John L. Stephens

“ But the devil is not so black as he is painted. I do not mean to offer any apology for gambling, in Yucatan, as in all the rest of Mexico, the bane and scourge of all ranks of society; but Merida is, in a small way, a city of my love, and I would fain raise this great mass of people from the gulf into which I have just plunged them: at least, I would lift their heads a little above water.
The game which they were engaged in playing is called La Loteria, or the Lottery. It is a favourite amusement throughout all the Mexican provinces, and extends to every village in Yucatan. ”

“ Priests in glittering vestments were officiating before it, music was swelling through the corridor and arches, and the floor of the immense church was covered with women on their knees, dressed in white, with white shawls over their heads. Through the entire body of the church not a man was to be seen. Near us was a bevy of young girls, beautifully dressed with dark eyes, and their hair adorned with flowers, sustaining, though I was now a year older and colder, my previous impressions of the beauty of the ladies of Merida. ”

“ We left the campo santo, and walked up the long street of the village, the quiet, contented character of the people impressing itself more strongly than ever upon my mind. The Indians were sitting in the yards, shrouded by cocoanut and orange trees weaving hammocks and platting palm leaves for hats; the children were playing naked in the road, and the Mestiza women were sitting in the doorways sewing. ”

“ During the whole time of our residence at Uxmal, and until my forced visit to Ticul, and fortunate intimacy with the cura Carillo, I had not even heard of the existence of such a place. It was absolutely unknown; and the Indians who guided us having conducted us to these buildings, of all the rest seemed as ignorant as ourselves. They told us, in fact, that these were all; but we could not believe them; we felt confident that more lay buried in the woods, and, tempted by the variety and novelty of what we saw, we determined not to go away until we had discovered all. ”

“ The House of the Nuns was almost smothered, and the whole field was covered with a rank growth of grass and weeds, over which we could barely look as we rode through. The foundations, terraces, and tops of the buildings were overgrown, weeds and vines were rioting and creeping on the façades, and mounds, terraces, and ruins were a mass of destroying verdure. A strong and vigorous nature was struggling for mastery over art, wrapping the city in its suffocating embraces, and burying it from sight. ”

“ The most striking feature, the life and beauty of the paseo, were the calesas. Except one or two gigs, and a black, square box-wagon, which occasionally shame the paseo, the calesa is the only wheeled carriage in Merida. The body is somewhat like that of an oldfashioned gig, only much larger, and resting on the shaft a little in front of the wheels. It is painted red, with light and fancifully coloured curtains for the sun, drawn by one horse, with a boy riding him—simple, fanciful, and peculiar to Yucatan. ”

“ At the distance of two leagues they laid us down under a large seybo tree, opposite the hacienda of Chetulish, part of the domain of Uxmal. As if in mockery of us, the Indians were all out of doors in holyday dresses, celebrating the opening of the new year. We remained a short time for our carriers to rest, and in two hours we reached the village of Nohcacab, and were laid down at the door of the casa real. When we crawled out, the miserable Indians who had borne us on their shoulders were happy compared with us. ”

“ A broad staircase leads to the top, on which stands a long narrow building, one hundred feet by twenty, divided into three apartments.
There was a mournful interest about this great pile of ruins. Entering under the great archway, crossing two noble courtyards, with ruined buildings on each side, and ascending the great staircase to the building on the top, gave a stronger impression of departed greatness than anything else in this desolate city. It commanded a view of every other building, and stood apart in lonely grandeur, seldom disturbed by human footsteps. ”

“ Cabot opened to us a new source of interest and beauty. In order to begin business at once, he rode in the first caleza alone, and before he had gone far, we saw the barrel of his gun protrude on one side, and a bird fall. He had seen at Sisal, egretes, pelicans, and ducks which were rare in collections at home, and an oscillated wild turkey, which alone he thought worth the voyage to that place; and now, our attention being particularly directed to the subject, in some places the shrubs and bushes seemed brilliant with the plumage and vocal with the notes of birds. ”

“ The lintels of the doorways were of wood; these are all fallen, and of all the ornaments which decorated them not one now remains. No doubt they corresponded in beauty of sculpture with the rest of the façade. The whole now lies a mass of rubbish and ruin at the foot of the wall.
On the top is a structure which, at a distance, as seen indistinctly through the trees, had the appearance of a second story, and, as we approached, it reminded us of the towering structures on the top of some of the ruined buildings at Palenque. ”

“ The cloud which hangs over their history is much darker than that resting over the ruins of Uxmal. I can only say of them that they lie on the common lands of the village of Nohcacab. Perhaps they have been known to the Indians from time immemorial; but, as the padrecito told us, until the opening of the camino real to Bolonchen they were utterly unknown to the white inhabitants. This road passed through the ancient city, and discovered the great buildings, overgrown, in some places towering above the tops of the trees. ”

“ If this opinion is correct, and I believe it—if this skeleton does present the same type of physical conformation with all the tribes of our continent—then, indeed, do these crumbling bones declare, as with a voice from the grave, that we cannot go back to any ancient nation of the Old World for the builders of these cities; they are not the works of people who have passed away, and whose history is lost, but of the same great race which, changed, miserable, and degraded, still clings around their ruins. ”

“ The finest horses in the country in appearance are those imported; but the Yucatan horses, though small, are remarkably hardy, require no care, and endure an extraordinary degree of fatigue.
Night came on, and the plaza was alive with people and brilliant with lights. On one side, opposite the church, along the corridors of the houses and in front of them, were rows of tables, with cards and dice, which were very soon crowded with players, whites and Mestizoes; but the great scene of attraction was the gathering of Indians in the centre of the plaza. ”

“ They had not had a fair start with the Indians of the village, but they had been expeditious, and, by making good use of their time and the money we paid them, were as thoroughly intoxicated as the best in Nohcacab. Still they were good-natured as children, and, as usual, each one concluded his little speech with begging a medio.
The North American Indian is by drinking made insolent, ferocious, and brutal, and with a knife in his hand he is always a dangerous character; but the Indians of Yucatan when intoxicated are only more docile and submissive. ”

“ Alas! poor Chaipa Chi, the white man's friend! never again will she make tortillas for the Ingleses in Uxmal! A month afterward she was borne to the campo santo of the hacienda. The sun and rain are beating upon her grave. Her bones will soon bleach on the rude charnel pile, and her skull may perhaps one day, by the hands of some unscrupulous traveller, be conveyed to Doctor S. G. Morton of Philadelphia. ”

“ Within the memory of the oldest Indians these remains had never been disturbed. The account of the digging up of the bones in San Francisco had reached them, and they had much conversation with each other and with the padrecito about us. It was a strange thing, they said, that men with strange faces, and a language they could not understand, had come among them to disinter their ruined cities; and, simple as their ancestors when the Spaniards first came among them, they said that the end of the world was nigh.
It was late the next day when we reached the ruins. ”

“ Inside the enclosure, at the farthest extremis, was a pile of skulls and bones, which, according to a custom of the Indians observed from time immemorial, had been dug up from the graves and thrown into this shallow pit, a grim and ghastly charnel-house.
The village consisted of a long, straight street, with houses or huts almost hidden by foliage, and inhabited exclusively by Indians. We rode up to the plaza without meeting a single person. ”

“ The ruined building on the top consisted of a single corridor, but three feet five inches wide, and, with the ruins of Nohpat at our feet, we looked out upon a great desolate plain, studded with overgrown mounds, of which we took the bearings and names as known to the Indians; toward the west by north, startling by the grandeur of the buildings and their height above the plain, with no decay visible, and at this distance seeming perfect as a living city, were the ruins of Uxmal. ”

“ In all the long catalogue of superstitious rites that darkens the page of man's history, I cannot imagine a picture more horribly exciting than that of the Indian priest, with his white dress and long hair clotted with gore, performing his murderous sacrifices at this lofty height, in full view of the people throughout the whole extent of the city. ”

“ The existence of most of these ruins was entirely unknown to the residents of the capital;—but few had ever been visited by white inhabitants;—they were desolate, and overgrown with trees. For a brief space the stillness that reigned around them was broken, and they were again left to solitude and silence. Time and the elements are hastening them to utter destruction. In a few generations, great edifices, their façades covered with sculptured ornaments, already cracked and yawning, must fall, and become mere shapeless mounds. ”

“ When the Spaniards first made their way into the interior of Yucatan, they found no circulating medium, either of gold, or silver, or any other species of metal, but only grains of cacao; and it seemed a strange circumstance, that while the manners and customs of the Indians have undergone an immense change, while their cities have been destroyed, their religion dishonoured, their princes swept away, and their whole government modified by foreign laws, no experiment has yet been made upon their currency. ”

“ Gentle, and averse to labour themselves, they impose no heavy burdens upon the Indians, but understand and humour their ways, and the two races move on harmoniously together, with nothing to apprehend from each other, forming a simple, primitive, and almost patriarchal state of society; and so strong is the sense of personal security, that, notwithstanding the crowds of strangers, and although every day Don Simon had sat with doors open and piles of money on the table, so little apprehension was there of robbery, that we slept without a door or window locked. ”

“ And it appears in every page of the history of the Spanish conquest, that the Spaniards never attempted to occupy the houses and villages of the Indians as they stood. Their habits of life were inconsistent with such occupation, and, besides, their policy was to desolate and destroy them, and build up others after their own style and manner. It is not likely that at the early epoch at which they are known to have gone to Ticul, with their small numbers, they would have undertaken to demolish the whole Indian town, and build their own upon its ruins. ”

“ In half an hour we came into a clear and open country, and at ten we entered the camino real for Jalacho, a broad and open road, passable for calesas. Up to this time we had not seen a single habitation or met a human being, and now the road was literally thronged with people moving on to the fair, with whose clean garments my mud-stained clothes contrasted very unfavourably. There were Indians, Mestizoes, and white people on horseback, muleback, and on foot, men, women, and children, many carrying on their backs things to sell, in petaquillas, or long baskets of straw ”

“ At eleven o'clock the ball broke up; and if the loteria was objectionable, and the bull-fight brutal, the paseo and baglio redeemed them, and left on our minds a pleasing impression of the fête of San Cristoval.
One fiesta was hardly ended when another began. On Monday was the great fête of Todos Santos. Grand mass was said in all the churches, and in every family prayers were offered up for the souls of the dead; and, besides the usual ceremonies of the Catholic Church throughout the world, there is one peculiar to Yucatan, derived from the customs of the Indians, and called Mukbipoyo. ”

“ Men go into all places without shame, though not without reproach, but I am happy in being able to say that none of what are called the higher classes of the ladies of Merida were present. Still there were many whose young and gentle faces did not convey the idea that they could find pleasure in scenes of blood, even though but the blood of brutes.
In the evening we took another hot-bath at the loteria, and the next day was Sunday, the last day of the fiesta, which opened in the morning with grand mass in the church of San Cristoval. ”

“ With an uncontrollable antipathy to revolutions, it had been his lot to pass the greater part of his life in countries most rife with them. After running before them in Colombia, Peru, Chili, and Central America, where he had prescribed for Carrera when the latter was pursuing his honest calling as a pig-driver, unluckily he found himself in Salama when Carrera came upon it with twelve hundred Indians, and the cry of death to the whites. ”