbands.

At four o'clock I set off with Don Lorenzo Peon, a brother of Don Simon, for Maxcanú. Our mode of conveyance, much used in Yucatan, but new to me, was called a caricoché. It was a long wagon on two large wheels, covered with cotton cloth as a protection against the sun, and on the bottom was stretched a broad mattress, on which two persons could recline at full length. If they would sit up, it was large enough for three or four. It was drawn by one horse, with a driver riding as postillion, and another horse followed to change. The road was broad, even, and level. It was the camino real between Merida and Campeachy, and would pass in any country for a fair carriage-road. All along we passed parties of Indians returning from the fair. In an hour we came in sight of the sierra which traverses at that point the whole peninsula of Yucatan from east to west. The sight of hills was cheering, and with the reflection of the setting sun upon them, they presented almost the first fine scenery I had encountered in the country. In an hour and ten minutes we reached Maxcanú, twelve miles distant, being by far the greatest speed at which I ever travelled in Yucatan.