“The carvings again portray the mask of Kukul Can, with interlinking geometrical designs. A single doorway gives access to the interior, once rich in murals, and the bright sunshine striking upon the white floor floods the whole room with clear light. Close to the ceiling are traces of a row of medallions which originally contained hieroglyphs.
“Another building of about the same size is similarly finished and decorated with the mask of Kukul Can. It contains several small rooms. The entire wall of one apartment has been removed, by not very ancient builders, for the prosaic purpose of making a stone fence. In passing I might mention also that a good-sized pit has been made near one side of the grand stairway of La Casa de las Monjas, it being easier to get cut stone in this way than to quarry it.
“No great amount of labor would be required to put this group of buildings in nearly its pristine condition. Nearly all the stones that have fallen lie where they fell and could easily be replaced. Near the grand stairway lie many sculptured images of serpents, birds, and animals, of massive size and carved in full relief. These formed the balustrade and might be replaced even though some are missing. I have no doubt that when the debris at the base of the buildings is removed new archæological treasures will be revealed.
“As an interesting bit of authentic history, the main building was occupied by the soldiers of Montejo, who were besieged there by the enraged native populace. They escaped by night, through the rear of the buildings, by means of a ruse. The besiegers did not discover until dawn that the enemy had fled many hours before.
“Just when one decides that there is nothing new to surprise him, in this old city, he comes upon something else to puzzle his brain, spurring his curiosity into vain excursions after the why and wherefore of it all.
“We leave the unexplainable Casa de las Monjas and, walking westward less than a hundred yards, stand before the Caracol or Snail-shell, which is entirely unlike any other building in the City of the Sacred Well or in all of Yucatan. This curious structure, we imagine, was either a watch-tower or an astronomical observatory—though it may have served a quite different purpose. It is round and built on a terrace two hundred feet square of cut stone, twenty feet in height. Above this is a second stone terrace, twelve feet high. These terraces have sheer vertical sides, but much fallen stone and debris have gathered about them. From the west a stairway forty-five feet wide leads to the first terrace; it was once bordered with great stone balusters in the form of tremendous entwined serpents, their heads on the ground, their bodies forming the balustrade and ending at the top in rattles. The same sort of device is found again and again in Maya architecture. A second similar stairway leads to the upper terrace and the door of the building. A projecting ornamented cornice caps each terrace.
“At the top of the second stairway was once some large object which Stephens thought was an idol, and here was uncovered a hieroglyphed monument bearing the longest inscription yet found in the city. The round tower is forty feet in diameter and forty feet high, with two concentric walls, each two and a half feet thick. The inner wall incloses a circular chamber at the center of which is a core of small diameter, solid except for a winding stairway at its center, extending from the ground-level to the height of the double walls. There is also a passage, now almost obliterated, piercing the lower terrace and connecting with this winding stairway. The building at the top of the double walls has a deep-jutting five-tiered cornice above which rises another and smaller single-walled tower, surrounded by a promenade or ledge, not unlike the balcony of a lighthouse, at the height of the cornice.
“The space between the outer and the inner wall provides an arched chamber five feet wide and one hundred feet in circumference. The inner chamber also is arched and is eight feet wide. The usual Maya arch construction is employed, the arch beginning at a height of ten feet and being about twenty-four feet at the peak. The upper ruined tower, about twenty feet high, contained a stone-lined passage facing due west which might have been used as a line of sight for astronomical observations.
“The outer walls are pierced by four openings—windows or doorways, whichever they may have been—corresponding to the four points of the compass. Similar openings occur in the inner wall but, curiously, they are exactly forty-five degrees out of line with the openings in the outer wall. One of the most novel features in the construction are the many wooden beams placed horizontally between the inner and outer shells of masonry. As these are set in the masonry, it is evident that they are an original and integral part of the building, probably put there to help support the stone-work during construction. Many have stood the test of time and are still stanch and firm. They are hewn from the famous sapote tree, whose wood of steel-like hardness alone could have endured through the centuries. There is no ornamentation within the building, nor upon its walls, and the construction is pure Maya except that it is round where all else is square.
“The curious edifice is on high ground and its construction leads inevitably to the idea of a watch-tower. Its builders knew in their time quite as much about astronomy as did any contemporary race—if not more. The periods of sun, moon, and planets they knew with great accuracy. For these reasons I like to think that their priests and sages came to this tower, making divinations from the stars and laboriously charting their positions and courses. Possibly they were panic-stricken by an occasional eclipse of moon or sun, which they called chi-bal-kin, ‘the moon or sun devoured by serpents or other beings.’