The City of the Sacred Well

by T. A. Willard

THIS PLAN INDICATES THE GENERAL SHAPE AND SIZE OF THE SACRED WELL AND THE LOCATION OF THE SHRINE OF THE LAST RITES

The placid water of the pool is jade-green, due partly to the great depth, and partly, I believe, to traces of certain salts or solubles in the water, although I cannot speak with certainty on this point, as I have never subjected it to chemical analysis. I have tried many, many times to get a really good photograph of the Sacred Well and have come to the conclusion that only the motion camera, or an airplane view can ever succeed in reproducing the sight. The “still” photograph, taken from the brink, shows either an expanse of wall and little water or much water and little wall. For this reason the illustration opposite [page 113] fails to show the whole well and does not begin to do justice to this most interesting, historic spot.

As Don Eduardo and I sat on the crumbling walls of the shrine, at the very brink of the Sacred Well, he told me of his famous undertaking, now so successfully carried out—the removal of the ancient treasures from the very bottom of the Sacred Well.

“For many years,” he said, “the thought of exploring the bottom of the Sacred Well had filled my mind. I thought about it by day and dreamed about it by night. It became a mania which would not let me rest and earned for me the reputation of being a little queer in the head. A thousand times I had gone over in my mind the practical ways and means that might be employed. Draining, dredging, or diving—it must be one of these three. I early became convinced that probably the well could not be drained, and certainly not with the slender finances at my command. I concluded at last that it could be dredged, and with comparatively simple equipment consisting of a stiff-legged derrick with a hand windlass, a long boom which might be swung out over the well, and a steel orange-peel buck-scoop, or bucket.

“Simple as the undertaking sounds, it was beset at every turn with difficulties. The equipment, especially contrived and designed, was easily ordered in the United States and put aboard ship. Getting it ashore at Progreso, where it had to be unloaded five miles out and lightered to shore, was the first hard job. Loading it on flat-cars and finally unloading it at Dzitas, sixteen miles from my city, was no less difficult. With only native assistance, without trucks or anything adequate on wheels, and over the poorest excuse for a road, the equipment was moved piecemeal, until, after months of the hardest work I have ever done, it was all piled beside the Sacred Well.

“Assembling the machinery was a task of shorter duration but no less strenuous. I would at that time have given gladly some years of my life for the services, for a few hours, of one or two brawny, profane, and competent Yankee ‘riggers.’ Time and again, before the cumbersome outfit was completely in place, I expected it to topple into the well or fall upon me and my Indians.

“At last all was ready. My Indians, about thirty in number, each had his appointed task. The most trusted were to man the windlass and the turning of the boom from whose projecting end hung the cable-suspended dredging-scoop. The boom was swung out until it extended far over the well. I gave the signal and the steel bucket descended, disappeared under the green water, and at last came to rest on the bottom. Slowly the boom was swung back toward the brink of the pit and stopped. Eager hands manned the windlass to raise the bucket. Seemingly endless feet of wet cable were wound about the drum before the filled bucket broke the surface of the water. Up and up it rose, until it was on a level with our heads; then it was swung in by the boom and lowered to the spot which I had selected, where every precious scoopful should be minutely and painstakingly examined on the sorting-tables I had erected. No treasure must slip through our hands; nothing must be damaged by careless handling. Anything perishable must be immediately treated with the preservatives which were ready and waiting. My hands trembled, in spite of my effort to control them, as I emptied the contents of the scoop upon the sorting-tables, for soon I must be either ‘that clever chap who recovered the treasures from the Sacred Well in Yucatan’ or else the prize idiot of the whole Western Hemisphere.

“I went over the muck, spreading it out, examining every bit of it, and found nothing; not a trace of anything interesting. It might just as well have come from any cesspool.

“Again the winch revolved, its ratchets clinking against the brake. The big scoop, with its hungry steel lips wide open, plunged into the still water. The Sacred Well seemed sullen in the reflection of a black cloud overhead, as though determined to the very last to withhold its secrets.