At the time of my attack, Mr. Catherwood, Doctor Cabot, and Albino were all down with fever. I had a recurrence the next day, but on the third I was able to move about. The spectacle around was gloomy for sick men. From the long continuance of the rainy season our rooms in the convent were damp, and corn which we kept in one corner for the horses had swelled and sprouted.
Death was all around us. Anciently this country was so healthy that Torquemada says, "Men die of pure old age, for there are none of those infirmities that exist in other lands; and if there are slight infirmities, the heat destroys them, and so there is no need of a physician there;" but the times are much better for physicians now, and Doctor Cabot, if he had been able to attend to it, might have entered into an extensive gratuitous practice. Adjoining the front of the church, and connecting with the convent, was a great charnel-house, along the wall of which was a row of skulls. At the top of a pillar forming the abutment of the wall of the staircase was a large vase piled full, and the cross was surmounted with them. Within the enclosure was a promiscuous assemblage of skulls and bones several feet deep. Along the wall, hanging by cords, were the bones and skulls of individuals in boxes and baskets, or tied up in cloths, with names written upon them, and, as at Ticul, there were the fragments of dresses, while some of the skulls had still adhering to them the long black hair of women.
The floor of the church was interspersed with long patches of cement, which covered graves, and near one of the altars was a box with a glass case, within which were the bones of a woman, the wife of a lively old gentleman whom we were in the habit of seeing every day. They were clean and bright as if polished, with the skull and cross-bones in front, the legs and arms laid on the bottom, and the ribs disposed regularly in order, one above the other, as in life, having been so arranged by the husband himself; a strange attention, as it seemed, to a deceased wife. At the side of the case was a black board, containing a poetical inscription (in Spanish) written by him.
"Stop, mortal!
Look at yourself in this mirror,
And in its pale reflection
Behold your end!
This eclipsed crystal
Had splendour and brilliancy;