The City of the Sacred Well

by T. A. Willard

“And as we cleared the debris away it became evident that these massive figures, so stiff and majestic, had originally sustained the front or façade of the temple. My curiosity and excitement had now reached a point where every slight delay was nerve-racking and the two grim guardians seemed to me like silent keepers of age-old secrets, ready to come to life and destroy the prying humans who dared invade their sacred domain.

“Little by little we removed the earth and rubbish. Slowly we progressed between the colossal figures, excavating with great difficulty the compacted mortar and stone which had fallen and become almost as a single stone. About three feet back of the statues was a huge stone covered with inscriptions. Was it the stone book? I cast aside all philosophic calmness and dropped to my knees, clawing away with my bare hands at the debris which obscured the inscriptions, until my nails were broken and my fingers bleeding.

“Here indeed was the Huun-tunich, the Stone Book, the Rosetta Stone of my ancient, lovely, and forgotten City of the Sacred Well! I am not ashamed of the fever of excitement which possessed me and communicated itself to my wondering Indians, who had not the slightest idea why the mad white man should become so wrought up over the finding of merely another stone with queer writings on it. But, then, what matter! White men are always a little insane, anyway, and one never knows what folly they will attempt next.

“With sharpened twigs I cleaned out all the incised lines, until the inscription on the exposed face stood forth clearly. Not till then did I attempt to read it. And there, among the glyphs I could not at once decipher, my eye caught a date-sign fairly jumping out to meet me. Cycle Ten, Katun Two, Tun Nine, Uinal One—in other words, 600 A. D.!

“It had been my secret hope that somewhere, somehow, I should be able to find an authentic date in Chi-chen Itza, some inscription which had eluded the eyes of other searchers. The Chronicles mention various dates in connection with the ancient city, but this added proof was needed to carry us over the threshold from probability into the realm of incontrovertible fact, just as the finds in the Sacred Well proved for us the veracity of the legends.

“This date-stone does not by any means indicate that the city was founded in 600 A. D., but that this particular temple, whatever its purpose may have been, was built or dedicated at that time. Imagine some terrible catastrophe befalling the United States, wiping out all our people and leaving our cities to fall in ruins and become covered with forests with the passing of hundreds of years. Then imagine an archæologist, even one as mad as myself, digging into these ruins and coming upon that block of granite which now stands over the entrance to the New York Corn Exchange and tells us in unmistakable terms when the building was erected. His find would be of tremendous historical value—a definite date standing out clearly from the misty past. But still he would not know nor have any clear idea of the date of the founding of New Amsterdam and no clue to the interesting history of those sturdy Dutch patroons who first built a village at the mouth of the Hudson.

“And so it is with my Sacred City. There is not in all the world a metropolis living or dead more mysterious, more dowered with romance. Its age, its origin, even the racial identity of its builders, are each and all sunk in mystery so profound that I doubt if we shall ever fathom them.

“I was so elated over my discovery that I at once promised double pay to each man for the month and declared that we would have a fiesta that all would remember for miles around and describe in later years to their sons. I tried to tell them how important was our find, but the double pay and the fiesta were much more eloquent to them than any words I could utter. I singled out the old Indian whose great, great grandfather had passed down the tale of the stone book. His face was as impassive as the faces of the stone gods about us, as befitted his dignity, but I could see it cost him a tremendous effort not to shout with glee and dance about like a small boy, and he gloried in the fact that he had not led me astray. Drawing his bent frame erect, he said, ‘Did I not say so and did my great grandfather ever lie?’

“Careful measurements showed that the stone had been the lintel of the doorway. Each end had rested upon and was securely cemented to the heads and supporting upraised arms of the huge Atlantean figures, thus forming an integral portion of the main temple entrance. This is not an unusual Mayan arrangement and, as previously mentioned, there is in the Akzab Tzib, or House of the Writing in the Dark, a similar lintel but without a date.

“A very long time must have elapsed since the abandonment of this temple. A seed of the chac-te tree was carried by the winds or the birds and dropped in the entrance, a little to one side of the center. This tree is of extremely hard wood and it grows slowly. It grew to a sapling and at last into a big tree whose roots by their upward thrust toppled over the central portion of the façade. The lintel fell to the ground, but its fall was softened by the pile of powdered mortar and stone which had already sifted down, and fortunately the priceless relic was unbroken. Time passed; the big tree died and decayed. All this we know by the casts of the gnarled roots left in the grouting beneath the temple platform. Once again fertile Nature planted a seed under the tablet, carried to its earthy bed down under the fallen stones by some rodent or fruit-eating bat. And this was the seed of the yax-nic—a tree as hard as iron and as long-lived as its predecessor. It too grew to great size and its roots tilted the stone tablet to one side and, finally dying, left its epitaph written in root-casts or molds. Again ever-vigilant Mother Nature planted a seed, this time of a tree of soft, quick-growing wood, and the roots encircled the tablet as in a mighty hand; and thus we found it when we cut down the tree. Fortunately, the previous trees, which exude an acidic sap, had done the tablet no harm and the last tree had by its clasp rather protected the tablet than harmed it. And how easily Nature might have contrived, with her cycles of life, for the destruction of this treasure!