Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. I.

by John L. Stephens

At dark the Indian arrived with my luggage, sweating at every pore, having carried it twenty-one miles, for which I paid him three shillings and sixpence. As he was going away we gave him a roll of bread, and he asked by signs if he was to carry it to the cura. Being made to comprehend that he was to eat it himself, he sat down and commenced immediately, having probably never eaten so much bread before in his life. We then gave him half a cup of Habanero, some plantains and a cigar, and, as the dew was heavy, told him to sit by the fire. When he had finished these we repeated the portion, and he seemed hardly to believe his good fortune real, but he had an idea that he was well off, and either from being a stranger, and free from the apprehensions felt by the Indians of Uxmal, or else from a fancy he had taken to us, he asked for a costal, a piece of hemp bagging, to sleep upon. We gave him one, and he lay down by the fire; for a while he endeavoured to protect his naked body against the moschetoes, and kept up a continued slapping, lighter or heavier according to the aggravation, changed his position, and tried the back corridor, but it was all in vain; and, finally, with a sad attempt at a smile, he asked for another drink of Habanero and a cigar, and went away.

On the twenty-fourth of December Doctor Cabot returned from Ticul, bringing back with him Albino, who was still in a rueful plight. Unfortunately, the cura Carillo was unwell, and unable to accompany him, but had promised to follow in a few days. On Christmas eve we were all once more together, and Christmas Day, in spite of ourselves, was a holyday. No Indians came out to work. Chaipa Chi, who had moved regularly as the sun, for the first time failed. We had, however, as visiters, a number of women from the village of Moona. From the top of the House of the Dwarf we saw them moving toward that of the Nuns, and went down to receive them. The only males who accompanied them were a lad about fourteen attending his newly-married wife, and the husband of the woman I had seen buried, who either had not the spirit for joining in the festivities at the hacienda, or was putting himself in the way of repairing his loss.

Unable to do anything at the ruins, I walked down to the hacienda to see one of our horses which had a sore back. The hacienda was deserted, but the sound of violins led me to the place where the Indians were congregated. Preparations were making on a large scale for the evening feast. The place looked like a butcher's shambles, for they had cut up what had once composed eight turkeys, two hogs, and I do not know how many fowls. The women were all busy; Chaipa Chi was lady-patroness, and up to her elbows in tortillas.

I walked on to the campo santo, for the purpose of carrying away two skulls which I had selected and laid aside on the charnel pile at the time of the funeral. I had taken some precautions, for the news of the carrying off the bones from San Francisco had created some excitement among the Indians all over the country; and as I had to pass a long row of huts, I had procured two calabazas, or gourds, for drinking cups, which I carried in a pocket-handkerchief, and intended to throw away in the graveyard, and substitute the skulls. On reaching the pile, however, I found that other hands had been upon it. The skulls I had selected had been displaced and mingled with the others, so that I could not identify them. I examined the whole heap, but could recognise only the huge skull of an African and that of the woman I had seen dug up. The latter was the skull of a full-blooded Indian, but it had been damaged by the crowbar; besides, I had seen all her bones and her very flesh taken piecemeal out of the grave; I had heard so much of her that she seemed an acquaintance, and I had some qualms of conscience about carrying her skull away. In fact, alone in the stillness and silence of the place, something of a superstitious feeling came over me about disturbing the bones of the dead and robbing a graveyard. I should nevertheless, perhaps, have taken up two skulls at random, but, to increase my wavering feeling, I saw two Indian women peeping at me through the trees, and, not wishing to run the risk of creating a disturbance on the hacienda, I left the graveyard with empty hands. The majoral afterward told me that it was fortunate I had done so, for that if I had carried any away, it would have caused an excitement among the Indians, and perhaps led to mischief.

The account of our residence at Uxmal is now drawing to a close, and it is time to bring before the reader the remainder of the ruins; but before doing so I shall make one remark in regard to the work of Mr. Waldeck, which was published in folio at Paris in 1835, and, except my own hurried notice, is the only account that has ever been published of the ruins at Uxmal. I had this work with me on our last visit. It will be found that our plans and drawings differ materially from his, but Mr. Waldeck was not an architectural draughtsman, and he complains that his drawings were taken from him by the Mexican government. I differ from him, too, in the statement of some facts, and almost entirely in opinions and conclusions; but these things occur of course, and the next person who visits these ruins will perhaps differ in many respects from both of us. It is proper to say, moreover, that Mr. Waldeck had much greater difficulties to encounter than we, for at the time of his visit the ground had not been cleared for a milpa, and the whole field was overgrown with trees; besides, he is justly entitled to the full credit of being the first stranger who visited these ruins, and brought them to the notice of the public.

To return. I have already mentioned the Casa del Gobernador and the Casa de las Tortugas, or House of the Turtles, the latter of which stands on the grand platform of the second terrace of the Casa del Gobernador, at the northwest corner.

Descending from this building, and on a line with the doorway of the Casa de las Monjas, going north, at the distance of two hundred and forty feet are two ruined edifices facing each other, and seven feet apart, as laid down on the general plan of the ruins. Each is one hundred and twenty-eight feet long, and thirty feet deep, and, so far as they can be made out, they appear to have been exactly alike in plan and ornament. The sides facing each other were embellished with sculpture, and there remain on both the fragments of entwined colossal serpents, which ran the whole length of the walls.

In the centre of each façade, at points directly opposite each other, are the fragments of a great stone ring. Each of these rings was four feet in diameter, and secured in the wall by a stone tenon of corresponding dimensions. They appear to have been broken wilfully; of each, the part nearest the stem still projects from the wall, and the outer surface is covered with sculptured characters. We made excavations among the ruins along the base of the walls, in hope of discovering the missing parts of these rings, but without success.

These structures have no doorways or openings of any kind, either on the sides or at the ends. In the belief that they must have interior chambers, we made a breach in the wall of the one on the east to the depth of eight or ten feet, but we found only rough stones, hanging so loosely together as to make it dangerous for the Indians to work in the holes, and they were obliged to discontinue.

This excavation, however, carried us through nearly one third of the structure, and satisfied us that these great parallel edifices did not contain any interior apartments, but that each consisted merely of four great walls, filled up with a solid mass of stones. It was our opinion that they had been built expressly with reference to the two great rings facing each other in the façades, and that the space between was intended for the celebration of some public games, in which opinion we were afterward confirmed.