Plate No. 8 represents the capstan that served me to raise the statue, the size of which you may know, Sr. President, comparing it with your servant and the Indians who aided at the work. The trunk of a tree, with two hollowed stones, were the fundamental pieces of the machine. These rings of stone were secured to the trunk with vines. Two forked poles, whose extremities rest at each side of the excavation, and the forked sticks tied up to the superior ring embracing it, served as arc-boutant in the direction where the greatest force was to be applied. A tree-trunk, with its fork, served as a fulcrum around which was wound the cable of bark. A pole placed in the fork served as lever. It is with the aid of this rustic capstan that my ten men were able to raise the heavy mass to the surface in half an hour.
But my works were not to end there. True, the statue was on the surface of the earth, but it was surrounded by débris, by ponderous stones, and trunks of trees. Its weight was enormous compared with the strength of my few men. These on the other hand worked by halves. They always had the ear attentive to catch the least sound that was perceived in the bush. The people of Crecencio Poot might fall upon us at any moment, and exterminate us. True, we had sentinels, but the forest is thick and immense, and those of Chan-Santa-Cruz make their way through it with great facility.
Open roads there were none, not even to carry the statue of Chaacmol to civilization if I had the means of transport.
Well, then, I had resolved that, cost what it might, the world should know my statue—my statue, that was to establish my fame forever among the scientific circles of the civilized world. I had to carry it, but, alas! I calculated without the prohibitive laws.... Sr. President, to-day, with grief I write it, it is buried in the forests, where my wife and myself have concealed it. Perhaps the world will only know it by my photographs, for I have yet to open three long leagues of road to conduct it to Ɔitas, and the moment is already approaching when the doors of the American Exhibition will open.
With all that, I have faith in the justice, intelligence, and patriotism of the men who rule the destinies of the Mexican Republic.
Will the man who, to place his country at the height of other civilized nations, has known how to improvise, in less than three months, an astronomical commission, and send it to Japan to observe the transit of Venus, will he permit, I ask, the greatest discovery ever made in American archæology, to remain lost and unknown to the scientific men, to the artists, to the travellers, to the choicest of the nations that are soon to gather at Philadelphia? No! I do not believe it! I do not wish to, I cannot believe it!
These difficulties, I had conquered! Plate No. 9 proves how, having found the means of raising the statue from the depth of its pedestal, I knew also how to make it pass over the débris that impeded its progress. My few men armed with levers were able to carry it where there was a rustic cart made by me with a machete.
With rollers and levers I was able to carry it over the sculptured stones, its companions, that seemed to oppose its departure. But with rollers and levers alone I could not take it to Pisté, four kilometers distant, much less to Ɔitas, distant from Pisté sixteen kilometers; it needed a cart and that cart a road.
Sr. President, the cart has been made, the road has been opened without any expense to the State. In fifteen days the statue arrived at Pisté, as proved by plate 11. Senor D. Daniel Traconis, his wife and their young son, who had come to visit us, witnessed the triumphal entrance of the Itza Chieftain Chaacmol, at Pisté, the first resting place on the road that leads from Chichen to Philadelphia. I have opened more than three kilometers of good cart road of five to six meters in width, from Pisté toward Ɔitas; but for reasons that it is out of place to refer to here, and which I have not been able up to the present time to alter, for they do not depend on me, I have seen myself compelled to hurriedly abandon my works on the 6th of the present month of January.
I have come with all speed to Mérida, from which place I direct to you the present writing; but until now, having to contend against inertia, I have obtained nothing.