As we talked, we went on rapidly through the city; and even the danger that we were in, and the excitement that attended this sudden shifting of our fortunes, could not prevent me from studying with a lively curiosity the many evidences of an advanced civilization that I beheld. The plan of the city, as I had discerned while we were approaching it, was that of a wide-open fan. From the Treasure-house, on the height in the centre, twelve broad streets radiated outward, of which three on the northern side and three on the southern ended against the great enclosing wall, and six came down through openings in the walls along the several terraces directly to the water-front. All of these streets were well paved with large smooth blocks of stone, and were led up the faces of the terraces by wide and easy stairs. The transverse streets were true semicircles, starting from and ending at the face of the cliff, and were carried along the outer edges of the terraces, just inside their facing walls. Rayburn was even more astonished than I was by the exactness with which these great semicircles were laid off; for he apprehended, as I did not, the difficulty attendant upon running a line in a true and regular curve. But I am not prepared to say that this work could not have been accomplished by mere rule of thumb. My friend Bandelier, in the course of his admirable analysis of the ruins at Mitla, has made clear to me how easy it is to attribute to scientific knowledge work that is the result only of manual skill. As I have pointed out in my discussion of this matter in my Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North America, the plateau at the top of this range of terraces easily might have been laid off in a true semicircle by the simple means of a pointed stick at the end of a long rope; and from the true line thus established the line of the terrace below it could have been had—and so on down to the lowest terrace of all.
There could be no doubt, however, that engineering skill of a high order—howsoever crude might have been the actual method of its application—was exhibited both in the preparation of the site, and then in the city's building. On the site alone an almost incredible amount of labor had been expended; for the rocky promontory—that primitively, as the result showed, had been broken and irregular—had been so cut away in some places, and so filled in in others, and the whole of it had been so carefully trimmed and smoothed, that in the end it became a huge mass of rock-work, in the regularity of which there was not perceptible the smallest flaw. And in this preliminary work, as well as in the building of the houses afterwards, fragments of stone were used of such enormous size that the moving of them, Rayburn declared, would be wellnigh impossible even with the most powerful engineering appliances of our own time. Nor was the use of these huge pieces of stone confined to the foundations of the houses. Some of them were high above the ground; indeed, the very largest that we observed—the weight of which Rayburn estimated at not less than twenty tons—was a single block that made the entire top course of a high wall.
All of the stone-work was well smoothed and squared; and while the exteriors of the houses were entirely plain, we could see through the open door-ways that the interiors of many of them were enriched with carvings. All were destitute of windows opening upon the street; and their dull, black walls, and the dull black of the stones with which the streets were paved, gave a dark and melancholy air to the city that oppressed us even more heavily when thus seen closely than it had when we beheld it from afar off. Yet the interior court-yards, so far as we could tell from the glimpses that we had of them through open door-ways, were bright with sunshine and gay with flowers; thus showing that the gloom of these dwellings did not extend beyond their outer walls. I observed with much interest that the provision for closing the entrances from the street was not swinging doors of wood, but either metal bars, such as we had seen in Tizoc's house, or else a metal grating, that was arranged like a portcullis to slide up and down in a groove; and I attributed the absence of wooden doors less to a desire for stronger barriers than to the comparative recentness of the acquisition of the knowledge of wood-working tools. Here, I thought, was a curious instance of development along the lines of greatest resistance; for in itself the invention and the making of a swinging door of wood was a much easier matter than was the invention and the making of these finely wrought sliding doors of hardened gold.
As for Young, the sight of all this gold-work quite took his breath away. "It regularly jolts me, Professor," he said, "t' see th' genuine stuff, that's good t' make gold dollars out of, slung around this way. A front door of solid gold is a huckleberry above Jay Gould's biggest persimmon; an' as t' Solomon, these fellows just lay Solomon out cold—regularly down th' old man an' sit on him. Why, for just that one front door of th' big house ahead of us I'd sell out all my shares in this treasure-hunt, an' be glad t' do it. But I guess I'd have to hire Samson—who was in that line of business—t' carry it off for me. It must weigh a solid ton!"
By this time we had mounted all of the terraces, and the house towards which Young pointed as he spoke was built directly beneath the crowning plateau on which the great temple stood. It was the largest and by far the most elegant house that we yet had seen, and the sliding grating of gold that closed the entrance was unusually heavy, and very beautifully wrought. Sentinels were stationed here, wearing the same uniform as that of the soldiers who formed our guard; and this further indication of the importance of the building gave us the impression that it was the dwelling of some great dignitary. Close by the portal we were halted, while the commander of our guard spoke through the grating to some one inside. A moment later the grating was slowly raised, and we were marched through the narrow entrance, and so along a short passage-way into a long, narrow chamber that obviously was a guard-room; for spears and javelins were ranged in orderly fashion upon racks, and swords and shields and bows and quivers of arrows were hung upon the walls. Here we were halted again; and while we stood silent together, wondering what might be in store for us in this place, we heard the heavy grating behind us close with a dull clang.
XXII.
THE OUTBREAK OF REVOLUTION.
So dismal was this sound, and so many were the dismal possibilities that it suggested, that as I heard it a cold chill went down into my heart; and I was glad enough that we at once were led forth from the guard-room, and that in consideration of matters of immediate moment my mind was diverted from dwelling drearily upon a future that seemed full of gloom.
For all the brilliant blaze of sunlight that brightened the large court-yard into which we were conducted, there was about it curious coldness and cheerlessness. As in the case of all the other houses which we had observed, the stone-work of the walls and of the pavement was a dull black; but here there were no flowers, nor bright-colored hangings over the inner doors, nor brightness of any sort or kind. The carving of the stone was extraordinarily rich, to be sure; but the bass-reliefs which covered the walls were wholly of a gloomy sort—being for the most part representations of the slaughter of men in sacrifice, and the tearing of hearts out—so that the eight of them made me shiver, notwithstanding the warmth of the sun. From the centre of the court-yard a broad stair-way ascended to the plateau above on which the temple stood; and this direct way of communicating with it led me to the conclusion that the building was a dependency of the temple, and that very likely the higher members of the priesthood were housed here.