Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. II.

by John L. Stephens

The last of the padre's good offices was procuring a horse for Doctor Cabot, which the alcalde had not been able to do. It was the last time we were thrown upon the hospitality of a padre, and in taking leave of him, I do repent me that in my confidential intercourse with the reader I have at times let fall what I might better have kept to myself.

At ten o'clock we set out, and at half past twelve reached Temax, two and a half leagues distant. It had a fine plaza, with a great church and convent, and a stone casa real, with a broad corridor in front, under which the guarda were swinging in hammocks.

We were but six leagues from Izamal, at which place, we learned, a fiesta was then going on, and there was to be a ball in the evening; but we could neither push our horses through, nor procure a calesa, though the road was good for wheel carriages.

Early in the evening we took to our hammocks, but had hardly lain down, when one of the guarda came to inform us that a caricoche had just arrived from Izamal, and wanted a return freight. We had it brought down to the casa real, and at two o'clock, by a bright moonlight, we started, leaving Dimas to follow with the horses. The caricoche was drawn by three mules, and had in it a bed, on which we reclined at full length.

At nine o'clock we entered the suburbs of Izamal, but fifteen leagues from Merida. The streets had lamps, and were designated by visible objects, as at Merida. Peeping through the curtain, we rode into the plaza, which was alive with people, dressed in clean clothes for the fiesta. There was an unusual proportion of gentlemen with black hats and canes, and some with military coats, bright and flashing to such a degree that we congratulated ourselves upon not having made our entry on horseback. We had on our shooting-clothes, with the mud stains from Punta Arenas, and by computation our beards were of twenty-eight days' growth. In the centre of the plaza our driver stopped for instructions. We directed him to the casa real, and as we were moving on, our English saddles, strapped on behind, caught the eye of Albino, who conducted us to the house in which Mr. Catherwood was already domiciled. This house was a short distance from the plaza, built of stone, and about sixty feet front, divided into two large salas, with rooms adjoining, a broad corridor behind, and a large yard for horses, for all which the rent was three reales per day, being, as we were advised, but two more than anybody else would have been obliged to pay. In a few moments we had done all that our scanty wardrobe would allow, and were again in the street.

It was the last day of the fiesta of Santa Cruz. By the grace of a beneficent government, the village of Izamal had been erected into a city, and the jubilee on account of this accession of political dignity was added to the festival of the holy cross. The bull-fights were over, but the bull-ring, fancifully ornamented, still remained in the centre of the plaza, and two bulls stood under one of the corridors, pierced with wounds and streaming with blood, as memorials of the fight. Amid a crowd of Indians were parties of vecinos, or white people, gay and well dressed in the style and costume of the capital, and under the corridor of a corner house, with an arbour projecting into the plaza, music was sounding to summon the people to a ball. From desolation and solitude we had come into the midst of gayeties, festivities, and rejoicings. But amid this gay scene the eye turned involuntarily to immense mounds rising grandly above the tops of the houses, from which the whole city had been built, without seeming to diminish their colossal proportions, proclaiming the power of those who reared them, and destined, apparently, to stand, when the feebler structures of their more civilized conquerors shall have crumbled into dust.

One of these great mounds, having at that time benches upon it, commanding a view of the bullfight in the plaza, blocked up the yard of the house we occupied, and extended into the adjoining yard of the Señora Mendez, who was the owner of both. It is, perhaps, two hundred feet long and thirty high. The part in our yard was entirely ruined, but in that of the señora it appeared that its vast sides had been covered from one end to the other with colossal ornaments in stucco, most of which had fallen, but among the fragments is the gigantic head represented in the plate opposite. It is seven feet eight inches in height and seven feet in width. The ground-work is of projecting stones, which are covered with stucco. A stone one foot six inches long protrudes from the chin, intended, perhaps, for burning copal on, as a sort of altar. It was the first time we had seen an ornament of this kind upon the exterior of any of these structures. In sternness and harshness of expression it reminded us of the idols at Copan, and its colossal proportions, with the corresponding dimensions of the mound, gave an unusual impression of grandeur.

Two or three streets distant from the plaza, but visible in all its huge proportions, was the most stupendous mound we had seen in the country, being, perhaps, six or seven hundred feet long and sixty feet high, which, we ascertained beyond all doubt, had interior chambers.

Turning from these memorials of former power to the degraded race that now lingers round them, the stranger might run wild with speculation and conjecture, but on the north side of the plaza is a monument that recalls his roving thoughts, and holds up to his gaze a leaf in history. It is the great church and convent of Franciscan monks, standing on an elevation, and giving a character to the plaza that no other in Yucatan possesses. Two flights of stone steps lead up to it, and the area upon which they open is probably two hundred feet square; on three sides is a colonnade, forming a noble promenade, overlooking the city and the surrounding country to a great distance. This great elevation was evidently artificial, and not the work of the Spaniards.