“The day passed and darkness came, but I could not leave the spot. I dismissed my Indians and took the photographic cloth from my camera and covered the tablet and then piled over it some pliant boughs of trees. But, like the youth who lingers over his adieus to his sweetheart, I uncovered the stone again and sat beside it until the moon was bright overhead. My vagrant fancy carried me back over the centuries and I saw smooth highways crossing and recrossing, and along these highways populous cities with the towering outlines of massive temples and the carved edifices of kings and nobles. I could hear the soft, silvery laughter of women bearing water-jugs, as they met in groups along the tree-shaded avenues, and there were merchants and bearers of burdens traveling to and fro from the market-places, and resplendent warriors and haughty peers and solemn priests. And there was the scent of incense smoke and a high, clear voice was chanting the invocation to Kukul Can....
“I was aroused by the voice of one of my Indians, a quaint fellow who always addressed me as Ah Kin (High Priest)—why I do not know. ‘Ah Kin,’ said he, ‘Master, the voices of the birds are stilled; your food is cold and untasted; I beseech you to come and eat.’ I arose and went with him, but I could not eat; and all night, as I tossed in my hammock, I saw the tablet and its every inscription as clearly as though it were actually before my eyes, and early in the morning I was back at its resting-place. That day we carefully raised it and replaced it firmly upon the heads and upraised arms of the impassive stone guardians—serene, majestic figures that have witnessed a mighty civilization and its passing into the dust of oblivion. Once again their arms hold the graven tablet as of old, but their mute lips which might tell so much are silent and in their changeless gaze is the haunting, immutable introspection of the Sphinx.”
CHAPTER XII
THE CONSTRUCTION OF MAYA BUILDINGS
WHOEVER views the pyramids along the Nile is inevitably intrigued as to how they were built—how the massive stones were transported and placed in their elevated positions. And likewise at Chi-chen Itza one is bound to speculate as to how the heavy stone-work was transported from its quarries, how it was so intricately carved, and by what predetermined plans it was erected into buildings which have stood for centuries, defying tropical nature.
I have found the Sacred City an absorbing topic upon which to ponder, fitting together the known facts and drawing upon imagination to piece in the gaps, until the mental picture of the building of its ancient temples is an unbroken fabric. My own visualization of the process of building a Maya temple is no doubt faulty in many respects, and I have no wish to precipitate an archæological controversy by claiming it to be hole-proof; I offer it merely for the sake of the reader who has not the opportunity to create his own vision of the subject from a first-hand view of these ancient edifices.
Imagine an army of workers—a hundred, yes, a thousand times as many as would be employed in the erection of a great modern building,—short, squat, powerful, sun-browned men, sweating at their task of quarrying and moving huge stone blocks.
In the quarries the blocks for the monolithic serpent heads, the column sections, and all the larger pieces used in the building are being channeled from the solid ledge rock, or from isolated boulders, by the pa-tunich, or quarry master, and his many assistants. The ring of blows struck with stone or wooden mallets upon chisels tipped with flint or calcite attests their industry. Some workers do not use the mallet and chisel, but score the soft limestone ledge with flint-bladed hatchets, while others ply long wooden poles as wedges and levers. On the quarry floor the master stone-cutters are squaring and smoothing the rough blocks and laying against them, from time to time, their wooden gauges, satisfied only when the stones are smooth and square and of the right dimensions. Under the finished stones are inserted wooden rollers and about them are knotted cables made of fiber or of tough vines, and long lines of men grasp the cables and bend their backs to the task of hauling the big blocks from the quarry to the building site.
Lines of men like toiling ants carry on their shoulders baskets of earth and stones. Slowly the terrace or substructure is built up to the first level, its sides faced with smooth stones, and each side bisected with a broad stairway. And up to this level is built an inclined roadway for the workers and their burdens. And slowly, up and up, grows terrace after terrace, each smaller than the preceding one, and the pyramid takes shape, leaving a flat stone platform at the top upon which the temple will be erected. Here the pol-tunich, the master stone-mason, and his artisans are busy in the finishing of the stones and in their intricate carving. Flint-edged hammers are used to work the grosser outlines, but the finer details are worked out with more delicate implements—gouging-tools of flint and calcite and keen-edged chisels of polished nephrite. Such a chisel Don Eduardo dug up near the base of one of the temples.