The City of the Sacred Well

by T. A. Willard

The inexhaustible natural wells were early utilized by the Spanish plantation-owners, who in the irrigation of their fields employed the noria, that ancient, rather clumsy big wheel with water-buckets or dippers fastened to its periphery. It is in operation to-day in Yucatan just as it is in Spain and the Levant.

At Chi-chen Itza are three main cenotes and some lesser ones. The Sacred Well was called “Chen Ku” (Chen means “well”) and was never called dzonot, or cenote, which gives the impression that the great well may have been made by human effort or at least was thus enlarged. Perhaps, however, this idea that human agency was employed in its construction may have arisen mostly from the fact of its circular form and perpendicular sides, which may quite logically have been the work of Nature alone, or Nature aided by man. De Sander speaks of this well as having been formed in part by man, and I think his theory is not improbable. But surely the great well is, for the most part, a work of Nature.

Tol-oc, the next largest well in the Sacred City, was the main source of potable water. In ancient times a stone stairway led down into its waters. To-day the upper steps are gone, but one can see a clearly defined line of chiseled steps some three feet or more beneath the surface and adjacent to these is distinguishable another line of steps. Don Eduardo thinks the stairway originally consisted of a broad flight leading from the top of the well down to the water-level and that at its base was a narrow stone platform. It is impossible to determine now how wide the stairway was, or whether or not his surmise is correct that there was a platform at the bottom.

His conclusions were made several years ago, when the water in the well was unusually low. The fact that the rise and fall of the water-level in this cenote bears little if any relation to local rain-fall leads to the belief that its principal source is far distant and comes down through some permeable rock strata, until by reason of a rock fault it gushes up into the well of Tol-oc. Overhanging the wall are large trees, orchid-covered, whose delicate perfume floats down to meet the water. There are orchids here that would quickly make a fortune for a New York florist.

At first sight the water seems dust-covered and turgid, but the dust on the surface is only pollen from the orchids and the big lilies that cluster against the cliff-like walls. It is therefore good, clean, and deeply poetic dust, and beneath the surface the water is crystal clear and cold as any bubbling New England spring. To bathe in Tol-oc is an unalloyed joy.

The large cenote of X-Katum also is on the outskirts of the city and is famous among the natives to-day for the purity and softness of its water. It has no recorded history nor traditions, but the worn grooves in the solid stone of its brink, where ropes have raised and lowered countless jars for countless centuries, is testimony more eloquent than words.

The many other cenotes in and around the city all contain very pure water and are apparently inexhaustible. Around them are the remains in stone and mortar of what were surely important structures. Near the cenote of Yula, which is almost six miles from the center of the ancient city, Don Eduardo was fortunate enough to uncover a large stone tablet, one side of which is entirely filled with clear, minutely carved hieroglyphs.

The Via Sacra—the causeway, once so straight and smooth, leading to the Sacred Well—is now in bad condition, its outline dulled by time. Great trees border it and their branches arch overhead, while their roots have raised and broken the smooth avenue until it no longer resembles a road. Smaller trees are rooted in the roadway itself.

The Sacred Well is a great pit, with sheer stone sides which are slightly irregular. Its form is elliptical, almost circular. At the side nearest the Great Pyramid is a small ruined sanctuary where the last rites were performed before a maiden was thrown into the well to become the bride of the Rain God. The ground for some distance about this sanctuary was paved with stones. The Sacred Well, at whose bottom dwelt Yum Chac, the Rain God, is more than one hundred and sixty feet wide and as one gazes down its vertical sides, the drop to the water seems tremendous; indeed it is fully seventy feet.

The sheer wall of the well is laminated, split horizontally into two thousand bands or strata of limestone, of various widths. Some of these bands appear hardly thicker than a sheet of paper, others as wide as a house is high, and every lamination is separated from its neighbor by a sandwich filling of thin lime-powder. The striated appearance is very striking, because the laminations are dead black except where vines, trees, and orchids or other parasitic plants or fungi cling to and lend color to the surface. The layers of lime-dust between the strata of rock are either pure white or cream-colored. The powder has a hard-packed coherency, but the elements—sun, wind, and rain together—loosen enough of it so that the plants and the surface of the water are always covered with a thin film of dust. All about the edge of the well is a fringe of trees, and a surprising amount of vegetation has found a root-hold between the rock laminations of the perpendicular walls.