CHAPTER XI

THE FINDING OF THE DATE-STONE

“Always in my earlier days in my City of the Sacred Well,” says Don Eduardo, “the question was in my mind as to the age of the city. Every carved stone I found, I scanned eagerly for some clue and I should say, perhaps, right here, that while we can often gain only an inkling of the meaning of the Maya hieroglyphs and in some cases no understanding at all, the date-glyphs are plain sailing. We can read them, I think, as readily as we would read dates written in English. With but a little training any one may do this.

“But though I looked on engraved stones by the hundreds, there were no dates. Again and again I questioned the natives: ‘When do you think these buildings were erected and who built them?’ Invariably came the patient answer, ‘_Quien sabe?_’—‘Who knows?’

“Among these Indians was an old fellow whose face hauntingly reminds me of an ancient picture of a Hebrew patriarch that I have seen in some forgotten place. One day we were clearing the brush from a gentle terrace to make ready for the planting of corn. I called the attention of my overseer to several mounds upon a large near-by terrace, telling him that we must surely dig into them as soon as we could find time, to see if they contained any relics. Suddenly my grizzled patriarch straightened up and gazed at the mounds and then came over to me, saying as he pointed to the tallest of the mounds, ‘That one has in it a stone book written by my fathers.’ Here at last was something, of no value, possibly, but better far than the eternal ‘_Quien sabe?_’ Eagerly I asked him how he came by this idea and he said that in the days of his great, great grandfather this temple mound was known as Mul-huun-tunich, the Hill of the Stone Book. He said that he had been told this by his father and his grandsire had told his father and a high priest had so told his grandfather. I could get no more out of him, but he stuck doggedly to this brief tale.

“I had passed the mound several times and now I gazed at it with fresh interest. It was covered with a tangled growth of vines and thicket and well-grown trees, reminding me of what some philosopher has so truly said—that the most perfect works of men are soon covered by forests which grow an inch a day. If this mound had ever been a stately edifice, all semblance had long since passed. The bat or serpent might find a cavity in its ruined space, but if any carving of god or hero were to be found, it was well hidden from my prying eyes.

“At once I began the task of clearing away the young growth and the stumps of what had been sizable trees and beneath these were other decaying tree stumps. In this ruined area, which is perhaps three thousand feet to the south of the Great Pyramid of El Castillo, is a terrace, rising about twenty feet above the general level. On this terrace, which once had smooth, sloping sides, are ruined buildings with a bit here and there still standing, surrounded with shapeless heaps of fallen stone. The hill of the stone book, as it was called by my old Indian, was on the northeastern edge of this terrace, pyramidal in form and sharply defined.

“My better judgment told me I was wasting time in heeding the vaporings of the old Indian while more important tasks waited, but my interest and curiosity were touched and I urged my men to strenuous effort, resisting with difficulty the temptation to dig at once into the center of the mound. We cleared the undergrowth in patches and burned it, so that the valuable timber would not be injured by the heat, nor the stones in the mound calcined. While most of the men were thus engaged I selected a few picked workers and we began the excavation of the pyramidal mound. We found not only trees growing above buried stumps, but charred stumps even below these. My old Indian examined carefully the cuts upon these deep-buried stumps and logs and said that these marks had not been made by ax, hatchet, machete, or any modern implement that he had ever seen. In all probability this earliest felling was done before the coming of the white man with his cutting edges of metal.

“I wondered who could have cut down the big trees around the pyramid. How could trees have been permitted to grow here or have been burned so close to buildings inhabited or in use? Evidently the burning and cutting, ancient as it might have been, had yet been done many, many years after the structure was abandoned.

“At last we had a space cleared all around the base of the mound and we sorted over the loose stones, looking for inscriptions, but came across nothing of unusual interest. We found the mound to be four-sided and truncated, with broad steps leading up all four sides and with the principal stairway facing the west. The pyramid was in ruins and the upper outline obliterated. Close to the base of the main stairway we uncovered a semi-recumbent stone figure, part man and part animal, of the so-called Chac Mool type. It was still firmly cemented in place and, like the stairway, faced the west. Just in front of this stone figure we unearthed a small elaborately carved stone urn of pineapple pattern, and a similar urn was dug up just to the rear of the Chac Mool figure. The Chac Mool and the incense urns were much marred and pitted by erosion, and the finding of charcoal in fragments and granules all about indicated that a deliberate effort had been made to destroy these priceless things.

“Gradually we cleared the earth and fallen stones and mortar from the main staircase. Many nests of lovely mauve-colored wood-doves were destroyed as we felled the trees. We saved as many as we could, but for several hours the mournful cries of the bereaved feathered creatures sounded from the neighboring forest like the wails of the departed spirits of those who had lived and died beside this old, old temple.

“On the southern slope a huge _chaib_, a species of boa-constrictor, beautifully marked with splashes of green and brown, was awakened from its slumbers deep in some rocky cavity of the pyramid and came surging down the mound with watchful head held high and graceful body bending the bushes in its path as it disappeared into the thicket below.

“The bees of Yucatan are kindly and have no sting, but the wasps more than make up for the impotence of the bees. The most venomous wasps, the _x-hi-chac_, build flat nests that cling as closely and unobtrusively to the tree trunks as porous plasters. One of the trees we felled contained such a nest. Lightning is slow compared with the speed of these insects, and I, personally, would just about as willingly be struck by lightning as to encounter the sting of the _x-hi-chac_. I think lightning would be less painful. Several of the men were badly stung and while I gave them first aid by applying ammonia to their hurts, and provided drinks of a refreshing nature, the victims spent a sleepless, feverish night. They were weak and in low spirits in the morning, but we resumed our task nevertheless.

“Clearing the way a step at a time, we finally reached a level, well-built platform at a height of thirty feet. At the rear of the platform was the jagged outlined wall of what had been a small temple and directly before it were two large Atlantean figures of unusual type. I had seen many squat stone figures in and about the city but never before such large ones or figures carved with such fierce grandeur of expression. They were intricately carved and highly conventionalized. Each was garbed in an embossed head-dress, breast pendants, loincloth, and sandals. Every detail was clearly worked, even to the carved strands of rope holding the sandals—sandals bearing a striking resemblance to those worn by the prehistoric or archaic Gauchos of the Canary Islands, which again suggests the plausibility of Plato’s Lost Atlantis.

“And as we cleared the debris away it became evident that these massive figures, so stiff and majestic, had originally sustained the front or façade of the temple. My curiosity and excitement had now reached a point where every slight delay was nerve-racking and the two grim guardians seemed to me like silent keepers of age-old secrets, ready to come to life and destroy the prying humans who dared invade their sacred domain.

“Little by little we removed the earth and rubbish. Slowly we progressed between the colossal figures, excavating with great difficulty the compacted mortar and stone which had fallen and become almost as a single stone. About three feet back of the statues was a huge stone covered with inscriptions. Was it the stone book? I cast aside all philosophic calmness and dropped to my knees, clawing away with my bare hands at the debris which obscured the inscriptions, until my nails were broken and my fingers bleeding.

“Here indeed was the Huun-tunich, the Stone Book, the Rosetta Stone of my ancient, lovely, and forgotten City of the Sacred Well! I am not ashamed of the fever of excitement which possessed me and communicated itself to my wondering Indians, who had not the slightest idea why the mad white man should become so wrought up over the finding of merely another stone with queer writings on it. But, then, what matter! White men are always a little insane, anyway, and one never knows what folly they will attempt next.

“With sharpened twigs I cleaned out all the incised lines, until the inscription on the exposed face stood forth clearly. Not till then did I attempt to read it. And there, among the glyphs I could not at once decipher, my eye caught a date-sign fairly jumping out to meet me. Cycle Ten, Katun Two, Tun Nine, Uinal One—in other words, 600 A. D.!

“It had been my secret hope that somewhere, somehow, I should be able to find an authentic date in Chi-chen Itza, some inscription which had eluded the eyes of other searchers. The Chronicles mention various dates in connection with the ancient city, but this added proof was needed to carry us over the threshold from probability into the realm of incontrovertible fact, just as the finds in the Sacred Well proved for us the veracity of the legends.

“This date-stone does not by any means indicate that the city was founded in 600 A. D., but that this particular temple, whatever its purpose may have been, was built or dedicated at that time. Imagine some terrible catastrophe befalling the United States, wiping out all our people and leaving our cities to fall in ruins and become covered with forests with the passing of hundreds of years. Then imagine an archæologist, even one as mad as myself, digging into these ruins and coming upon that block of granite which now stands over the entrance to the New York Corn Exchange and tells us in unmistakable terms when the building was erected. His find would be of tremendous historical value—a definite date standing out clearly from the misty past. But still he would not know nor have any clear idea of the date of the founding of New Amsterdam and no clue to the interesting history of those sturdy Dutch patroons who first built a village at the mouth of the Hudson.

“And so it is with my Sacred City. There is not in all the world a metropolis living or dead more mysterious, more dowered with romance. Its age, its origin, even the racial identity of its builders, are each and all sunk in mystery so profound that I doubt if we shall ever fathom them.

“I was so elated over my discovery that I at once promised double pay to each man for the month and declared that we would have a fiesta that all would remember for miles around and describe in later years to their sons. I tried to tell them how important was our find, but the double pay and the fiesta were much more eloquent to them than any words I could utter. I singled out the old Indian whose great, great grandfather had passed down the tale of the stone book. His face was as impassive as the faces of the stone gods about us, as befitted his dignity, but I could see it cost him a tremendous effort not to shout with glee and dance about like a small boy, and he gloried in the fact that he had not led me astray. Drawing his bent frame erect, he said, ‘Did I not say so and did my great grandfather ever lie?’

“Careful measurements showed that the stone had been the lintel of the doorway. Each end had rested upon and was securely cemented to the heads and supporting upraised arms of the huge Atlantean figures, thus forming an integral portion of the main temple entrance. This is not an unusual Mayan arrangement and, as previously mentioned, there is in the Akzab Tzib, or House of the Writing in the Dark, a similar lintel but without a date.

“A very long time must have elapsed since the abandonment of this temple. A seed of the _chac-te_ tree was carried by the winds or the birds and dropped in the entrance, a little to one side of the center. This tree is of extremely hard wood and it grows slowly. It grew to a sapling and at last into a big tree whose roots by their upward thrust toppled over the central portion of the façade. The lintel fell to the ground, but its fall was softened by the pile of powdered mortar and stone which had already sifted down, and fortunately the priceless relic was unbroken. Time passed; the big tree died and decayed. All this we know by the casts of the gnarled roots left in the grouting beneath the temple platform. Once again fertile Nature planted a seed under the tablet, carried to its earthy bed down under the fallen stones by some rodent or fruit-eating bat. And this was the seed of the _yax-nic_—a tree as hard as iron and as long-lived as its predecessor. It too grew to great size and its roots tilted the stone tablet to one side and, finally dying, left its epitaph written in root-casts or molds. Again ever-vigilant Mother Nature planted a seed, this time of a tree of soft, quick-growing wood, and the roots encircled the tablet as in a mighty hand; and thus we found it when we cut down the tree. Fortunately, the previous trees, which exude an acidic sap, had done the tablet no harm and the last tree had by its clasp rather protected the tablet than harmed it. And how easily Nature might have contrived, with her cycles of life, for the destruction of this treasure!

“The day passed and darkness came, but I could not leave the spot. I dismissed my Indians and took the photographic cloth from my camera and covered the tablet and then piled over it some pliant boughs of trees. But, like the youth who lingers over his adieus to his sweetheart, I uncovered the stone again and sat beside it until the moon was bright overhead. My vagrant fancy carried me back over the centuries and I saw smooth highways crossing and recrossing, and along these highways populous cities with the towering outlines of massive temples and the carved edifices of kings and nobles. I could hear the soft, silvery laughter of women bearing water-jugs, as they met in groups along the tree-shaded avenues, and there were merchants and bearers of burdens traveling to and fro from the market-places, and resplendent warriors and haughty peers and solemn priests. And there was the scent of incense smoke and a high, clear voice was chanting the invocation to Kukul Can....

“I was aroused by the voice of one of my Indians, a quaint fellow who always addressed me as Ah Kin (High Priest)—why I do not know. ‘Ah Kin,’ said he, ‘Master, the voices of the birds are stilled; your food is cold and untasted; I beseech you to come and eat.’ I arose and went with him, but I could not eat; and all night, as I tossed in my hammock, I saw the tablet and its every inscription as clearly as though it were actually before my eyes, and early in the morning I was back at its resting-place. That day we carefully raised it and replaced it firmly upon the heads and upraised arms of the impassive stone guardians—serene, majestic figures that have witnessed a mighty civilization and its passing into the dust of oblivion. Once again their arms hold the graven tablet as of old, but their mute lips which might tell so much are silent and in their changeless gaze is the haunting, immutable introspection of the Sphinx.”