CHAPTER XXIV.

Departure for Merida.--The Road.--Cacalchen.--Hacienda of Ake.--The Ruins.--Great Mound called the Palace.--Immense Staircase.--Grand Approach.--Columns.--No Remains of a Building on the Mound.--Other Mounds.--Interior Chamber.--A Senote.--Rude and Massive Character of these Ruins.--End of Journey among ruined Cities.--Number of Cities discovered.--Of the Builders of the American Cities.--Opinion.--Built by the Ancestors of the present Race of Indians.--Reply to Arguments urged against this Belief.--Absence of Tradition.--Unparalleled Circumstances which attended the Conquest.--Unscrupulous Policy of the Spaniards.--Want of Tradition not confined to Events before the Conquest.--Nor peculiar to American Ruins.--Degeneracy of the Indians.--Insufficiency of these Arguments.--Farewell to Ruins.

The next morning we started for Merida, with the intention of diverging for the last time to visit the ruins of Ake. The road was one of the best in the country, made for carriages, but rough, stony, and uninteresting. At Cacalchen, five leagues distant, we stopped to dine and procure a guide to Ake.

In the afternoon we proceeded, taking with as only our hammocks, and leaving Dimas to go on direct with the luggage to Merida. Turning off immediately from the main road, we entered the woods, and following a narrow path, a little before dark we reached the hacienda of Ake, and for the last time were among the towering and colossal memorials of an aboriginal city. The hacienda was the property of the Conde Peon, and, contrary to our expectations, it was small, neglected, in a ruinous condition, and entirely destitute of all kinds of supplies. We could not procure even eggs, literally nothing but tortillas. The major domo was away, the principal building locked up, and the only shelter we could obtain was a miserable little hut, full of fleas, which no sweeping could clear out. We had considered all our rough work over, but again, and within a day's journey of Merida, we were in bad straits. By great ingenuity, and giving them the shortest possible tie, Albino contrived to swing our hammocks, and having no other resource, early in the evening we fell into them. At about ten o'clock we heard the tramp of a horse, and the major domo arrived. Surprised to find such unexpected visiters, but glad to see them, he unlocked the hacienda, and walking out in our winding sheets, we took possession; our hammocks followed, and were hung up anew. In the morning he provided us with breakfast, after which, accompanied by him and all the Indians of the hacienda, being only six, we went round to see the ruins.

[Engraving 70: Mound called El Palacio]

The plate opposite represents a great mound towering in full sight sight from the door of the hacienda, and called El Palacio, or the Palace. The ascent is on the south side, by an immense staircase, one hundred and thirty-seven feet wide, forming an approach of rude grandeur, perhaps equal to any that ever existed in the country. Each step is four feet five inches long, and one foot five inches in height. The platform on the top is two hundred and twenty-five feet in length, and fifty in breadth. On this great platform stand thirty-six shafts, or columns, in three parallel rows of twelve, about ten feet apart from north to south, and fifteen from east to west. They are from fourteen to sixteen feet in height, four feet on each side, and are composed of separate stones, from one to two feet in thickness. But few have fallen, though some have lost their upper layer of stones. There are no remains of any structure or of a roof. If there ever was one, it must have been of wood, which would seem most incongruous and inappropriate for such a solid structure of stones. The whole mound was so overgrown that we could not ascertain the juxtaposition of the pillars till the growth was cleared away, when we made out the whole, but with little or no enlargement of our knowledge as to its uses and purposes. It was a new and extraordinary feature, entirely different from any we had seen, and at the very end of our journey, when we supposed ourselves familiar with the character of American ruins, threw over them a new air of mystery.

In the same vicinity are other mounds of colossal dimensions, one of which is also called the Palace, but of a different construction and without pillars. On another, at the head of the ruined staircase, is an opening under the top of a doorway, nearly filled up, crawling through which, by means of the crotch of a tree I descended into a dark chamber fifteen feet long and ten wide, of rude construction, and of which some of the stones in the wall measured seven feet in length. This is called Akabna, casa obscura, or dark house. Near this is a senote, with the remains of steps leading down to water, which once supplied the ancient city. The ruins cover a great extent, but all were overgrown, and in a condition too ruinous to be presented in a drawing. They were ruder and more massive than all the others we had seen, bore the stamp of an older era, and more than any others, in fact, for the first time in the country, suggested the idea of Cyclopean remains; but even here we have a gleam of historic light, faint, it is true, but, in my mind, sufficient to dispel all unsettled and wavering notions.

In the account of the march of Don Francisco Montejo from the coast, presented in the early part of these pages, it is mentioned that the Spaniards reached a town called Ake, at which they found themselves confronted by a great multitude of armed Indians. A desperate battle ensued, which lasted two days, and in which the Spaniards were victorious, but gained no easy triumph.

There is no other mention of Ake, and in this there is no allusion whatever to the buildings, but from its geographical position, and the direction of the line of march of the Spanish army from the coast, I have little doubt that their Ake was the place now known by the same name, and occupied by the ruins last presented. It is, indeed, strange that no mention is made of the buildings, but regard must be had to the circumstances of danger and death which surrounded the Spaniards, and which were doubtless always uppermost in the minds of the soldiers who formed that disastrous expedition. At all events, it is not more strange than the want of any description of the great buildings of Chichen, and we have the strongest possible proof that no correct inference is to be drawn from the silence of the Spaniards, for in the comparatively minute account of the conquest of Mexico, we find that the Spanish army marched under the very shadow of the great pyramids of Otumba, and yet not the slightest mention whatever is made of their existence.

I have now finished my journey among ruined cities. I know that it is impossible by any narrative to convey to the reader a true idea of the powerful and exciting interest of wandering among them, and I have avoided as much as possible all detailed descriptions, but I trust that these pages will serve to give some general idea of the appearance which this country once presented. In our long, irregular, and devious route we have discovered the crumbling remains of forty-four ancient cities, most of them but a short distance apart, though, from the great change that has taken place in the country, and the breaking up of the old roads, having no direct communication with each other; with but few exceptions, all were lost, buried, and unknown, never before visited by a stranger, and some of them, perhaps, never looked upon by the eyes of a white man. Involuntarily we turn for a moment to the frightful scenes of which this now desolate region must have been the theatre; the scenes of blood, agony, and wo which preceded the desolation or abandonment of these cities But, leaving the boundless space in which imagination might rove, I confine myself to the consideration of facts. If I may be permitted to say so, in the whole history of discoveries there is nothing to be compared with those here presented. They give an entirely new aspect to the great Continent on which we live, and bring up with more force than ever the great question which I once, with some hesitation, undertook to consider: Who were the builders of these American cities?

My opinion on this question has been fully and freely expressed, "that they are not the works of people who have passed away, and whose history is lost, but of the same races who inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest, or of some not very distant progenitors." Some were probably in ruins, but in general I believe that they were occupied by the Indians at the time of the Spanish invasion. The grounds of this belief are interspersed throughout these pages; they are interwoven with so many facts and circumstances that I do not recapitulate them; and in conclusion I shall only refer briefly to those arguments which I consider the strongest that are urged against this belief.

The first is the entire absence of all traditions. But I would ask, may not this be accounted for by the unparalleled circumstances which attended the conquest and subjugation of Spanish America? Every captain or discoverer, on first planting the royal standard on the shores of a new country, made proclamation according to a form drawn up by the most eminent divines and lawyers in Spain, the most extraordinary that ever appeared in the history of mankind; entreating and requiring the inhabitants to acknowledge and obey the church as the superior and guide of the universe, the holy father called the pope, and his majesty as king and sovereign lord of these islands, and of the terra firma; and concluding, "But if you will not comply, or maliciously delay to obey my injunction, then, with the help of God, I will enter your country by force; I will carry on war against you with the utmost violence; I will subject you to the yoke of obedience, to the church and king; I will take your wives and children, and make them slaves, and sell or dispose of them according to his majesty's pleasure. I will seize your goods, and do you all the mischief in my power, as rebellious subjects, who will not acknowledge or submit to their lawful sovereign; and I protest that all the bloodshed and calamities which shall follow are to be imputed to you, and not to his majesty, or to me, or the gentlemen who serve under me."

The conquest and subjugation of the country were carried out in the unscrupulous spirit of this proclamation. The pages of the historians are dyed with blood; and sailing on the crimson stream, with a master pilot at the helm, appears the leading, stern, and steady policy of the Spaniards, surer and more fatal than the sword, to subvert all the institutions of the natives, and to break up and utterly destroy all the rites, customs, and associations that might keep alive the memory of their fathers and their ancient condition. One sad instance shows the effects of this policy. Before the destruction of Mayapan, the capital of the kingdom of Maya, all the nobles of the country had houses in that city, and were exempted from tribute; according to the account from which Cogolludo derives his authority, in the year 1582, forty years after the conquest, all who held themselves for lords and nobles still claimed their solares (sites for mansions) as tokens of their rank; but now, he says, "from the change of government and the little estimation in which they are held, it does not appear that they care to preserve nobility for their posterity, for at this day the descendants of Tutul Xiu, who was the king and natural lord by right of the land of Maya, if they do not work with their own hands in manual offices, have nothing to eat." And if at that early date nobles no longer cared for their titles, and the descendants of the royal house had nothing to eat but what they earned with their own hands, it is not strange that the present inhabitants, nine generations removed, without any written language, borne down by three centuries of servitude, and toiling daily for a scanty subsistence, are alike ignorant and indifferent concerning the history of their ancestors, and the great cities lying in ruins under their eyes. And strange or not, no argument can be drawn from it, for this ignorance is not confined to ruined cities or to events before the conquest. It is my belief, that among the whole mass of what are called Christianized Indians, there is not at this day one solitary tradition which can shed a ray of light upon any event in their history that occurred one hundred and fifty years from the present time; in fact, I believe it would be almost impossible to procure any information of any kind whatever beyond the memory of the oldest living Indian.

Besides, the want of traditionary knowledge is not peculiar to these American ruins. Two thousand years ago the Pyramids towered on the borders of the African Desert without any certain tradition of the time when they were founded; and so long back as the first century of the Christian era, Pliny cites various older authors who disagreed concerning the persons who built them, and even concerning the use and object for which they were erected. No traditions hang round the ruins of Greece and Rome; the temples of Paestum, lost until within the last half century, have no traditions to identify their builders; the "holy city" has only weak inventions of modern monks. But for written records, Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman remains would be as mysterious as the ruins of America; and to come down to later times and countries comparatively familiar, tradition sheds no light upon the round towers of Ireland, and the ruins of Stonehenge stand on Salisbury plain without a tradition to carry us back to the age or nation of their builders.

The second argument I shall notice is, that a people possessing the power, art, and skill to erect such cities, never could have fallen so low as the miserable Indians who now linger about their ruins. To this, too, it might be sufficient to answer that their present condition is the natural and inevitable consequence of the same ruthless policy which laid the axe at the root of all ancient recollections, and cut off forever all traditionary knowledge. But waiving this ground, the pages of written history are burdened with changes in national character quite equal to that here exhibited. And again, leaving entirely out of the question all the analogous examples which might be drawn from those pages, we have close at hand, and under our very eyes, an illustration in point. The Indians who inhabit that country now are not more changed than their Spanish masters. Whether debased, and but little above the grade of brutes, as it was the policy of the Spaniards to represent them, or not, we know that at the time of the conquest they were at least proud, fierce, and warlike, and poured out their blood like water to save their inheritance from the grasp of strangers. Crushed, humbled, and bowed down as they are now by generations of bitter servitude, even yet they are not more changed than the descendants of those terrible Spaniards who invaded and conquered their country. In both, all traces of the daring and warlike character of their ancestors are entirely gone. The change is radical, in feelings and instincts, inborn and transmitted, in a measure, with the blood; and in contemplating this change in the Indian, the loss of mere mechanical skill and art seems comparatively nothing; in fact, these perish of themselves, when, as in the case of the Indians, the school for their exercise is entirely broken up. Degraded as the Indians are now, they are not lower in the scale of intellect than the serfs of Russia, while it is a well-known fact that the greatest architect in that country, the builder of the Cazan Church at St. Petersburgh, was taken from that abject class, and by education became what he is. In my opinion, teaching might again lift up the Indian, might impart to him the skill to sculpture stone and carve wood; and if restored to freedom, and the unshackled exercise of his powers of mind, there might again appear a capacity to originate and construct, equal to that exhibited in the ruined monuments of his ancestors.

The last argument, and that upon which most stress has been laid, against the hypothesis that the cities were constructed by the ancestors of the present Indians, is the alleged absence of historical accounts in regard to the discovery or knowledge of such cities by the conquerors. But it is manifest that even if this allegation were true, the argument would be unsound, for it goes to deny that such cities ever existed at all. Now there can be no doubt as to the fact of their existence; and as it is never pretended that they were erected since the conquest, they must be allowed to have been standing at that time. Whether erected by the Indians or by races perished and unknown, whether desolate or inhabited, beyond all question the great buildings were there; if not entire, they must at least have been far more so than they are now; if desolate, perhaps more calculated to excite wonder than if inhabited; and in either case the alleged silence of the historian would be equally inexplicable.

But the allegation is untrue. The old historians are not silent. On the contrary, we have the glowing accounts of Cortez and his companions, of soldiers, priests, and civilians, all concurring in representations of existing cities, then in the actual use and occupation of the Indians, with buildings and temples, in style and character like those presented in these pages. Indeed, these accounts are so glowing that modern historians, at the head of whom stands Robertson, have for that reason thrown discredit over them, and ascribed them to a heated imagination. To my mind, they bear on the face of them the stamp of truth, and it seems strange that they have been deemed worthy of so little reliance. But Robertson wrote upon the authority of correspondents in New Spain, one of whom, long resident in that country, and professing to have visited every part of it, says that "at this day there does not remain the smallest vestige of any Indian building, public or private, either in Mexico or any province of New Spain." Robertson's informants were probably foreign merchants resident in the city of Mexico, whose travels had been confined to the beaten road, and to places occupied by the Spaniards; and at that time the white inhabitants were in utter ignorance of the great cities, desolate and in ruins, that lay buried in the forests. But at this day better information exists; vast remains have been brought to light, and the discoveries prove incontestably that those histories which make no mention of these great buildings are imperfect, those which deny their existence are untrue. The graves cry out for the old historians, and the mouldering skeletons of cities confirm Herrera's account of Yucatan, that "there were so many and such stately Stone Buildings that it was Amazing; and the greatest Wonder was that, having no Use of any Metal, they were able to raise such Structures, which seem to have been Temples, for their Houses were all of Timber, and thatched." And again, he says, that "for the Space of twenty Years there was such Plenty throughout the Country, and the People multiplied so much that Men said the whole Province looked like one Town."

These arguments then--the want of tradition, the degeneracy of the people, and the alleged absence of historical accounts--are not sufficient to disturb my belief, that the great cities now lying in ruins were the works of the same races who inhabited the country at the time of the conquest.

Who these people were, whence they came, and who were their progenitors, are questions that involve too many considerations to be entered upon at the conclusion of these pages; but all the light that history sheds upon them is dim and faint, and may be summed up in few words.

According to traditions, picture writings, and Mexican manuscripts written after the conquest, the Toltecs, or Toltecans, were the first inhabitants of the land of Anahuac, now known as New Spain or Mexico, and they are the oldest nations on the continent of America of which we have any knowledge. Banished, according to their own history, from their native country, which was situated to the northwest of Mexico, in the year 596 of our era, they proceeded southward under the directions of their chiefs, and, after sojourning at various places on the way for the space of one hundred and twenty-four years, arrived at the banks of a river in the vale of Mexico, where they built the city of Tula, the capital of the Toltecan kingdom, near the site of the present city of Mexico.

Their monarchy lasted nearly four centuries, during which they multiplied, extended their population, and built numerous and large cities; but direful calamities hung over them. For several years Heaven denied them rain; the earth refused them food; the air, infected with mortal contagion, filled the graves with dead; a great part of the nation perished of famine or sickness; the last king was among the number, and in the year 1052 the monarchy ended. The wretched remains of the nation took refuge, some in Yucatan and others in Guatimala, while some lingered around the graves of their kindred in the great vale where Mexico was afterward founded. For a century the land of Anahuac lay waste and depopulated. The Chechemecas, following in the track of their ruined cities, reoccupied it, and after them the Acolhuans, the Tlastaltecs, and the Aztecs, which last were the subjects of Montezuma at the time of the invasion by the Spaniards. The history of all these tribes or nations is misty, confused, and indistinct. The Toltecans, represented to have been the most ancient, are said to have been also the most polished. Probably they were the originators of that peculiar style of architecture found in Guatimala and Yucatan, which was adopted by all the subsequent inhabitants; and as, according to their own annals, they did not set out on their emigration to those countries from the vale of Mexico until the year 1052 of our era, the oldest cities erected by them in those countries could have been in existence but from four to five hundred years at the time of the Spanish conquest. This gives them a very modern date compared with the Pyramids and temples of Egypt, and the other ruined monuments of the Old World; it gives them a much less antiquity than that claimed by the Maya manuscript, and, in fact, much less than I should ascribe to them myself. In identifying them as the works of the ancestors of the present Indians, the cloud which hung over their origin is not removed; the time when and the circumstances under which they were built, the rise, progress, and full development of the power, art, and skill required for their construction, are all mysteries which will not easily be unravelled. They rise like skeletons from the grave, wrapped in their burial shrouds; claiming no affinity with the works of any known people, but a distinct, independent, and separate existence. They stand alone, absolutely and entirely anomalous, perhaps the most interesting subject which at this day presents itself to the inquiring mind. I leave them with all their mystery around them; and in the feeble hope that these imperfect pages may in some way throw a glimmer of light upon the great and long vainly mooted question, who were the peoplers of America? I will now bid farewell to ruins.