IMAGINE yourself the sole owner of a plantation within which lies a city more than twelve square miles in area; a city of palaces and temples and mausoleums; a city of untold treasures, rich in sculptures and paintings. Would you not feel shamefully wealthy? And does it not seem strange that Don Eduardo, the master of such a plantation, takes the fact of his ownership with apparent calmness?
But, before your fancy carries you too far, let me tell you a little more about this remarkable city, which may dampen your ardor for ownership, but which only increases its value in Don Eduardo’s eyes. It is a dead city. Its thousands of inhabitants perished or abandoned it nobody knows how long ago—probably before Columbus first saw the shores of America. And it is in the heart of Yucatan, where Mexico, ending like the upflung tail of a huge fish, juts into the gulf, while Cuba serves as a sentinel a hundred and fifty miles to the eastward.
The Treasure City, the City of the Sacred Well, with the queer-sounding name of the Chi-chen Itza (pronounce it Chee´chen Eet-za´), is for the most part overgrown with tropical jungle. Its treasures are valuable only to the antiquarian.
Early in our conversations about the City of the Sacred Well, Don Eduardo told me that because at the time of his purchase the plantation was well within the territory dominated by the dreaded Sublevados, the rebellious Maya Indians, no planter dared live in or even visit the region for long, and so he was able to secure the land from its absentee owners cheap, as plantation prices run in Yucatan.
THE ANCIENT CITY OF CHI-CHEN ITZA IS AT NO GREAT DISTANCE FROM THE UNITED STATES.
“My life-interest has been American archæology,” he said, “and I came first to Yucatan, thirty years ago, to explore its ruins and relics of an ancient civilization. Even before that I had read of the immense Sacred Well at Chi-chen Itza—a well as wide as a small lake and deep enough to hold a fifteen-story building—and had made up my mind that I would be the man who some day made it yield up its secrets. For a long time I tried to persuade various wealthy Americans to finance the undertaking, but organizing a stock company to raise sunken galleons along the Spanish Main would be a simple task as compared with my difficulties in promoting what seemed a will-o’-the-wisp project. At last, however, I did succeed.”
But I am ahead of my story.
The trip from New York to the City of the Sacred Well requires but a week and may now be accomplished luxuriously, whereas my earlier journeys over the same route were anything but comfortable. Mr. John L. Stephens, who was sent to Yucatan by the United States Government in 1841, describes, in his interesting book “Incidents of Travel in Yucatan,” the difficulties of travel which he met. They might have daunted any spirit less courageous than his. His four volumes, although written nearly eighty years ago, retain their pristine freshness and are still authoritative. I recommend them heartily to the reader.
On any Thursday the traveler destined for the City of the Sacred Well may board at New York a Ward Line steamer bound for Progreso, the only port of Yucatan. The liner stops over at Havana, and a day and a night after leaving that hectic city one awakes in the early dawn to the deep-chanted tones of a sailor who is casting the lead. “Four fathoms,” he cries; then, “Three fathoms,” and finally the engines are hushed and out goes the anchor. Through the port-hole is seen a lighthouse and behind it a faint, foggy vista of low-lying sandy shore.