At Yalloch, just across the Guatemala boundary line from Choro, a small village in the western district of British Honduras, the Alcalde made a remarkable discovery a few years ago. While hunting for a gibnut he traced one to a hole in the ground; on poking a stick into this hole, he was astonished on withdrawing it to find that he had brought out on its end a small painted pottery cylinder. The hole on being enlarged proved to be the entrance to a chultun, one of those curious underground chambers cut in the limestone rock found throughout Yucatan and the northern part of British Honduras, especially in the neighborhood of ruins. This chultun contained numbers of fragments of very finely painted and decorated pottery vases, together with two complete cylindrical vases, an ovoid vase, and a pottery cylinder without bottom. Some of these were within the chultun, some in a pit sunk in its floor, from which at a later date several pieces of beautifully decorated pottery were taken. The pit had evidently been used as a burial place, in which the memorial pottery was deposited with the body. Merwin found similar painted Maya vases some years later in a chamber covered by a mound, at Holmul, within a few miles of Yalloch, and at Platon, on the Mopan River, a sepulchral chultun was cleared out in which human bones still remained. (Pls. 23-28.)
Near the point where Blue Creek or Rio Azul joins the Rio Hondo, in the northern district of British Honduras, is situated in the bush about 100 yards from the latter river a small circular lagoon, of a deep blue color and considerable depth; from this flows a narrow stream, also deep blue in color and highly impregnated with copper, which opens into the main river just below the mouth of the Rio Azul. The little lake is bounded on its eastern side by an almost perpendicular cliff of limestone, in which are several small caves and one large cave. The interior of one of the smallest of these caverns, situated near the base of the cliff, not more than a few yards in depth, was roughly hewn out so as to form shelves. Upon these were found several hundred small binequins of incense, varying in size from 3 to 4 inches in length by 11/2 to 2 inches in breadth, to 8 to 10 inches in length by 3 to 4 inches in breadth. The incense was composed of the gum of the white acacia mixed with various aromatic substances; when burned it gave off a very pleasant odor. The gum had evidently been poured while in a liquid state into small bags, made of palm leaves, as in some of the binequins considerable fragments of the palm leaves were still adherent to the copal, and in all, casts of the leaves were left on the soft surface of the gum before it solidified. The binequins which the present-day Maya Indians manufacture as receptacles for their homemade lime, though vastly larger, are precisely similar in shape, construction, and appearance to those their ancestors used as receptacles for copal. The entrance to the large cave was near the summit of the cliff and so difficult to reach that it can never have been long used as a place of residence, though it would form an exceedingly strong position to hold against an attack from without, as it is necessary to cross a fallen tree trunk in order to enter, and this might easily be hauled back into the cave or pushed away from its mouth, leaving it practically inaccessible. Nothing was found in the cave except a large quantity of bats' excrement and of rough red potsherds.
[TWO PAINTED STUCCO FACES FROM UXMAL]
Two human faces molded in stucco and painted were discovered in a small stone-lined chamber situated beneath one of the end rooms of the Casa del Gobernador in the ruins of Uxmal, northern Yucatan. The room was accidentally disclosed by the caving in of a small part of its roof. One of its walls was covered, above a stone cornice, by a frieze of hieroglyphs, and against this wall stood a small square stone altar, each side of which had been decorated with a human figure molded in stucco and painted. Unfortunately these figures had fallen: the two heads here described are the best preserved parts of them which remain. Describing the sculpture in stone which adorns the outside of the Casa del Gobernador, Stevens ventures the opinion that some of the heads were portraits of celebrated men of the period.
The discovery of this chamber is extremely interesting, as it opens up the possibility that many, if not all, of these vast substructures, built apparently of solid stone, which throughout Yucatan support more or less ruined buildings, may in fact be honeycombed with chambers. Stevens first suggests the possibility of this. Unfortunately since Stevens's day little or nothing has been done throughout Yucatan in the way of excavation to verify the truth of his surmise.
Of the two heads now described, one probably represents a male, the other a female; there is, moreover, a marked individuality about each of them which renders it extremely probable that they are portraits, possibly of some "Halach Uinic" (real man, or chief) of Uxmal and his wife, during the palmy days of the triple alliance.
Each face is painted black with white circles round the orbital margin, red rims to the eyes, and brick-red oval patches at either angle of the mouth. The center of each upper lip is decorated by a figure 8 shaped labret, the lower portion of which has been broken away in the male head. Over the bridge of each nose is a curious ornament consisting of a small oblong object with rounded corners, held in place by a loop passing down the median line of the bridge. Over the center of the forehead in both faces hangs a pendant, that of the male composed of four small round beads, that of the female appearing as a rounded comblike excrescence. Traces of the headdresses remain as a few feathers above each forehead. Both heads were probably held within widely distended animal jaws, as a part of the lower jaw is seen below the chin in the male head, where also the large circular red ear plug still remains on the right side. The measurements of the faces are as follows:
Male.—Top of headdress to bottom of lower jaw of animal head holding the face, 11-3/10 inches; top of headdress to bottom of chin, 9-3/10 inches; forehead below headdress, to bottom of chin, 8-3/10 inches; extreme breadth of face (midway between a transverse line passing through the pupils and one passing immediately beneath the lower margin of the nasal septum), 7-1/10 inches; extreme breadth at level of the pupils, 7 inches; length of nose, 2-6/10 inches; breadth of nose, 1-6/10 inches.