Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. I.

by John L. Stephens

In a spirit of utter disappointment, I pointed out to the Indians the mass of earth that, as it were, maliciously cut off all my hopes, and told them to put an end to their lying stories about the Laberinto and its having no end; and in my disappointment I began to feel most sensibly the excessive heat and closeness of the place, which I had hardly perceived before, and which now became almost insufferable from the smoke of the torches and the Indians choking the narrow passage.

All that I could do, and that was very unsatisfactory, was to find out the plan of this subterraneous structure. I had with me a pocket compass, and, notwithstanding the heat and smoke, and the little help that the Indians afforded me, under all annoyances, and with the sweat dropping on my memorandum book, I measured back to the door.

I remained outside a few moments for fresh air, and entered again to explore the passage which branched off to the left of the door. I had just gone far enough to have my hopes revived by the prospect of some satisfactory result, when again I found the passage choked up by the falling in and burial of the arch.

I measured and took the bearings of this too. From the excessive heat and annoyance, this plan may not be very correct, and therefore I do not present it. The description will enable the reader to form some general idea of the character of the structure.

In exploring that part to the left of the door, I made an important discovery. In the walls of one of the passages was a hole eight inches square, which admitted light, and looking through it, I saw some plump and dusky legs, which clearly did not belong to the antiguos, and which I easily recognised as those of my worthy attendants.

Having heard the place spoken of as a subterraneous construction, and seeing, when I reached the ground, a half-buried door with a mass of overgrown earth above it, it had not occurred to me to think otherwise; but on examining outside, I found that what I had taken for an irregular natural formation, like a hill-side, was a pyramidal mound of the same general character with all the rest we had seen in the country. Making the Indians clear away some thorn-bushes, with the help of the branches of a tree growing near I climbed up it. On the top were the ruins of a building the same as all the others. The door of El Laberinto, instead of opening into a hill-side, opened into this mound, and, as near as I could judge from the ruins along the base, was ten feet high, and the Laberinto, instead of being subterraneous, or, rather, under the surface of the earth was in the body of this mound. Heretofore it had been our impression that these mounds were solid and compact masses of stone and earth, without any chambers or structures of any kind, and the discovery of this gave rise to the exciting idea that all the great mounds scattered over the country contained secret, unknown, and hidden chambers, presenting an immense field for exploration and discovery, and, ruined as the buildings on their summits were, perhaps the only source left for acquiring knowledge of the people by whom the cities were constructed.

I was really at a loss to know what to do. I was almost tempted to abandon everything else, send word to my companions and not leave the spot till I had pulled down the whole mound, and discovered every secret it contained; but it was not a work to be undertaken in a hurry, and I determined to leave it for a future occasion. Unfortunately, in the multiplicity of other occupations in distant regions of the country, I never had an opportunity of returning to this mound. It remains with all its mystery around it, worthy the enterprise of some future explorer, and I cannot but indulge the hope that the time is not far distant when its mystery will be removed and all that is hidden brought to light.

In the account which I had received of this Labyrinth, no mention had been made of any ruins, and probably, when on the ground, I should have heard nothing of them, but from the top of this mound I saw two others, both of which, with a good deal of labour, I reached under the guidance of the Indians, crossing a patch of beans and milpa. I ascended them both. On the top of one was a building eighty or a hundred feet long. The front wall had fallen, and left exposed the inner part of the back wall, with half the arch, as it were, supporting itself in the air. The Indians then led me to a fourth mound, and told me that there were others in the woods, but all in the same ruinous condition; and, considering the excessive heat and the desperate toil of clambering, I did not think it worth while to visit them. I saw no sculptured stones, except those I have before mentioned, dug out like troughs, and called pilas, though the Indians persisted in saying that there were such all over, but they did not know exactly where to find them.

At three o'clock I resumed my journey toward Uxmal. For a short distance the road lay along the ridge of the sierra, a mere bed of rock, on which the horse's hoofs clattered and rang at every step. Coming out upon the brow of the sierra, we had one of those grand views which everywhere present themselves from this mountain range; an immense wooded plain, in this place broken only by a small spot like a square on a chess-board, the clearing of the hacienda of Santa Cruz. We descended the sierra, and at the foot of it struck the camino real.

About an hour before dark, and a league before reaching the village of Opocheque, I saw on the left, near the road, a high mound, with an edifice on its top, which at that distance, as seen through the trees, seemed almost entire. It stood in a corn-field. I was not looking out for anything of the kind, and but for the clearing made for the milpa, I could not have seen it at all. I threw the bridle of my horse to the major domo, and made for it, but it was not very easy of access. The field, according to the fashion of the country, was enclosed by a fence, which consisted of all the brush and briers collected on the clearing, six or eight feet high and as many wide, affording a sufficient barrier against wild cattle. In attempting to cross this, I broke through, sinking almost to my neck in the middle, and was considerably torn by thorns before I got over into the milpa.