CHAPTER VI

AMID THE PALACES OF THE ITZAS

By all means let the sluggard go to the ant, if he feels equal to the journey; but on no account let him go to Yucatan. For if he ever arrived at Merida he would never get further. It is only the early bird which catches a Yucatecan train. Bradshaw would find himself in Yucatan one of the unemployed, for there is no need of railway tables. All Yucatecan trains start at dawn, one from each terminus, east, south, and west. With the rising of the sun there is a setting of railway activity, the only remaining excitement of the day being the reception of the incoming train from east, south, or west, which has also started at dawn. Early rising is accounted a virtue in most countries; in Yucatan it has become a vice. It may have something to do with sleeping in hammocks. Everybody, rich and poor, sleeps in hammocks in Yucatan, and until the last year or two a bedstead, even in Merida, was scarcely known as a curio, and even now the few existing are restricted to the hotel and one or two American houses. For even the energetic to get out of a bedstead "with the sun" is an undertaking, an enterprise, demanding real moral courage and iron will-power. But the hammock is so different. You give a sharp twist of the body to the left, raise your feet clear of the blanket, and, before you know where you are, you are up, or, to speak more accurately, you are down, for there are falls in plenty for the uninitiated in hammock-sleeping. But whether it is due to hammocks or not the Yucatecans are all early birds, though they seem to have no designs on the early worms; for they simply sit about in the dark and shudder with cold.

The stars were still bright and it was pitch dark when, cursing the unearthly hours of Yucatecan railways, we tumbled out of our beds and into our top boots on the morning of our leaving Merida. There are many pleasanter occupations than putting the finishing touches to one's baggage for a long journey in the wilds in a gloom which is almost Cimmerian. The worst of the Yucatecans is that, having forced you, by the intemperance of their railway methods, to leave your bed, they do nothing for you in the way of providing food. Though the barbarians are all up themselves and the markets opening, you could not get a square meal for love or money. We were due to catch the dawn train going eastward, and the irritability born of dressing in the dark had developed into a sullen despair by the time we reached the station. It was deadly cold, that penetrating coldness which is typical of the tropics before dawn, and, as the little ramshackle train jolted through the suburbs, we wondered at the obstinacy of a people who will get up early and will not breakfast.

This eastern railway, which now runs as far as Valladolid--a small place which we shall describe later--had only just been completed on our arrival in Yucatan. Its total length is some eighty miles. At first the scenery was much what we had seen in our journey from the coast. Desolate, flat, stony country, all grey walls and henequen. After about ten miles of this, the little ill-laid single line enters the forest, which it thereafter never leaves, except at the clearings for the stations. Some of these are primitive enough, the platforms merely mounds banked up at the side of the rail. The monotony of the journey was broken by one or two humorous incidents. The slowness of Yucatecan trains is such as to make applicable Artemus Ward's sarcastic suggestion in regard to the American trains of old times, "that it's no use having a cow-catcher on the engine, for we shall never catch up a cow. It ought to be at the rear to prevent the cows from boarding the train and biting the passengers." We did not literally face this peril, but we did suffer the indignity of being chased by a pack of barking dogs, and at one point we had to slow down for a herd of cattle which had blundered from the woods on to the track and galloped, tails in the air, in front of the engine for about five miles. After we had been delayed for some time, further on, by the wood fuel, stored on the tender of the engine, catching fire, we eventually reached Citas, whence it is some eighteen miles through the forests to the famous ruins of Chichen Itza. Citas is a dirty village with a large church. There is something pathetic about Yucatan's churches. They are all too big for their towns, and look as much out of it as a boy of sixteen at a child's party. The smallest village in civilised Yucatan always possesses a large church and a small official with a big name, _el Jefe politico_, "the political Chief," a kind of mayor without the sables and the chain of office. Citas's mayor had very little on but a panama hat and a shirt, but he was an intelligent fellow to whom, as strangers in a strange land, we felt gratitude, for he had provided horses and an Indian guide.

It was our first experience of a Yucatecan road, and we were not impressed. Even the best roadways resemble a Scotch trout stream with the water dried up. Ledges of rock a foot or more high; stretches, a quarter of a mile at a time, covered with boulders but a few inches apart, make riding an absorbing exercise. The horses of Yucatan have learnt to take matters quietly (they certainly would not last a week if they fussed), and your mount will balance himself on a rocky promontory, like a chamois, and deliberately look about for the best place for his next hoof-step. A hold on the rein in case of a stumble, but no steering, is the best rule for the rider in Yucatan. If you try to steer your mount, you come to grief four out of five times; he knows best. The light was fading with tropical quickness as we rode through the Indian village of Piste, a ruinous settlement, thrice the scene of battles and raidings in the native wars of last century. Thence less than a league lies Chichen, and the road, deep embowered in trees, looked like a cavern's mouth ahead of us till the moon rose.

We had been riding forty minutes or so, when of a sudden the trees parted. Looming up, momentarily blotting out moon and sky, rose a mighty pyramid, rearing its vast mass of ink-black shadow into the silver sky. As we rode towards its western shoulder, the moon touched with a glinting light the flat stones of its southern slope and struck on the huge plinths and door-lintels of the temple which crowned it. Around us, as our eyes became used to the light, we saw, rising gaunt above the tree-tops, the crumbling walls and façades of palaces and temples. It was Chichen! Chichen the magnificent! and this the "Taj Mahal" of Central America, down the steep steps of which the solemn procession of priests and victims had passed in their journey to the scene of the sacrifice! Reining in our horses, we sat there gazing up at this grand relic of a dead people. Instinctively, one almost held one's breath; there was something so sublime, so awe-inspiring in this imperishable monument to perishable gods. What did it all mean? The tyrant priests, majestic in their bejewelled and befeathered robes, standing at the head of those now crumbling steps, with supplicatory hands uplifted to the starlit heavens; the mighty lord of the Itzas, at whose command tens of thousands had toiled at the building for years in the blistering sunlight; the gods, to appease whom the blood of human victims had perchance flowed in rivers before their grotesque idols; all dead, unutterably dead, impotent, discredited! As we sat there, from the dark woods echoed the weird long-drawn cry of the Mayan night-jar--the pubuy--like a spirit-wail over the fallen race.

The history of Chichen Itza before the arrival of the Spaniards is as vague and as untrustworthy as all else concerning the ancient Mayans. In a later chapter we shall review the evidence available as to the date of its building. M. Desiré Charnay labours needlessly to prove that the city was inhabited at the time of the Conquest. Of that, at least, there is no doubt. Even if no credence could be given to the report of the expedition thither of the elder Montejo in 1528, there is a sufficiency of Spanish documentary evidence to show that the city was not only inhabited, but the centre of a vast and powerful population in the twenties of the sixteenth century. But there is no reason to doubt the truth of Montejo's account of his sojourn there which has been outlined in Chapter III. He found Chichen the metropolis of the vast tribe of the Itzas. The Spanish historian Herrera asserts that Montejo had a return of the population taken with a view to apportioning the Indians among his soldiers as slaves, and that each Spaniard became master of between two and three thousand. Montejo's troops possibly numbered on his arrival at Chichen some 350, and this would make the census of Indians work out at something like a million. This is obviously a gross exaggeration, for even if there was any evidence that Montejo succeeded so completely in subjugating the Itzas as to be able to enslave them, we are quite certain from a careful personal survey of the district, that the country around never could have supported, any more than it could to-day support, so many inhabitants.

But as a matter of fact it is thoroughly clear that though Montejo succeeded in making a lodgment at Chichen and possessed himself of the principal buildings, occupying these for something like two years, the vast horde of Indians were not in any sense conquered, but had simply temporarily withdrawn into the surrounding woods and village suburbs of the city. Unable in the face of firearms to recapture their palaces, the natives played a waiting game, setting about slowly but surely to starve the Spaniards into submission. Weakened by months of privation, with every square mile of woodland thick with his enemies, Montejo's position became at last desperate, and there was nothing for him but to evacuate the city. This was done in a picturesque way. Choosing a dark night, Montejo collected his men, keeping the sentries on the walls till the last moment, and then, muffling with cloths the horses' hoofs, he tied a dog to the bell-rope attached to the clapper of a bell, putting a piece of meat a few feet away, but just out of his reach. Stealthily the war-worn Spaniards moved off into the woods, and naturally, as the dog saw them going, he pulled at the rope, thus ringing the bell. When they were actually out of sight the dog presumably scented the meat, and thereafter throughout the night made efforts to reach it, ringing the bell the while. This ruse entirely succeeded, the Indians believing their enemies still in camp; and it was not until their suspicions were aroused by the continuous ringing of the bell until dawn that they approached the buildings and found them deserted. But it was too late, and the Spaniards on their horses were able to make good their escape to the coast.

At the hacienda a kindly welcome awaited us from Mr. Edward Thompson, Consul-General for America in Yucatan, who has for some years been the owner of the property. A keen archæologist, he pluckily entered into possession of the estate some fifteen years ago when the neighbourhood had long earned an unenviable reputation. The last two haciendados and their families had been massacred by the revolted Indians and the house pillaged. Even to-day Chichen, which practically stands on the borderland of the disaffected eastern district of the Peninsula, is not as peaceful as it looks. A fortnight before our arrival a village some thirty miles off called Xocen had been raided and burnt. But these outbreaks do not distress Mr. Thompson, whose sympathies are with the Indians, and who, speaking Maya like one of them, is beloved by all around. An experienced traveller himself, Mr. Thompson gained our hearts at once by introducing us, as soon as our greetings were over, to a palm-thatched bathhouse in his garden, where in a stone trough we revelled for some time in the pleasures of cold water after our dusty, burning ride.

With the dawn we were up and out at El Castillo, to use the stupid Spanish name of the great pyramid. It loses none of its majesty in the daylight. It is a truncated pyramid close on 100 feet high, squared almost to the four cardinal points, but not, we believe, orientated; the northern side being the front because in that direction lies the Sacred Cenote which we shall describe in a moment. The four base lines are each, as near as can be, 200 feet long. On each of the four sides were gigantic staircases. That on the west, still in fair preservation, up which we must climb directly, is 37 feet wide. That on the north was 44, but this latter and that on the east are so entirely destroyed as to be barely traceable. The stairs on the south, about 40 feet wide, are much broken and overgrown by cactus and shrub. The pyramid is built of rubble and earth, and was completely faced with flat-hewn slabs of limestone about 5 feet by 4 and 4 to 6 inches thick. In places these are still in position. This is particularly the case with the south front. The four corners were evidently once dressed with rounded stone blocks from top to bottom.

It is difficult to exaggerate the magnificent appearance the mound must have once presented. The stairways, which are so steep as to appear in some places almost perpendicular, were balustraded, each balustrade ending on the ground in those gigantic carved stone serpent-heads, the jaws wide gaping, which we find again and again in Mayan ruins. The climb of the 120 steps, on the average about 9 inches high and 8 broad, is an undertaking before which any one not a practised Alpine climber might be excused for quailing. Pausing for breath at the eightieth step and looking downwards, your head reels; for the edges of the steps appear to merge into one another by reason of their steepness, giving one the feeling of being perched, fly-like, on the face of a grey cliff. On reaching the top step, a few feet of platform separates you from the temple. Climbing as you have been from the western side, the real one-time grandeur of the sanctuary does not strike you. It is not the front, and you must pass to the north, where was the state entrance to the Holy of Holies. This is 20 feet wide and the lintel of the gigantic doorway is supported by two pillars, 8-1/2 feet high, carved with a snake pattern and once ending at the base in snakes' heads, open-mouthed, the now empty eye-sockets having once been filled with brilliantly painted stone or pieces of polished jade. These heads are broken up, and only enough remained for the tutored eye to reconstruct the whole. Entering, you are in a now roofless room running the full length of the building east to west, 40 feet long and 6 broad. In front of you is a second doorway, its massive door-posts carved with life-sized figures of warriors in full ceremonial dress. By this you enter the central room, 20 feet by 12. Two pillars, each 1 foot 10 inches square, carved on every side with life-sized figures of warriors or priests in feathered costumes, support beams of sapota wood, once carved, but now too decayed to permit of the designs being traced.

There is no doubt that the building formed a temple. The religious nature of the Castillo must be indubitable to any one standing in front of it. Whether the bloody rites which are known to have been celebrated by Moctezuma's people in honour of Huitzopochtli, God of War, on the pyramids of Mexico had their equivalent on Chichen's mound is a very different matter. There is really no proof for or against. And if it were argued that the fact that there is no altar stone within, as is the case, goes far to prove that there were no such rites, there would be no value in such negative evidence. If bloody deeds in honour of a Sun-Deity were here enacted, possibly the flattened serpents' heads at the outer door, which would have been in view of the congregated thousands on the plains below, formed the butcher-blocks upon which the victim's palpitating heart, after his breast had been sliced open with the silex knife, was torn from its tissues to be burned as an offering to the god in the inner Holy of Holies; while the body, scarcely lifeless, was pitched (as some writers who value the picturesque rather than the accurate would like us to believe) down the steps to be sacramentally eaten by the worshippers. On the other three sides of the building runs a corridor 6 feet wide, three doors with sculptured jambs facing almost due south, east, and west.

A woodland path, in places wide enough to merit the title of road, and here and there showing signs of an ancient cementing, leads from this grimly majestic shrine of fallen gods to perhaps the grimmest pool in the world. Yucatan is peculiar in being riverless and lakeless. Rivers and lakes there are, but these are all subterranean, generally from fifty to two hundred feet beneath the surface. But dotted over the Peninsula are deep holes or water-caves, reservoirs carved by nature out of the limestone and fed by these underground sources. For these the Mayan Indian name is "cenote," and they are often huge. Two of the largest are at Chichen. Indeed the very name is due to them; for "_chi_" is "mouth" and "_chen_" is "wells." Thus _Chichen_ was the city at the "mouth of the wells."

But only one of Chichen's natural wells served as water supply. This flower-bordered path we follow leads to the Sacred Cenote, round which grim rumours have long collected; rumours which it is now our privilege to confirm as facts. As we approach, the trees on either side give a denser shade. A few yards further and the path debouches into a small semicircular space with tiers of stone running round it to the left, suggestive of a tiny amphitheatre. In front of you is a small stone building, one-roomed, possibly the scene of the penultimate acts of the terrible dramas played so many centuries back in this tropic woodland. A step more and you are on the brink! Hold the branch of that sapota sapling fast, for the fall is sheer! Seventy feet below you in a huge limestone basin, two hundred feet or more in diameter--so nearly a perfect circle that as you look into it you find it hard to believe it has not been engineered by man, that it has worn thus from the infinitely slow corrosive action of the rainfall and natural drainage water--seventy feet beneath you lies the black, still water. It is an inky black. High above it on the limestone sides of the great hole sprawl ferns, cactus, and orchid; higher still, fringing its verge, thorn-bushes and pale-green acacias, the grey-barked sapota, and the heavy-leafed ceibo-tree raise their branches into the sunlight. But the sun never touches that gruesome, deadly still, pitchy lake. Its very glassy stillness sends a shudder through you. In its sepia depths what wonder that Mayan priest and people saw the home of the terrible Rain God, at whose will the land might smile with plenty or the spectre of famine lay his bony hand on the shrinking townsfolk?

From the earliest days of the Spanish invasion to the present time rumour has been busy in circulating many gruesome stories of the exact sacrificial uses to which this terrible pothole in the limestone was put by the ancient Mayan Indians. If Montejo the elder, during his stay at Chichen in 1528, was cognisant of human immolation in the cenote, he has left no record of it. But this is no evidence that he was not, because, like most of his fellow-adventurers in the New World, he left no chronicles at all. The probability is, however, that he knew nothing accurately and certainly witnessed no sacrificial rites, for during the foreign occupation of their city the ritual of the Indians would almost certainly be in abeyance, or at any rate practised with the utmost secrecy. The first actual written Spanish testimony to the sacred character of the pool appears to be that of Bishop Landa in his _Relación de las Cosas de Yucatan_ (1556). He writes: "A good wide road led to a well into which in times of drought the natives used to throw men, as indeed they still do, as an offering to their deities, fully believing that they would not die, even though they disappeared. Precious stones and other valuable objects were also offered; and had the country been rich in gold, this well would contain a vast quantity, because of the great veneration of the natives for it.... On its bank rises a small building filled with idols in honour of all the principal deities in the country, exactly like the Pantheon in Rome. I cannot say whether this is an ancient practice or an innovation of the aborigines, who find here their idols to which they can bring their offerings. I also found sculptured lions, vases, and other objects, which from the manner they were fashioned must have been wrought with metal instruments; besides two statues of considerable size of one single block, with peculiar heads, earrings, and _maxtli_ round their loins."

The bishop's remarks were based, obviously, on an actual visit he paid Chichen and upon such tittle-tattle as he could obtain from the Indian peasantry. A more serious notice of the cenote is contained in a report, clearly inaccurate in detail and based on hearsay, which was drawn up in 1579 by the Spanish Governor of Valladolid and transmitted to Madrid. It runs as follows:--

"Eight leagues from this town stand some buildings called Chicheneca. Among them there is a _Cu_ (Maya name for pyramid) made by the hand of hewn stone and masonry, and this is the principal building. It has over ninety steps and the steps go all round so as to reach to the top of it; the height of each step is over one-third of a _vara_[2] high. On the summit stands a sort of tower with rooms in it.... This _Cu_ stands between two zenotes of deep water. One of them is called the Zenote of Sacrifice. They call the place Chicheneca after an Indian named Alguin Itza who was living at the foot of the Zenote of Sacrifice. At this zenote the lords and chiefs of all the province of Valladolid observe this custom. After having feasted for sixty days without raising their eyes during that time even to look at their wives nor at those who brought them food, they came to the mouth of the zenote and at the break of day they threw into it some Indian women, some belonging to each of the lords, and they told the women that they should beg for a good year in all those things which they thought fit, and thus they cast them in unbound; but as they were thrown headlong in they fell into the water, giving a great blow on it; and exactly at midday she, who was able to come out, cried out loud that they should throw her a rope to drag her out with, and she arrived at the top half dead, and they made great fires around her and incensed her with copal, and when she came to herself she said that below there were many of her nation, both men and women, who received her, and that raising her head to look at some of them they gave her heavy blows on the neck, making her put her head down, which was all under water in which she fancied were many hollows and deeps; and in answer to the questions which the Indian girl put to them, they replied to her whether it should be a good or bad year, and whether the devil was angry with any of the lords who had cast in the Indian girls, but these lords already knew that if a girl did not beg to be taken up at midday it was because the devil was angry with them, and she never came out again. Then seeing that she did not come out, all the followers of that lord and the lord himself threw great stones into the water and with loud cries fled from the place."

During the succeeding centuries there is no record of any effort on the part of the Spaniards to solve the mystery surrounding the well. This is not at all surprising, for from the first they took no kind of interest in questions affecting the Indian past of the country, and their innate avarice was not awakened by any well-founded suggestion that jewels and the precious metals had been cast as offerings into the Zenote. The mineral poverty of Yucatan was so obvious as not to permit of such a belief gaining currency, as is clear from the quotation given above from Bishop Landa. But there was another and a stronger reason why the pool should hold its secret fast. This was the extraordinary mechanical difficulty of dredging operations. As has been said, the height from the brink of the cenote to the water-level is seventy feet, and the basin is a complete and precipitous circle all round; there thus being no means of reaching the water except by some elaborate contrivance of a crane nature. M. D. Charnay in 1881 provided himself, in anticipation of his visit to Chichen with two automatic sounding machines, one of which was capable of bringing up half a cubic metre deposit. Owing, however, to the height of the cenote walls, the depth of the water, and the enormous detritus of centuries, he could do nothing. It has been reserved for our good friend Mr. Edward Thompson, whose earnestness is only matched by his persistence and his contempt for difficulties, to wrest from this ugly hole the full measure of its secrets. Some twelve months back he had set up an elaborate crane apparatus worked by hand-winches which, projecting considerably over the cenote, and moving in a large half-circle, supported a heavy iron dredger. By means of this machinery dredging over the whole surface of the well-bottom has been done to a considerable depth.

The water, regarded still by the superstitious Indians as fathomless, is at present thirty feet deep, but was probably deeper once. The dredging operations have disclosed the bottom of the cenote to be an accumulation of earth and vegetable refuse, into which Mr. Thompson has been able to probe to the depth of over thirty feet. These investigations have once and for all established the fact that the pool was the scene of countless human sacrifices. The quantity of skulls and bones brought up by the dredger admits of no other explanation. For if it was urged, as it may be, that such "finds" point possibly to the cenote having been put to a sepulchral use, the answer is provided by the character of the skulls and bones. In a pool which was regarded in the light of a national Valhalla the majority of the skeletons would almost certainly be those of men, and men, too, of advanced age, chiefs and war-worn tribal heroes. But this is not the case. With scarcely any exceptions, the bones are those of the young. We were privileged by the courtesy of Mr. Thompson to see and handle many of the skulls, and our examination of them satisfied us that they were one and all those of young females between twelve and sixteen years of age. The disarticulated bones all exhibited a like immaturity and sex. From these facts only one deduction is possible, namely that sacrifices in the cenote did occur, and that such sacrifices were of young girls who were hurled by the priests into the chasm, possibly after defilement by the high-priests in the small building at the pool's edge, thus symbolising the simultaneous surrender of virginity and life to the Rain Deity.

It is of course impossible to say for how many centuries before the Spanish Conquest this practice prevailed, but allowing for the natural tendency of the bodies to entirely decay during anything like such a vast period as some writers would suggest is represented by the life of Chichen as a city, the quantity of skulls found in fair preservation seems to indicate a comparatively frequent repetition of this cruel rite; probably many maids each dry season. These grim mementoes of the pagan past are not the only "finds" the cenote has yielded. While the dredging has more than corroborated Bishop Landa's supposition that the mineral poverty of Yucatan forbade the hope that countless ounces of gold and silver lay hidden in the pool's muddy bottom, many archæological treasures have been recovered. There is much reason to believe that, aided by these, Mr. Thompson will be able to give the world an absorbingly interesting reconstruction of pre-Conquest life in Chichen, pieced together with that painstaking zeal which has distinguished all his previous work in other parts of Yucatan.

To these "finds" we shall have reason later to refer more in detail, but of one thing we would speak here. An enormous quantity of lumps of copal, a resin obtained from several small trees or shrubs of tropical America with compound dotted leaves, known to botanists as the order of Burseraceae, have been dredged up. This copal was used as incense in the Mayan temples, and it is certain that it was regarded as very precious, for there is evidence that tributes to overlords were paid by vassal tribes in so much weight of this resinous gum. There thus seems little doubt that part of the ritual at the cenote edge was the casting in of lumps of copal as offerings to the god, and it is more than likely that this custom is referred to unconsciously by the Spanish official reporting in 1579, when he says that "all the followers of that lord and the lord himself threw great stones into the water and with loud cries fled from the place." The pieces of copal recovered are in some cases as large as a human head.

About one hundred and thirty yards to the south-west of the great pyramid is the building known as the Tennis-Court. Running north to south are two immense parallel walls 274 feet long, 30 feet thick, 25 feet high, and 120 feet apart. At each end, some 30 yards from the walls, stand buildings roofless and wall-less on the Tennis-Court side. That on the north still shows traces of elaborate carvings from floor to roof, and on two pillars, where was once a doorway, are figure carvings. The building to the south is not so richly decorated. The clue to the purpose of this vast enclosure is given by a massive stone ring projecting from the eastern wall 20 feet from the ground. A corresponding one on the west side has fallen and lies among the bushes. We found its measurements to be 3 feet 11 inches in diameter, 11-1/2 inches thick, and the diameter of the ringhole 1 foot 7 inches. The ring still in position is obviously of the same measurements: it can be seen in the photograph reproduced. On the flat surface and on its edges each ring is carved with two serpents intertwined. These rings formed an essential part of a ball-game, which seems to have been common to the Mayan peoples in Yucatan and the Aztec subjects of Moctezuma in Mexico. The native name for this pastime was _Tlachtli_.

The Spanish historian Herrera, in describing the amusements at the Court of Moctezuma, has a detailed account of the game. He writes (we follow the translation adopted by J. L. Stephens): "The King took much delight in seeing Sport at Ball, which the Spaniards have since prohibited, because of the mischief that often happened at it; and was by them called Tlachtli, being like our Tennis. The ball was made of the gum of a tree that grows in hot countries, which, having holes made in it, distils great white drops, that soon harden, and, being worked and moulded together, turn as black as pitch. The balls made thereof, though hard and heavy to the hand, did bound and fly as well as our footballs, there being no need to blow them; nor did they use chaces,[3] but vy'd to drive the adverse party that is to hit the wall, the others were to make good, or strike it over. They struck it with any part of their body, as it hapned, or they could most conveniently; and sometimes he lost that touched it with any other part but his hip, which was look'd upon among them as the greatest dexterity; and to this effect, that the ball might rebound the better, they fastened a piece of stiff leather on their hips. They might strike it every time it rebounded, which it would do several times one after another, in so much that it look'd as if it had been alive. They play'd in parties, so many on a side, for a load of mantles, or what the gamesters could afford, at so many scores. They also play'd for gold, and feather-work, and sometimes play'd themselves away, as had been said before. The place where they played was a ground room, long, narrow, but wider above than below and higher on the sides than at the ends, and they kept it very well plastered and smooth, both the walls and the floor. On the side walls they fix'd certain stones, like those of a mill, with a hole quite through the middle, just as big as the ball, and he that could strike it through won the game; and in token of its being an extraordinary success, which rarely hapn'd, he had a right to the cloaks of all the lookers-on, by antient custom, and law amongst gamesters; and it was very pleasant to see, that as soon as ever the ball was in the hole, the standers-by took to their heels, running away with all their might to save their cloaks, laughing and rejoicing, others scouring after them to secure their cloaks for the winner, who was oblig'd to offer some sacrifice to the idol of the Tennis Court, and the stone through whose hole the ball had pass'd. Every Tennis Court was a temple, having two idols, the one of gaming, and the other of the ball. On a lucky day, at midnight, they perform'd certain ceremonies and enchantments on the two lower walls and on the midst of the floor, singing certain songs, or ballads; after which a priest of the great temple went with some of their religious men to bless it; he uttered some words, threw the ball about the Tennis Court four times, and then it was consecrated and might be play'd in, but not before. The owner of the Tennis Court, who was always a lord, never play'd without making some offering and performing certain ceremonies to the idol of gaming, which shows how superstitious they were, since they had such regard to their idols, even in their diversions. Moctezuma carry'd the Spaniards to this sport, and was well pleas'd to see them play at it, as also at cards and dice."

This account by Herrera of the temples surrounding the playground would be as accurate if it purported to be a description of Chichen instead of Mexico. The two roofless buildings which we found north and south of the court certainly suggested temples, but a more elaborate confirmation of the religious element in this ball-game is found at the southern end of the eastern wall, where stands another building larger than either of those described. This is called "The Temple of the Tigers," from a frieze design, marvellously lifelike, of jaguars (always called tigers in Yucatan) pacing after one another. The building is built to the same level as, and indeed forms part of, the wall of the Tennis Court. Its position, with serpent-columned doorway, facing the arena, indicates that it, too, figured in the ceremonies of the ball-game. Of the front room nothing remains but the two columns and the back wall, out of which latter a doorway leads into an inner apartment. Here are the most remarkable Mayan paintings so far discovered. They cover, or, to be accurate, they once covered (for they are much mutilated), the whole wall space. The colours used are green, red, blue, a reddish brown (the colour of the human skin in all Mayan paintings), and yellow. The designs are coarse in outline, the colours are faded, the plaster is chipped; but the humanity of it all holds you. The method employed in these mural paintings was that of placing one layer of pigment over another. Thus a green shield with yellow bosses studding it was depicted by the shield being first painted entirely over with green, discs of yellow chalky pigment being then placed on the green background. This method, which at the time of the actual painting obviously must have added to the glowing realistic effect, has its grave disadvantages in the detaching of these superimposed layers of paint by crumbling during the passage of centuries. Thus much of the original skill of the design is for ever lost to us.

But it is all very human. Life as it was lived, loved and struggled for; life with all its work and its play, its lights and its shades; the drama of life in those far-off Indian days, is here pictured for you. The long-dead past lives again in that crumbling fresco. By the magic of even that crude draughtsmanship you are transported back through the centuries into the living city. Close at hand you seem to hear the weird chanting of the priests, to smell the resinous incense; from the steaming plain below rise the sounds of hut-life, the grating of the stone rolling-pin (universal sound in every Indian village) on the _metate_ or stone tray as the housewife crushes the maize, the cries of playing children, the barking of the housedogs, the crowing of the cocks. You seem to catch the echo of sharp words of command, of the low, long-drawn, grunting cries of the toilers as they drag huge plinths up the newly banked sides of the pyramid; while from the distant quarry comes the incessant "tap-tap-tap" of nephrite chisels as the masons shape the vast blocks of limestone. On the other wall the artist shows you warriors, shields and flint-headed spears in hand, in the full crash of battle; while above them the women have come out upon the battlements of the city to watch the struggle. Truly is there nothing new under the sun. To one's mind come those lines of Matthew Arnold:

"Men shall renew the battle on the plain; To-morrow, as it hath been, it shall be; Hector and Ajax shall be there again; Helen shall come upon the walls to see."

Scrambling down the broken wall to the ground-level, at the back of this painted room is another looking towards the pyramid. The back wall, all that remains, is covered with figures of warriors carved so closely that it is hard to follow the design in the blaze of sunlight.

But there is one figure which demands attention. In the centre of this bas-relief is the presentment of a man who is distinguished from those around by the fact that he wears a beard. This is very curious and very important. Beards were never worn by the ancient Mayan Indians, as indeed they are never worn to-day. In fact, physiologically the Mayan cannot grow a beard, or at least a beard of anything but the mangiest and most scrubby nature, a fact which is evidence of that Mongolian blood which he shares in common with the American Indians of the North and South. But beards are said to have been worn by the priestly caste attached to the worship of the Mexican deity and culture-hero Quetzalcoatl. This divinity, it has been believed, can be identified with the Maya god Itzamna, and this belief certainly gains support from the appearance of this bearded figure on the sculpture of Chichen, the work of a beardless race.

In front, where the doorway of this temple once stood, are two square carved pillars, not monolithic, but built of slabs a foot or more thick; but the topmost slabs have come away and lie on the ground. Between these pillars, the back hollowed as if for a ceremonial seat, is the much broken form of a tiger (jaguar). Between this building and the pyramid are heaps of fallen stones, and in the dense bush we find and photograph huge slabs of limestone 3 or 4 feet square and more than a foot thick, upon which are carved quite brilliantly lifelike representations of a much bewhiskered jaguar and a parrot eating a nut of the mamey tree. Among these littered stones are, too, many serpents' heads and pieces of a curious frieze decorated with skulls and crossbones.

Standing on the top of the Castillo platform, looking northeastward, one sees shining white amid the trees the pillars of what is known as the Temple of the Tables, so called in allusion to its chief feature, a series of tables, huge stone slabs supported on Atlantean figures. These latter are of extraordinary interest. They have the square, severe Egyptian headdress and fillet, and so closely resemble in features and general appearance the Sphinx-forms of Egyptian mythology that one starts back in amazement on first seeing them. One curious thing, too, is that a close examination shows an extraordinary diversity of feature. Whoever the sculptor was, he was not content with producing a stereotyped face, but actually aimed at and obtained a series which one might reasonably guess to be portraits. But of these squat figures, more when we come to our conclusions as to who the Mayans were.

Away to the north of the Castillo, but a few yards from the path which leads to the Sacred Cenote, is a small ruin known as the Temple of the Cones, because in front of it are perhaps a hundred small cone-shaped stones about 2 to 3 feet long, looking for all the world like the 10-inch shells fired from modern artillery. Some writers have found a suggestion of phallic worship in these, but the close inspection we made convinced us this is not the case.

To the east of the Castillo in the dense woods are an extraordinary series of short columns, the difficulty of explaining which has so far defeated all students. Hundreds of these columns, now broken and scattered, built, as all the columns at Chichen are, of square slabs mortared on to each other, appear to have stood in rows five or six abreast, and some 12 feet apart each from each, forming the sides of an immense square. These columns would seem to have been finished by plain square capitals which lie about here and there. The most reasonable suggestion offered in explanation of these groups of pillars, none of which evidently exceeded 6 feet in height, is that of M. Charnay, who was at Chichen in 1881. He believed them to mark the site of the market-place of the ancient city, and found in the columns the supports for that low colonnade which, he pointed out, was known to have bordered the market-places in Mexico at the time of the Conquest. He quoted Clavigero, who wrote: "In Mexico the judges of the commercial tribunal, twelve in number, held their court in the market buildings, where they regulated prices and measures and settled disputes. Commissioners acting under their authority patrolled the market-place to prevent disorder." The position of these strange columns at Chichen, in the very heart of the old city, as they must have been, within a hundred yards of the Castillo, certainly seem to support M. Charnay's guess, and there is no difficulty in believing that a large arcade supported by rows of five columns abreast ran round the market-place to afford shelter from the sun to those who, like the judges mentioned by Clavigero, had by reason of their duties to be there all day. M. Charnay, however, does not attempt to explain what has become of the roof of such arcade, for there is no sign of it among the littered stones. The explanation undoubtedly is that the roof would have been formed not of stone but of a framework of light beams thatched with palm-leaves, the thatch periodically renewed, as is the case to-day with every Indian hut where the thatching lasts little more than a year. This roofing of the arcade would have of course long ago entirely rotted away.

In the woods to the south-east of the Castillo are a series of ruins which, while intrinsically interesting, are perhaps of most value in the discussion as to the actual age of Chichen. We shall refer to them in a later chapter, and at present would content ourselves with saying that we believe them to represent an older Chichen than that which flourished at the time of Montejo's visit. They consist of a series of mounds some 30 feet high, crowned with now ruined buildings. In their midst are two temples. The first is very remarkable. Its roof has gone, but the majestic carved pillars, 10 feet high, which supported it are still for the most part in position. Here Mr. Thompson recently unearthed a life-sized recumbent statue of the Chacmool type to which a reference was made in our description of the Museum at Mexico City. Its head is half turned, and its features and headdress are those of the Atlantean statuettes. A hollow in the body between the navel and ribs, three inches wide by three-quarters of an inch deep, suggests a receptacle for incense-burning; the figure probably being altar and idol combined.

To the immediate south of this, with the walls nearly adjoining, is a second temple, now roofless. Against its southern wall stand three carved pillars some 10 feet high, but the peculiar feature is a platform 3 feet high and 5 feet wide and 12 feet long on the north side which has all the appearance of an altar; while a second feature, which we saw nowhere else in Yucatan, was a terraced ledge at the eastern end about 4 feet wide running the full width of the building and approached in its north-east corner by a flight of five stone steps well laid. Still further to the south of these twin temples were two mounds parallel to each other about 50 yards apart. Owing to the dense growth of bush accurate measurements were difficult; but each appeared to be between 40 and 50 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 25 to 30 feet high. Excavations on the second one showed three small stone houses, apparently communicating.

In the woods to the south of the Castillo are a group of large and well-preserved ruins. First the "Red House," a literal translation of the Indian name _Chichanchob_, in allusion to the extensive colouring of the inner walls. The building, which is 43 feet long and 23 deep and has a richly ornamented cornice, stands on a low mound 62 feet long and 50 odd wide, approached by a stairway 20 feet wide. It has three doors admitting to a room running the full length of the building; and out of this again there are three doors to three inner rooms. Along the top of the wall of the front room runs a tablet covered with two lines of hieroglyphics. They are much worn, and we found it impossible to get a satisfactory mould of them. The paints on the walls are still vivid, but no pattern is traceable; the only striking feature being that "red hand," which we found in far better preservation at a city we discovered some months later in the island of Cozumel, and of which we shall write later.

To the south-east of the Chichanchob is a most puzzling building, unique as far as Yucatan is concerned. The Caracol, or "Winding Staircase," stands on two rectangular stone-faced terraces reached by steps. The lower terrace measures 220 feet north to south, 150 feet east to west, and is 20 feet high. The masonry is very rough, and may have been plastered. At one end are the remains of four small pillars, and around the building we found at intervals carved heads hollowed in the crowns to serve as incense-burners. The stairs are on the west side, and are 45 feet wide; the broken remains we found suggested there had been serpent balustrades. The second or upper terrace is 60 feet east to west, 80 north to south, and 12 feet high; the steps being a continuation of the lower flight. The building is a large squat turret of about 40 feet diameter and about 25 in height. Upon this turret a smaller one, now largely fallen, stood. The main turret consists of two concentric walls, enclosing two annular rooms and a circular core or pillar. The walls are some 2 feet thick. There are four doorways facing the cardinal points of the compass in the outer, and four facing the sub-cardinal points in the inner, wall. The core is about 7 feet thick at the floor-level and 8 feet at ceiling. The roof of each of these annular rooms ends in a very pointed arch. Facing the north-east door is a small opening in the core about 4 feet from the floor and measuring about 28 by 24 inches. J. L. Stephens in 1842 abandoned the attempt to explore this, but we were luckier. By a total disregard of our clothes and of the probability that the passage sheltered at least one rattlesnake, we squirmed through and came out at the side of the topmost turret some 10 feet from the top. Undoubtedly this was once a stairway, for we could feel (it was too dark to see) the broken edges of the steps. It is reasonable to surmise that this unique winding-stair building was in the nature of an observatory, though whether in connection with Sun or Star worship it is of course impossible to say.

To the south of the Caracol stands a ruin of remarkable beauty and in wonderful preservation. The Spaniards called it "_La Casa de las Monjas_" (Nuns' House), and there is much reason to believe that this is a thoroughly appropriate title, and that this building did actually house those virgins of noble birth of whose dedication to religious uses we shall have to speak at some length in a later chapter, when reviewing the whole subject of Mayan religion. The peculiar feature of the building is the manner of erection. Apparently at first it stood on a solid foundation of masonry 30 feet high and of the same size as the building itself except to the north, where there was a platform 30 feet wide. At some period, whether during erection or after completion it is impossible to tell, the architect must have come to the conclusion that the building was top-heavy, and decided to strengthen it by continuing the northern platform all round. This new wall was not spliced and mortised into the other as one would expect. A wall was built to the outer dimensions of the support only 2 feet thick, and the space between this and the main building was filled up with rubble and loose building waste. The abutment on the northern side, down which thirty-four steps lead to ground-level, was built in the same manner, giving it an unsubstantial lean-to appearance. But we shall have more to say upon this mode of building when attempting to date these structures in a later chapter.

The buildings on the platform are two in number. The larger is 104 feet long and 30 wide, and contains seven rooms, the largest on the south side measuring 47 feet by 9 feet wide, its inner walls bearing traces of figure paintings from floor to roof. The space on the northern side corresponding to this room has apparently been filled up. The niches for the doorways exist, but they are sealed to the lintel with masonry, whether because sepulchral or to give support to the building above, it is impossible to say. On either side of this closed space are two smaller rooms and two more in corresponding places on the south side, while at the east and west ends a room runs from north to south. The lintels of the three sealed doorways, both underneath and on the facings, are covered with hieroglyphics, as are also those of the doors on either side, and the fact that none are found on the southern chamber suggests that the sealing was for an important reason. Returning to the north side and climbing sixteen steps, you reach the second platform, on which stood a second house now merely a heap of stones. It was one-roomed with two doors, looking north and south.

As we came down the steps we disturbed a huge iguana, which darted up the face of the ruin and ran along its edge, stopping motionless at the corner to peer over at us, its grey dewlapped head and hideous blinking eyes making it look like some animated gargoyle. Once more on the ground, we turned towards the eastern annexe of the nunnery, containing five open and two closed rooms. Its façade has scarcely a parallel in Central America. The twining-serpent frieze, the "elephant trunk," the diamond pattern, and other designs common in Mayan ornamentation are lavishly used, as can be seen from the illustration, while in a central arched niche is a bust with a headdress of feathers. Over the door are twenty curious cartouches, five in a row, and over these are six ornaments like capital T's stuck into the building by their stems. As we approach, two or three asses, startled from their grazing at the doorways, clatter off into the stony woodland. Lizard and wild ass! Could better illustration than these desolate, gaping palace chambers be found for Omar Khayyam's lines:

"They say the Lion and the Lizard keep The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep; And Bahram--that great hunter--the wild ass Stamps o'er his head, but cannot break his sleep"?

We sat awhile amid the fallen blocks of masonry in what must have been the nunnery courtyard, watching the swallows as they flew in and out of those timeworn doorways. Here and there amid the stunted wiry grass rose clumps of cactus and coarse thistle-like plants, while over all climbed a large blue convolvulus, its centre striped purple-red, making Nature's perfect harmony of colouring with a dainty butter-yellow foxglove-shaped flower which filled the air with a subtle musky perfume. Huge butterflies of orange and sulphur, of striped black and scarlet, of black and white, flitted among the blooms; while over us blazed the sun in a sea of blue, the rich blue of the eternal Carib summer.

A few yards south-eastward of us stood Akad-zib, "House of the Mysterious Writing," eighteen-roomed and unique as being the only building in Chichen not on a mound. Its façade--a contrast to the palace--is severely plain, but the building has importance. In the room looking south, over the dark lintel of a doorway leading to an inner chamber, are two rows of hieroglyphics,--the best preserved in Chichen,--while on the ceiling of this doorway, carved in relief and seated in front of what appears to be a basin of incense, is a figure in full-feathered dress, a right angle of glyphs running round to its left. Southward beyond the Akad-zib we could just see that greener patch of woodland which marks where lies the huge cenote whence the Itzas drew their water supply. Approached by a winding path which runs to the water's level, the broken sides of the chasm admit the sunlight, and the blueness of the water and the golden green of the palm-leaves make a true tropic picture.

And so the reader has wandered with us round two square miles of woodland, and glanced at the wonders of a city which in the days of its greatness numbered its citizens by scores of thousands; a city which architecturally, though possibly not culturally, remains the greatest monument of Central American civilisation.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] _Vara_--a linear measure used in Spanish America, equal to thirty-three English inches.

[3] _Chaces_--an old-time form of spelling "chases."