Plan of the ruins at PalenquePLAN OF PRINCIPAL GROUP OF RUINS AT PALENQUE.
PLAN OF PRINCIPAL GROUP OF RUINS AT PALENQUE.
I accepted Don Adolfo’s hospitality for the night, and was ready to set off early the next morning on a good horse he had lent me; but Don Carlos and Don Adolfo had put their heads together and agreed that it was out of the question that I should ride the forty miles to Santo Domingo alone, saying that I was sure to lose my way amongst the numerous cattle-tracks; they had been so uniformly kind and courteous to me, that, although I was fairly certain I could find the path, I felt obliged to give way to their wishes, and endure a further delay whilst a guide was being found for me. At last all was arranged and by eight o’clock we set off, and as we journeyed over the first few miles of the track, where the roots of the trees were thick and progress necessarily slow, I chatted with my guide and heard all the stories of the Carnival; then, as the track became clearer, I pushed my horse to a gentle canter and shouted to the guide to keep up with me. Time after time I had to wait for him, and each time he seemed to lag further and further behind, so about midday I left him and pushed on to the only place in the track where water was to be found and there stopped to eat my breakfast. I rested nearly an hour and still no guide made his appearance; at last, fearing he had met with some accident, I rode back along the track for about two miles, when I found him seated on the ground in the middle of the track and his mule quietly grazing close by. Nothing seemed to be the matter with him, and when I asked him why he did not come on to the water, he replied that he needed his breakfast, and, as far as I could find out, had made it solely off a large bottle of aguardiente, which was now quite empty.
With some difficulty I got him on his mule again, whilst he kept muttering “Galope, galope! con los Ingleses es siempre así, galope, galope!” and for the remaining twenty miles, with the aid of a long stick, I kept his mule in front of me at a ‘galope,’ or rather at a sort of shuffling canter which was all she was equal to. The guide swayed fearfully in his saddle, and at times I thought that he must come off, but somehow or other he always managed to save himself just in the nick of time; by degrees he got better, and, much to my astonishment, when he dismounted at Santo Domingo he was as sober as a judge. There we parted on the best of terms, and as I learnt that the arriero had also arrived safely with the pack-mules, I mounted my horse again and rode on to join Mr. Price at the ruins.
On the 20th February, Gorgonio, José Domingo, and Caralampio Lopez arrived at Palenque, having ridden overland from Guatemala, and we at once set to work making paper moulds of the inscriptions; by the end of three weeks a large number of moulds had been dried and stored in one of the temples, and others in process of making were still adhering to the sculptured slabs, when, late one evening, a heavy rain-storm unexpectedly burst upon us. It was impossible in the dark to reach the temple where the moulds were stored, as the whole of the intervening space was covered with felled trees, and even in the daytime it was a severe gymnastic exercise to get from one building to another. When daylight came and we were able to reach the temple, we found that the waterproof sheets with which the moulds were covered had not sufficed to keep out the driving rain, and that half of the moulds had been reduced to a pulpy mass, and those in process of making had been almost washed away. The rain continued to fall all day long, the rooms where we were living were partly flooded, the walls were running with water, and the drip came through the roof in all directions. It was not until the next day that the remnant of the moulds could be carried out to dry in the returning sunshine, and then we made certain that the greater part of the work would have to be done over again.
Gorgonio Lopez, Palenque, 1891GORGONIO LOPEZ, PALENQUE, 1891.
GORGONIO LOPEZ, PALENQUE, 1891.
I will not weary my readers with any further account of the troubles in engaging labourers, it was the old story of effusive offers of help and broken promises over and over again; at one time, for a few days, we actually had as many as fifty men at work, and during the next week we were left without a single one. For many days our only connection with the village was kept up by the two small boys who brought over the supply of tortillas for which a contract had been made. These plucky little fellows walked the twelve miles through the forest alone, although they were so small that on arriving at the ruins they had to help one another up and down the rather steep steps which led in and out of the Courts. Perhaps the chocolate and sweet biscuits with which they were rewarded had something to do with the persistence with which they stuck to their task.
The forest which surrounds the ruins is as heavy as any I have seen in Central America, and we were not able to clear away the undergrowth andfell the timber over more than three quarters of the area included in the plan, but this was sufficient to bring to light all the principal buildings. A fortnight of sunshine is needed to dry up the leaves after the trees are felled, and it is of course of the greatest importance to burn off the whole clearing at the same time, as the dried leaves easily catch fire and the great heat ensures the destruction of all the twigs and smaller branches; but unluckily we were denied a continuous fortnight of dry weather, and each succeeding rain-storm beat the dried leaves off of the branches and reduced the amount of easily inflammable material. It was not until the 15th April that we were able to run fire through the clearing, and as the result was not very satisfactory, a good deal of our time was afterwards taken up in heaping together the unburnt branches and starting secondary fires. The trunks and larger limbs were of course left unconsumed, although some of the drier logs would go on smouldering for many days.
In the following short account of the principal buildings I shall keep to the old but somewhat misleading names by which they are known to the villagers of Santo Domingo. There is no evidence that the so-called Palace, of which a separate plan is given on the following page, was used as the dwelling of a great chief, and I am inclined to look on it as a collection of buildings raised at different periods of time and devoted to religious purposes. All trace of a stairway has disappeared from the outer slopes of the foundation mound, which are covered with stones and rubble fallen from the buildings above. In structure the separate houses which form the palace group do not differ materially from those found at Chichén and Copan; they usually consist of two narrow chambers side by side, roofed with high-pitched stone vaults. The outer piers of house A are decorated with human figures moulded in a hard stucco and surrounded with an ornamental border. The western piers of houses C and D are decorated in the same manner, and there are many other traces of similar ornament on other buildings, usually too much destroyed for the design to be made out. In some instances these decorations have been preserved in a very curious way: the water continually dripping on them from above has passed through the dense mass of decaying vegetation which covers the roofs of the buildings, and become charged with carbonic acid in the process; it has then filtered through the slabs of which the roof and cornice are built, dissolving some of the limestone on its way, and re-depositing it in a stalactitic formation on the face of the piers. Mr. Price and I worked for some weeks at clearing the carvings of this incrustation, which varied from a hardly perceptible film to five or even six inches in thickness. The thinner parts were the more difficult to deal with, as they were exceedingly hard; where the thickness exceeded two inches afew taps with a hammer would sometimes bring away pieces two or three inches square, and we were fortunate in some instances in finding the colours on the surface of the stucco ornament underneath still fresh and bright. An example of this colouring is given on the outside cover of this volume.
Plan of the PalacePALENQUE. PLAN OF THE PALACE.
PALENQUE. PLAN OF THE PALACE.
The Eastern court, after being cleared of vegetation, was found to be so choked up with debris from the half-ruined buildings which surrounded it, that it was necessary to dig it out in some places to the depth of four feet, a task which we found to be very laborious. Some idea of the appearance of the court when the digging was finished can be formed from the photograph on the following page, which was taken from the front of House C looking south-east on the last day of our stay in the ruins, and shows some of the men setting out with their loads. The house on the north side of the court was completely ruined and much of the masonry had fallen over the northern slope of the foundation mound—a destruction which was very likely due to an earthquake, as a distinct rift can be traced right across the northern end of the mound. By standing on the broken masonry, a fine view is gained over the forest-covered plain which stretches northward to the Gulf of Mexico.
Palenque, eastern courtPALENQUE, THE EASTERN COURT.
PALENQUE, THE EASTERN COURT.
The house marked C is the best-preserved building in the Palace group, and it was in its eastern corridor that Mr. Price and I took up our abode, the western corridor serving as kitchen and store-room. The terrace on the western side of the house marked D was our favourite resort of an evening, as here we caught the breath of the night wind and escaped to some extent from the attacks of the myriads of mosquitos which rose to plague us as soon as the sun had set. On a moonlight night the view from this terrace of the Temple of Inscriptions with its background of giant forest was exquisite beyond description. The Tower, which is shown in the view of the western court, is a most curious and interesting building. It rises in three stories above a solid foundation, around which are clustered a number of small and now half-ruined chambers. The outer wall is pierced on all four sides by large openings, and encloses a central rectangular shaft of masonry which contains the stairway giving access to the different floors. Between the first and second floors is an intermediate story containing three minute chambers and a narrow passage connecting them without any exterior openings. The top story is half destroyed, and the whole structure was in great danger of being overthrown in a heavy gale from the weight of the huge trees which were growing out of it. At considerable risk of accident my men succeeded in felling all but one of these trees, and I hope that the safety of the tower is now secured for some years to come. It was perilous work, as the foothold was uncertain, and there was great danger of the trees tearing away the loose masonry in their fall. One tree alone was left standing, as its fall mustinevitably have damaged the roof of a neighbouring building, so a ring of bark was stripped from its trunk, in the hope that it will cause it to die slowly and fall piecemeal.
Palenque, western court and towerPALENQUE, THE WESTERN COURT & TOWER.
PALENQUE, THE WESTERN COURT & TOWER.
The other buildings of the Palace group do not here need separate notice; some of them contain fragments of stucco or painted decoration, and one (E) has a finely-carved stone medallion let into the wall. The most curious feature of the southern half of the group is the existence of three subterranean passages leading to three long parallel chambers, of which two are enclosed within the foundation mound, and the third has doorways opening onto the southern slope. The entrances to two of the passages had been purposely blocked up, and part of one of the chambers had been walled up and filled in, probably with a view to affording a secure foundation for a building to be erected above it. Both passages and chambers are shown in the plan in dotted lines, but a part of the walls of the latter (surrounded by a wavy line) are shown in tint.
To the south-west of the Palace stands the Temple of Inscriptions, built on a foundation mound which backs against a spur running out from the hills. The building itself is a fine one, and has been elaborately decorated on the outside, but it is especially interesting on account of the three stone panels which it contains, two of them let into the middle wall and one into the back wall of the building, on which is carved an inscription numbering six hundred glyphs, the longest continuous inscription of all those as yet discovered in Central America.
Plan and section of the Temple of the Sun
To the east of the Temple of Inscriptions, on the other side of the stream, three other temples will be found, marked on the plan as the Temple of the Cross, the Foliated Cross, and the Sun. They are all three built on much the same plan. The Temple of the Sun, which is the best preserved of the three, is shown onthe Plate facing page 228, and a ground-plan and section is also given. The whole of the frieze and the piers of the façade were elaborately decorated with figures and inscriptions in stucco, of which little now remains. On the roof, above the wall which divides the two corridors, stood an ornamental superstructure (a feature common to all buildings of this class) formed of a light framework of stone, which served to support a number of figures and other ornaments moulded in stucco. The inner corridor of each of the three temples is divided by transverse walls into three small chambers; and in the middle chamber, built out from the back wall, stands the Sanctuary. The exterior of the Sanctuary was richly decorated with stone carving and stucco moulding, but the only ornament in the interior now to be seen is the carved stone panel let into the back wall.
The Temple of the Sun, and the PalacePALENQUE, THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN & THE PALACE.
PALENQUE, THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN & THE PALACE.
On the next page is given a drawing of the carved panel from theTemple of the Foliated Cross, in which the beautifully-cut glyphs of the inscription are only lightly sketched, so as to give prominence to the central design.
Carved panel from the Temple of the Foliated Cross
The carved panels in the sanctuaries of the Temples of the Foliated Cross and of the Sun are still intact in their original positions; but the panel from the Temple of the Cross, which has perhaps received more attention from archæologists than any other monument of Maya art, has not been so fortunate. The slab to the left of the spectator only is in its place; the centre slab, after being torn from its position, broken in two, and exposed to the weather for many years, has at last found a resting-place in the Museum of the City of Mexico, and the right-hand slab, after being broken into fragments, has been carefully and skilfully pieced together, and is now exhibited in the National Museum at Washington.
The “aqueduct” marked in the plan is a stone-roofed tunnel intended to receive the water of the small stream which runs through the ruins. Unfortunately the upper end of the tunnel has become partly blocked up, and some of the water finds its way over the surface and floods the plaza after heavy rain.
As is the case with Copan and Quirigua, so with Palenque—we have absolutely no knowledge of it as a living town. The existence of the ruins first became known to the Spaniards in the middle of the eighteenth century, and before the end of the century they had more than once been examined and reported on at the instance of the Colonial Government. That such examinations were somewhat ruthlessly conducted, and may account for some of the damage from which the buildings have suffered, is shown by the followingquotation from the report signed by Antonio del Rio:—“I was convinced that in order to form some idea of the first inhabitants and of the antiquities connected with their establishments it would be indispensably necessary to make several excavations.... By dint of perseverance I effected all that was necessary to be done, so that ultimately there remained neither a window nor a doorway blocked up, a partition that was not thrown down, nor a room, corridor, court, tower, nor subterranean passage in which excavations were not effected from two to three yards in depth.”
During the present century travellers have frequently visited the ruins, and many descriptions of them have been published; amongst the best known are those of Dupaix, Waldeck, Stephens and Catherwood, Morelet and Charnay. There still remains, however, much work to be done—none of the foundation mounds have yet been cleared of the debris which covers their slopes, and very little attention has been paid to the tombs and burial mounds, which I know to be very numerous and believe will prove most interesting. Now that the heavier timber around the principal buildings has been felled, the work of examination will be somewhat easier, but the very rapid growth of vegetation will always entail on the visitor a considerable amount of clearing before he can obtain a satisfactory view of the buildings. Mr. W. H. Holmes, of the Field Columbian Museum of Chicago, who visited the ruins in 1895, only four years after I had cleared them, wrote to me to say that he had to use a plan and compass and cut his way from building to building, as a dense-growth of over twenty feet in height completely obscured them from view.
Serpent birdTHE SERPENT BIRD, TIKÁL.
THE SERPENT BIRD, TIKÁL.
SaclucSACLUC (LA LIBERTAD).
SACLUC (LA LIBERTAD).
Before closing the notes on my wanderings a few words must be said about two other ruins, Tikál, which I visited both in 1881 and 1882, and Menché, which I visited in the latter year only. On both occasions I started from Coban and travelled northward for ten days through the then almost uninhabited forest to the Paso Real on the Rio de la Pasion, where the Government maintains a ferryman and serviceable canoes for the passage of the river, and thence to Sacluc, a village standing in the savannah land about fifteen miles north of the river.
Sacluc, which had risen into notice as the headquarters of the mahogany-cutters, had only recently become the residence of the Jefe Político of the department of Peten, and had been euphemistically renamed “La Libertad,” possibly to hide the fact that a condition not very far removed from slavery was more noticeable there than in other parts of the Republic. All labourers’ wages are paid in advance, and as the wood-cutters are a thriftless folk, anycash they may receive is soon dissipated, and then before returning to work an additional charge must be incurred for tools and the necessary stores for sustenance during many months’ absence in the forest. In theory the long score against a workman in the patron’s books will be wiped out by the product of a season’s work, but in practice it only increases until the debt has reached the limit of value which is placed on the man’s services. Then, if the patron is in luck, he may find a purchaser for his workman; that is to say, he may sell the debt to another employer and the man’s services pass with it, for the law compels him to serve his new master until the debt is paid. Of course it is vastly immoral, but the system does not seem to work so badly after all; for if the patrones are too harsh, which did not seem to be the case, the frontiers of Mexico and British Honduras are not far distant, and a man could always take a few days’ walk through the forest and leave his debts behind him. Such migrations are not at all uncommon, and many Mexicans from Tabasco, Campeche, and Yucatan, as well as some runaway negroes from the British West India regiments, were numbered in the population of Sacluc. As a last resort, if a man has made Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize all too hot to hold him there is yet left a refuge in the no-man’s land held by the Santa Cruz Indians, and he may add to the mongrel and turbulent population of Xaxe Venic or some of the other frontier villages. Naturally such a mixed community as that which inhabits the isolated province of Peten would be likely sometimes to give trouble to the officials sent to rule over it; the last Jefe Político had paid with his life for some effort to enforce the orders of the Central Government, and a custom-house officer had been murdered shortly before my arrival and his murderer was confined in the room next to that in which I slept. But although the Peteneros resent too much interference on the part of Government officials, and have a natural prejudice against a high customs tariff, I don’t think they can be called a disorderly people, and I have never heard of them causing any annoyance to travellers.
A woodcutter is indeed to be pitied who has to seek recreation in such a hot, dull, dreary place as Sacluc; the condition of the water alone would justify his preference for aguardiente, as all the drinking water for the supply of the village is brought from small shallow unfenced ponds in the savannah, in which the women wash clothes, and where horses, cattle, and pigs wallow in the mud.
Soon after my arrival I received a visit from an elderly Englishman, who told me he resided there “because the climate suited him”; he was an eccentric waif who had at one time served with the British army, in what capacity I could not discover, although he gave me many unavailing hintsthat it was as a commissioned officer, and he was fond of talking about his “little place” in Somersetshire. The poor fellow earned an occasional dollar by taking very imperfect photographs, and his visit to me was in order to learn my intentions, as he had heard that I also was a “retratista” and was sadly afraid I would cut him out of his business. He told me that some years earlier when on the road to Peten he had lost his way in the forest and nearly died of starvation, and that some Peteneros who found him had carried him to their village and treated him with the greatest kindness during the illness which followed from the hardships he had gone through, although they knew he had nothing with which to repay them. His long residence in Peten had not enabled him to speak Spanish; but this did not interfere with his efforts to increase his income by giving lessons in English, and I greatly regret that I have lost the copy of a notice to that effect which he had written in Spanish and nailed on his door; it was certainly a masterpiece of “Spanish as she is spoke.” As he put it to me “Spanish is a very curious language; you may know lots of words, but somehow or other they won’t go together.” I met the poor old fellow another year when he was in broken health and almost penniless, and was able to help him on his way to Guatemala, where the foreign residents got him into the Infirmary and he passed quietly away.
A day’s ride to the north-east of Sacluc brings one to the lake of Peten-Itzá with its island town of Flores, known in ancient times as Tayasal[7]. Flores is a small island not more than a third of a mile across, lying close to the southern shore of the lake, and its population (probably including some hamlets on the neighbouring mainland) is said to number twelve hundred. After a day passed in hunting up a crew, we spent the night, when the wind usually falls light, in paddling up to El Remate, at the other end of the lake, whence a walk of about thirty miles through the forest brought us to the ruins of Tikál.
Plan of the ruins of TikálRough Plan of the Ruins of Tikál.
Rough Plan of the Ruins of Tikál.
The whole site of the ancient town was so completely covered over with forest that it took us some time to discover the position of the more important buildings and clear away the trees which covered them. As neither of my visits was over a week in length the plan of the ruins here given is very imperfect; it merely indicates the shape and size of the principal group of stone buildings near the house in which I took up my quarters, and gives approximately the position of the five great pyramidal temple mounds. The lintels over the doorways of the houses had apparently in all cases been formed of three or four squared beams of hard wood,probably the wood of the chico-sapote tree, and some of them are still in a perfectly sound condition; the greater number, however, have slowly rotted away, and buildings can be seen in every state of decay, many of them reduced to shapeless masses of hewn stone. The lofty foundation mounds of the principal temples are terraced and faced with well-wrought stone arranged in panels, somewhat in the same manner as that shown in the photograph of the Castillo at Chichén Itzá. At Tikál, however, access to the temple is gained by a single stairway only, instead of by four stairways, one on each side of the mound, as is usual at Chichén. The accompanying woodcuts show the plan of the mound and Temple marked A (of which a photograph is also given on the following page), and a ground-plan and section of Temple B. The Temple marked C on the plan is somewhat larger than A or B, the base of the oblong foundation mound measuring 184 feet by 168 feet, and the stairway is 38 feet across. The height of the front slope (measured on the slope, which is very steep) is 112 feet. The base of the temple itself measures roughly 41 feet by 28 feet, and the height must be over 50 feet, but I was not able to measure it. The temples are all built on much the same plan; the thickness of the walls is very remarkable, as is also the method by which the length of axis is secured, by cutting across the parallel stone vaulted chambers and connecting them by square-headed doorways with wooden lintels, the thickness of the walls through which the doorways pass far exceeding the width of the vaulted chambers. Of the Temple D I took no measurements and have merely guessed at the size.Temple E is by far the largest, the foundation mound measuring 280 feet in length and 160 feet on the slope from the door of the temple to the ground, and the extraordinary thickness of the walls is shown in the woodcut. One might almost suppose that the people had originally worshipped in caves in the natural hills, and had in process of time learnt how to build their caves in artificial hills, but, unfortunately for any such theory, no Maya cave temples are known to have existed.
Plan of the Foundation-mound and Temple APlan of the Foundation-mound and Temple A
Plan of the Foundation-mound and Temple A
Plan and section of Temple BPlan and section of Temple B
Plan and section of Temple B
Plan of Temple DPlan of Temple D
Plan of Temple D
There is, however, no other group of temples in Central America which offers such support to the theory that the position and form of the buildings is due to astronomical considerations. The lofty elevation so as to secure a clear view, the evident desire to gain length of axis, and the fact that all the temples may be roughly said to face the cardinal points favour this theory, and it may be that we can trace the sequence of the structures by their position. For instance, the temples B, C, and E, facing the rising sun, would follow one another in order of time, C would have been built when the erection of A had impeded the fairway of B, and E would have been built when the fairway of C had been obscured by the large group of buildings to the east of it; and it will be observed that this sequence follows the order of size, C being larger than B, and E than C. The fairway of A, which faces the setting sun, is still unimpeded, and there is therefore no larger temple facing in that direction. Unfortunately at the time of my visits to these ruins I did not pay any particular attention to the orientation of the temples beyond what was sufficient to fix their positions in the general sketch-plan; indeed I was not provided with instruments for an accurate survey, even if I had had time to use them. I now especially regret that I did not more carefully examine the smaller mounds in the neighbourhood of A and B, for I am inclined to think that we might trace an earlier northern temple in the mound markedf, which, when its fairway was interrupted, was superseded by the large temple D, whose foundation mound stands on higher ground and still commands a clear view.
View from the great templeTIKÁL, VIEW FROM THE GREAT TEMPLE.
TIKÁL, VIEW FROM THE GREAT TEMPLE.
Tikál is not rich in carved stone monuments; there are a few small monoliths and circular altars in the plaza between temples A and B ornamented with figures and inscriptions, but they are all much weather-worn. The most important inscriptions, and they are amongst the best examples of Maya art, were found in the carved wooden beams which spanned the doorways of the temples. Many of these beams have decayed, but the best specimens were removed at the instance of Dr. Bernoulli, who visited the ruins about 1877, and are now preserved in the museum at Basle, and two small fragments are to be seen in the British Museum.
Temple marked A on the PlanA TEMPLE AT TIKÁL. (Marked A on the Plan.)
A TEMPLE AT TIKÁL. (Marked A on the Plan.)
The greatest discomfort in exploring the ruins of Tikál is due to the want of a good supply of water. Every drop of water we used had to be brought the distance of a mile and a half from an overgrown muddy lagoon not more than 150 yards wide, and it was so thick and dirty that I never dared to drink it until it had first been boiled and then filtered, and my Indian workmen who refused to take any precautions suffered considerably from fever. The Indians seldom drink cold water when they are at work, and during a journey they will make frequent halts by the roadside to light fires and prepare warm drinks; but notwithstanding this prevalent habit, when we were encamped in places where the water was indubitably bad, I was never able to persuade my mozos that any advantage would be gained by actually bringing the water to the boil and then allowing it to stand and cool.
Camp in the forestCAMP IN THE FOREST, TIKÁL.
CAMP IN THE FOREST, TIKÁL.
A few years before the date of my visit to Tikál a party of Indians from the borders of the lake had attempted to form a settlement in the neighbourhood of the ruins. The solitary survivor of this party accompanied me as a guide, all the others having died of fever. This man told me that the small lagoon was the only source of water-supply, and that the nearest running stream was a branch of the Rio Hondo some miles distant. The ancient inhabitants probably stored water in “chaltunes,” the underground cisterns which are found in such large numbers amongst the ruins in the north of Yucatan; I discovered two such cisterns beneath the floor of the plaza, but had not time to clear them out.
I must now ask my reader to return with me, by way of Flores and Sacluc, to the Paso Real, on the Rio de la Pasion, whence, on the 14th of March, 1882, I started, in company with Mr. Schulte, the manager of Jamet & Sastre’s mahogany cuttings, on an expedition down the river, my object being to explore the ruins of Menché. I had heard of these ruins from Professor Rockstroh, of the Instituto Nacional in Guatemala, who had visited them the year before, and was, I believe, the first European to write any description of them. At the Paso Real I was fortunately able tosecure as guide one of the canoemen who had accompanied Prof. Rockstroh on his expedition.
Three days later I parted company with Mr. Schulte near the mouth of the Rio Lacandon, where he was about to establish a new “Monteria.” The banks of the river here begin to lose their monotonous appearance, and for the first time since leaving the Paso Real we caught sight of some hills in the distance. At midday we entered a gorge about a league in length, where the river flows between high rocky and wooded banks and in some places the stream narrowed to a width of forty feet. The current was not very swift, but the surface of the water moved in great oily-looking swirls which seemed to indicate a great depth. Below the narrows the river widens very considerably and the current becomes much more rapid, and great care had to be taken in guiding the canoes so as to avoid the numerous rocks and snags. This day we travelled about thirty miles below the Boca del Cerro and then camped for the night. Several times during the day we had seen traces of the Lacandones, “Jicaques” or “Caribes” as my men called them (the untamed Indians who inhabit the forests between Chiapas and Peten), and while stopping to examine one of their canoes, which we found hauled up on a sand-spit, its owner, accompanied by a woman and child, came out of the forest to meet us. The man was an uncouth-looking fellow, with sturdy limbs, long black hair, very strongly-marked features, prominent nose, thick lips, and complexion about the tint of that of my half-caste canoemen. He was clothed in a single long brown garment of roughly-woven material, which looked like sacking, splashed over with blots of some red dye. The man showed no signs of fear and readily entered into conversation with one of my men who spoke the Maya language; but the woman kept at a distance, and I could not get a good look at her.
LACANDONES.
LACANDONES.
Later in the day we landed to visit a “caribal,” or Indian village, which my guide told me stood somewhere near the river-bank. There was no trace of it, however, near the river, so we followed a narrow path into the forest marked by two jaguars’ skulls stuck on poles, and here and there by some sticks laid across the track, over which the Indians had probably dragged their small canoes. About two miles distant from the river we found three houses standing in a clearing near the bank of a small stream. A woman came out to meet us, and received us most courteously, asking us to rest in a small shed. Her dress was a single sack-like garment similar to that worn by the man whom we had met earlier in the day; her straight black hair fell loose over her shoulders, and round her neck hung strings of brown seeds interspersed with beads and silver coins, dollars and half-dollars, which she said were obtained in Tabasco. Two other women came out of their housesto greet us, and they told us that all the men were away hunting for wild cacao in the forest and would not return for five days. The walls of the houses were very low, but in other respects they resembled the ordinary ranchos of the civilized Indians. I asked if I might look into one of them, but my mozos strongly advised me not to make the attempt, as the numerous howling dogs shut up inside were very savage, and were sure to attack me.
The clearing round the houses was planted with maize, plantains, chillies, tobacco, gourds, tomatoes, calabash-trees, and cotton. We exchanged a little salt for some plantains, yams, and tomatoes without any haggling, and the women agreed to make me some totoposte, which I was to send for in a few days, and one of them, pointing to a silver dollar on her necklace, said that they wanted a coin like that in payment. I was surprised to find the women so pleasant-mannered and free from the dull shyness which characterizes the civilized Indians. On my return up the river some days later I again visited this “caribal,” and was received with equal courtesy by the men, who had then returned from the forest, to whom I repeated my request to see the inside of one of their houses; however, a very rapid glance was sufficient to satisfy my curiosity, for as soon as I showed myself at the half-open door seven or eight dogs tied to the wall-posts nearly brought down the house in their efforts to get at me, and two of them were with difficulty prevented by the women from breaking the cords which held them. Some especial significance must attach to the wearing of the brown-seed necklaces, for no offers which I could make would induce either man or woman to part with one of them. I was much impressed by the striking likeness which the features of the elder man, who appeared to be the leader of the village, bore to those carved in stone at Palenque and Menché. The extremely sloping forehead was not quite so noticeable in the younger men, and it may be that the custom of binding back the forehead in infancy, which undoubtedly obtained amongst the ancients, is being now abandoned. These people still use bows and stone-tipped arrows, which they carry with them wrapped in a sheet of bark.
The Rio Usumacinta at MenchéTHE RIO USUMACINTA AT MENCHÉ.
THE RIO USUMACINTA AT MENCHÉ.
To return to my journey to Menché. After visiting the “caribal” we continued our course down-stream and camped for the night on the right bank of the river; the next morning an hour’s paddle with the very rapid current brought us in sight of a mound of stones piled up on the left bank of the river, which we had been told marked the site of the ruins. On the 18th March, the day of my arrival, the water in the river was so low that the mound stood high and dry; but from the colour and marks on the stones it appears as though the average height of the water were two or three feet from the top of the mound. We soon scrambled up the rough river-bank,and began to cut our way through the undergrowth in search of the ancient buildings, which we found to be raised on a succession of terraces to a height of over 250 feet, with slopes faced with well-laid masonry or formed into flights of steps. Those buildings marked in the plan with definite outlines are still in a fair state of preservation, but where the outlines are left indefinite the houses have fallen and become mere heaps of broken masonry. The plan must not be regarded as more than a rough sketch, as I had no instrument with me for measuring vertical angles, and the distances were judged by pacing, and checked by the occasional use of a tape measure.
Menché, Temple AMENCHÉ, TEMPLE A.
MENCHÉ, TEMPLE A.
The house or temple which I chose for a dwelling-place (marked A on the plan) is a long narrow structure, measuring on the outside 73 feet long by 17 feet broad. There are three doorways giving access to the single chamber, which is divided up into a number of recesses by interior buttress-walls. In the middle recess we found a cross-legged figure of heroic size, reminding me of the seated figure on the great Turtle of Quirigua; the head with its headdress of grotesque masks and feather-work was broken off and lying beside it. There appears to have been some sort of canopy of ornamental plaster-work above the recess, which had fallen down and lay in a confused heap of dust and fragments around the figure. When I first entered the house there must have been over a hundred pieces of rough pottery, similar to those here figured, strewn on the floor and clustered around the stone figure. Many of these pots contained half-burnt copal, and from the positions in which we found them it is evident that they must have been placed in the house within recent years, probably by the Lacandones, who still, I am told, hold the place in reverence. In this house, and in most of the other buildings still standing, stone lintels span the doorways, many of them elaborately carved on the underside.
Pottery
On the outside of the house the lower wall surface is flat, and it seems probable that it had formerly been decorated in colours, as slight traces of colour can still be found where the plaster coating has adhered to the underside of the lower cornice. Between the lower and upper cornice is a broad frieze marked with three large and eight small niches; these niches have held seated figures and other ornaments modelled in stucco, of which only a few small fragments now remain in position. Above the upper cornice rises a light stone superstructure similar to that on the Temple of the Cross at Palenque, but here also all the ornament which it was built to support hasfallen away. However, in the middle is a large niche in which a sort of skeleton of a seated figure of giant proportions can still be traced. The bulk of the body, the bench on which it was seated, and one long stone representing a leg can be made out in the photograph, and a close inspection enables one to trace the outline of the head and to note the prominent stone which marks the position of the nose; but the stucco which clothed this skeleton and made it a work of art has been pierced with the thousand roots of the clinging vegetation and washed away with hundreds of years of tropical rains.
Many if not all of the other houses and temples had been similarly decorated, and, although the area covered by them is not of great extent, there can be little doubt the groups of highly ornamented and richly-coloured buildings raised above the rushing waters of the river on gleaming slopes of stucco-covered masonry must have formed a picture both beautiful and strikingly impressive.
Plan of the Ruins of Menché TinamitPlan of the Ruins of Menché Tinamit.
Plan of the Ruins of Menché Tinamit.
When we had been some days at work at the ruins I sent three of my men in a canoe up-stream to the “caribal” to get the supply of totoposte I had ordered from the Lacandones; they returned the next day without much food, but handed me something they had brought with them, carefully wrapped up in paper, which, much to my surprise, proved to be a card from M. Desiré Charnay, the head of a Franco-American scientific exploring expedition, who for two years had been at work examining the antiquities of Mexico and Yucatan. M. Charnay had come up the Usumacinta from Frontera to the head of the navigable water at Tenosique, and had thence ridden through the forest to a spot on the river-bank within a short distance of the “caribal” described earlier in this chapter, known to the canoemen as the Paso de Yalchilan. Having no canoes in which to convey his party down the river he had been brought to a halt and was making arrangements for the passage of himself and his secretary in two small cayucos borrowed from the Lacandones, when to his great surprise my canoe appeared on the scene. The next day I sent my canoes back for him, and leaving his men camped at Yalchilan, he arrived with his secretary at the ruins and occupied a house which had been cleared for him, and he very kindly added his ample supply of provisions to my somewhat meagre stock.
M. Charnay has published an interesting account of his journeys in a book entitled ‘Les Anciennes Villes du Nouveau Monde,’ and the collection of casts made from moulds taken during his two years’ wanderings, which is now exhibited at the Trocadero Museum in Paris, and in other museums in Europe and America, has formed the basis of much modern research.
In one of the half-ruined buildings we found a beautifully carved lintel, fallen from its place and resting face downwards against the side of the doorway.This excellent example of Maya art I determined to carry home with me, and at once set my men to work to reduce the weight of the stone, which must have exceeded half a ton, by cutting off the undecorated ends of the slab and reducing it in thickness. This was no easy matter, as we had not come provided with tools for such work, but shift was made with the end of a broken pickaxe and some carpenter’s chisels; by keeping mozos at work at it, three at a time, in continual rotation, at the end of a week the weight of the stone had been reduced by half, and we were able to move it to the river-bank and pack it in the bottom of our largest canoe.
On the 26th March we struck our camp and all started up the river together, and on the following day, at the Paso de Yalchilan, I lost the pleasant companionship of M. Charnay, who here rejoined his men and returned direct to Tenosique. It was very hard work hauling the canoe, heavily laden with the stone lintel, against the swift current of the river, and we were four days getting as far as the mouth of the Rio Lacandon. On the 30th March we reached the first inhabited rancho at Santa Rosa, and next day I met Mr. Schulte at the mouth of the Rio Salinas and accepted a passage in his canoe to the Paso Real, leaving the mozos and my heavily-laden canoes to follow more slowly. On the way up-stream we landed on the left bank of the river not far from the mouth of the Rio Salinas, and passed a few hours in examining the ruins of a town of considerable extent. I could find no stone houses standing, but there were several fragments of sculptured stones bearing hieroglyphic inscriptions lying amongst the numerous foundation mounds, and the whole site would probably repay careful exploration.
From the Paso Real the stone lintel was carried by Indians to Sacluc, where I purchased a saw from one of the wood-cutters and was again able slightly to reduce the weight of the stone. From Sacluc it was hauled across the savannah to the neighbourhood of Flores on a solid-wheeled ox-cart, the solitary wheeled vehicle then existing in the province of Peten; then it was again slung on a strong pole and carried by sixteen Indian mozos through the forest to the British frontier village of El Cayo, where it was again packed in the bottom of a canoe and sent down the river to Belize; it now rests at Bloomsbury in the British Museum.