The City of the Sacred Well

by T. A. Willard

“Among these Indians was an old fellow whose face hauntingly reminds me of an ancient picture of a Hebrew patriarch that I have seen in some forgotten place. One day we were clearing the brush from a gentle terrace to make ready for the planting of corn. I called the attention of my overseer to several mounds upon a large near-by terrace, telling him that we must surely dig into them as soon as we could find time, to see if they contained any relics. Suddenly my grizzled patriarch straightened up and gazed at the mounds and then came over to me, saying as he pointed to the tallest of the mounds, ‘That one has in it a stone book written by my fathers.’ Here at last was something, of no value, possibly, but better far than the eternal ‘Quien sabe?’ Eagerly I asked him how he came by this idea and he said that in the days of his great, great grandfather this temple mound was known as Mul-huun-tunich, the Hill of the Stone Book. He said that he had been told this by his father and his grandsire had told his father and a high priest had so told his grandfather. I could get no more out of him, but he stuck doggedly to this brief tale.

“I had passed the mound several times and now I gazed at it with fresh interest. It was covered with a tangled growth of vines and thicket and well-grown trees, reminding me of what some philosopher has so truly said—that the most perfect works of men are soon covered by forests which grow an inch a day. If this mound had ever been a stately edifice, all semblance had long since passed. The bat or serpent might find a cavity in its ruined space, but if any carving of god or hero were to be found, it was well hidden from my prying eyes.

“At once I began the task of clearing away the young growth and the stumps of what had been sizable trees and beneath these were other decaying tree stumps. In this ruined area, which is perhaps three thousand feet to the south of the Great Pyramid of El Castillo, is a terrace, rising about twenty feet above the general level. On this terrace, which once had smooth, sloping sides, are ruined buildings with a bit here and there still standing, surrounded with shapeless heaps of fallen stone. The hill of the stone book, as it was called by my old Indian, was on the northeastern edge of this terrace, pyramidal in form and sharply defined.

“My better judgment told me I was wasting time in heeding the vaporings of the old Indian while more important tasks waited, but my interest and curiosity were touched and I urged my men to strenuous effort, resisting with difficulty the temptation to dig at once into the center of the mound. We cleared the undergrowth in patches and burned it, so that the valuable timber would not be injured by the heat, nor the stones in the mound calcined. While most of the men were thus engaged I selected a few picked workers and we began the excavation of the pyramidal mound. We found not only trees growing above buried stumps, but charred stumps even below these. My old Indian examined carefully the cuts upon these deep-buried stumps and logs and said that these marks had not been made by ax, hatchet, machete, or any modern implement that he had ever seen. In all probability this earliest felling was done before the coming of the white man with his cutting edges of metal.

“I wondered who could have cut down the big trees around the pyramid. How could trees have been permitted to grow here or have been burned so close to buildings inhabited or in use? Evidently the burning and cutting, ancient as it might have been, had yet been done many, many years after the structure was abandoned.

“At last we had a space cleared all around the base of the mound and we sorted over the loose stones, looking for inscriptions, but came across nothing of unusual interest. We found the mound to be four-sided and truncated, with broad steps leading up all four sides and with the principal stairway facing the west. The pyramid was in ruins and the upper outline obliterated. Close to the base of the main stairway we uncovered a semi-recumbent stone figure, part man and part animal, of the so-called Chac Mool type. It was still firmly cemented in place and, like the stairway, faced the west. Just in front of this stone figure we unearthed a small elaborately carved stone urn of pineapple pattern, and a similar urn was dug up just to the rear of the Chac Mool figure. The Chac Mool and the incense urns were much marred and pitted by erosion, and the finding of charcoal in fragments and granules all about indicated that a deliberate effort had been made to destroy these priceless things.

“Gradually we cleared the earth and fallen stones and mortar from the main staircase. Many nests of lovely mauve-colored wood-doves were destroyed as we felled the trees. We saved as many as we could, but for several hours the mournful cries of the bereaved feathered creatures sounded from the neighboring forest like the wails of the departed spirits of those who had lived and died beside this old, old temple.

“On the southern slope a huge chaib, a species of boa-constrictor, beautifully marked with splashes of green and brown, was awakened from its slumbers deep in some rocky cavity of the pyramid and came surging down the mound with watchful head held high and graceful body bending the bushes in its path as it disappeared into the thicket below.

“The bees of Yucatan are kindly and have no sting, but the wasps more than make up for the impotence of the bees. The most venomous wasps, the x-hi-chac, build flat nests that cling as closely and unobtrusively to the tree trunks as porous plasters. One of the trees we felled contained such a nest. Lightning is slow compared with the speed of these insects, and I, personally, would just about as willingly be struck by lightning as to encounter the sting of the x-hi-chac. I think lightning would be less painful. Several of the men were badly stung and while I gave them first aid by applying ammonia to their hurts, and provided drinks of a refreshing nature, the victims spent a sleepless, feverish night. They were weak and in low spirits in the morning, but we resumed our task nevertheless.

“Clearing the way a step at a time, we finally reached a level, well-built platform at a height of thirty feet. At the rear of the platform was the jagged outlined wall of what had been a small temple and directly before it were two large Atlantean figures of unusual type. I had seen many squat stone figures in and about the city but never before such large ones or figures carved with such fierce grandeur of expression. They were intricately carved and highly conventionalized. Each was garbed in an embossed head-dress, breast pendants, loincloth, and sandals. Every detail was clearly worked, even to the carved strands of rope holding the sandals—sandals bearing a striking resemblance to those worn by the prehistoric or archaic Gauchos of the Canary Islands, which again suggests the plausibility of Plato’s Lost Atlantis.