“But perhaps this tower was no more than a military precaution, a place where solitary watchers by day and night constantly scanned the horizon. Maybe it was merely the local police station or fire department from which could be seen any undue disturbance or the outbreak of a conflagration. I shall leave it to you to make your own conclusions, which may be quite as near to or as far from the actual fact as my own, over which I have puzzled backward and forward for many years.
“To the north a distance of four hundred feet is the so-called Red House, or Chich-an Chob, the latter name meaning ‘strong, clean house.’ The name Red House is derived from the fact that the antechamber or vestibule across the front of the building has a broad painted band of red running about its four walls. This is the best-preserved building of all my city; scarcely a stone is missing. Its four walls face exactly the four points of the compass; its main entrance is in the western wall, while the eastern wall is unbroken. It now rises from a lovely grassy terrace, slightly sloping from the vertical and about twelve feet high by sixty feet long, faced with large stone blocks and having rounded corner stones at each of the four sloping edges of the pyramidal form. Extending around the top of the terrace is a regular Maya cornice, or projecting coping. Approaching the western entrance is a stone stairway, twenty feet wide, of sixteen high and shallow cut-stone steps—a staircase as distinctly Mayan as the mask of Kukul Can. And this stairway is as perfect to-day as the day it was finished, not a stone out of place or broken. It seems incredible that it could have lain there so many centuries at the mercy of the tropical wilderness and of passing vandals and have suffered not at all.
“Chich-an Chob deceives one at first glance, seeming to rise to a stately height because of its twenty-eight foot façade. The roof, however, is but twenty feet above the floor. The false front is nevertheless very lovely, being made of stone latticework which skilfully weaves with geometrical designs the ever-present elongated masks of the great Kukul Can, with the upturned snouts unbroken. The construction throughout is pure Mayan of the highest period, typical of many buildings seen in the southern part of Yucatan and particularly at Palenque. Three square-cut, high doorways give access to a shallow vestibule running the length of the building. Back of this is a wall with three more doorways, each opening into a separate chamber. A frieze of hieroglyphs cut in the stones somewhat above the doors completely encircles the walls of the vestibule. All of the interior walls are plastered and painted and have been replastered and repainted many times. The outer walls up to the stone latticework are quite plain, the cornices or moldings are unadorned, and except for the absence of pillars it could pass for a gem of Doric architecture. Its very simplicity is a pleasing contrast to the Nunnery; yet it is no less distinctly Mayan.
“Two hundred feet beyond Chich-an Chob is a level terrace, or pyramid, sixty-four feet square, which supports a small three-chambered temple with an entrance to the south. One end has fallen in, but two of the chambers are in good repair. This temple, so far as I know, is nameless and at present is of no special interest. Clustered near by, to the right, are several smaller pyramids whose buildings are merely heaped ruins. Some of these contain tombs. Probably all were burial-places of great men. The principal pyramid of this group contains the tomb of the high priest and it is the scene of one of my most thrilling adventures.”
The story of the exploration of the high priest’s tomb, alluded to by Don Eduardo, is very interesting and will be related in another chapter.
In about the center of the City of the Sacred Well is El Castillo, whose imposing bulk is by far the greatest of all of the silent old structures of this ancient metropolis. Don Eduardo has told us that this huge pile struck him speechless when he came upon it suddenly in the moonlight upon his first introduction to Chi-chen Itza. He is not the only one who has been struck dumb by the first sight of the rugged and beautiful temple, high and huge above its surroundings. Coming back from the States one year, I made the acquaintance, on the boat, of a middle-aged American and his charming daughter, who with some others composed a small party bound for Mérida, the capital of Yucatan. As I had been to Chi-chen Itza many times, I naturally, in my talk with this gentleman, was enthusiastic over the idea of showing him the ruined city, and finally the whole party decided to go there. We arrived at the little town of Dzitas, where the gentlemen on horseback, I on an ambling mule, and the rest in volans set out for the City of the Well. All the way the members of the party took turns in joking me about my pet city and my stories concerning it. I was in every sense the tail of the procession, as my mule had decided ideas of its own, as mules have, and would travel no faster than a slow walk; but the rest of the party were not traveling on a bed of roses and there was no unwillingness to stop and wait for me while they composed ironical witticisms.
When we came near to Chi-chen Itza I ranged my mule alongside the gentleman who was leader in the heckling. I did this knowing that we would travel almost to the Great Pyramid of El Castillo and then, at a sharp turn to the right, view it completely and suddenly.
My friend was in the middle of another verbal dig when the sight smote him. His mouth simply remained open. I have not yet heard the last of his apologies for his previous jesting remarks and I find my revenge very sweet.
The pyramid, or terrace, on which El Castillo stands is two hundred feet square and rises to a height of seventy-five or eighty feet. The exact height is rather difficult to measure because of the debris at the bottom. The top of the terrace has a level surface, or platform, sixty feet square, upon which stands the temple. The four sides of the pyramid rise steeply at an angle of fifty degrees and the pyramid is terraced, each terrace being nine feet high, with a narrow horizontal offset. The rises are faced with cut stone beautifully paneled. Each of the four pyramid faces is vertically bisected by a wide stone stairway more gentle in its incline than the angle of the pyramid itself but still very long and steep. The stairs start at the top flush with the ledge upon which the temple stands and draw away farther and farther, as they descend, from the plane of the pyramid face, with an increasing ratio of projection so that at the bottom they project an appreciable distance beyond the pyramid base. Thus the stairways pleasingly break the monotony of line—which is good art and good architecture. Like all Maya stairways, they have narrow treads and high risers.
The cult of Kukul Can, indicated everywhere in the City of the Sacred Well, nowhere attains so overshadowing an importance as here in this vast temple. Each of the four corners of the pyramid is bounded by the huge undulating body of a stone serpent, extending from the ground clear to the top of the pyramid. Each undulation of the serpent’s body marks a terrace or gradient and to lift a single stone section of one of these mammoth serpents would be a task for a dozen men. Everywhere on the horizontal levels of the terraces springs up each year a thick growth of grasses as high as a tall man’s head.