CHAPTER XV A MYSTERIOUS LAND And over all there was the shadow of a fear, This place is haunted. -Hood. THERE is no part of the two Americas more romantic or weirdly attractive than Yucatan. It is a land of ghosts, of mystery, of colossal ruins, a land of a perished civilization, of indecipherable hieroglyphics, and of hoary antiquity. Here, in the remote past, an unknown race built basilicas to the sun and temples to the serpent and cross, coiling the hideous snake around what is to us the symbol of redemption. From Palenque, the city of the dead, to Tabasco, and on to Chichen Itza, in the gloomy forests of Guatemala, lie in almost unbroken continuity sixty miles of imperishable ruins. Here, buried among exuberant timber lands of lignumvitæ and mahogany, there, in the jungles of rank vegetation, are artificially terraced mounds of great height, solitary remains of shrines, temples, palaces and pyramids of an architecturally great people, who left us no records beyond these immense structures and the unsolved writings on their huge stones. Partially covered by tropical vines and the mould of ages, these giant buildings remain as mortuary memorials of a race whose origin baffles all ethnological research, and whose disappearance is an historical mystery. Some of these groups of ruins have a circumference of more than four miles. At Chichen Itza there is a temple of granite, its façade a mass of intricate carvings, perched high upon a terraced mound of composite material. Along each front of this wonderful mound extends the writhing body of a monster serpent, carved out of blocks of stone. High upon the granite platform of the temple rests the tail of the huge snake, while the gigantic head, with jaws wide open and forked tongue, lies menacingly on the plain at the base of the mound. The traces of artificially-built roads, raised two or more feet above the level and surfaced with hard, smooth cement, show that these roads extended from temple to terrace, and from the mound to other populous centres. At Toluca, in Guatemala, a subterranean, stone aqueduct of great solidity and durability passes under one of the great buildings. Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, when contending with starvation, and against the elemental forces of nature on his march to Honduras, passed with his troops within thirty miles of the ruins of the prehistoric cities of Palencia, but he heard nothing of them. The little village of Tres Crucesthe three crosses-is built on the ground where three crosses were lifted up by Cortez in honour of the Holy Trinity, when he camped there two days to refresh his command. Even then, these magnificent structures, buried in a wilderness of tropical vegetation, were, as they are to-day, melancholy monuments in a desolation of solitude. Nothing was known of these silent cities by civilized man until 1750, and they were not even visited or explored till 1774. Then came the distinguished traveller, Calderon, to be followed by Le Plongeon, Dupaix and Desiré Charnay, Stephens and Catherwood. When Calderon visited Yucatan he partially explored the great forests and inspected eighteen palaces, twenty-two great buildings and one hundred and sixty-eight stone houses. All works of barbaric art found in the ruined cities are fortunately preserved in the museums of Mexico, Mérida, Paris or Madrid. Among these finos were soft glazed earthenware, curiously shaped marble vases, fragments of statuary, and strangely fantastic and even hideously ugly specimens of obsidian carvings. But to the archæologist and student of ethnology the most extraordinary objects found among these ruins were two bronze medals. One of these represents a man kneeling on a rock between two monster fishes with open mouths, surrounded by water, out of which the tops of trees are visible. The other medal presents a tree bearing fruit, around which a serpent is coiled. The antiquarians of Mexico believe the impressions on these medals perpetuate the tradition of the Noachic deluge and the temptation in the Garden of Eden. How the stamping or cutting of bronze was done, and when the Mayas first discovered the fusion of metals, are unsolved problems. Copper chisels and axes were found among huge and half-finished blocks of granite, and among fragments of pillars and architraves. They used copper with an alloy of tin, chisels of the volcanic nephrite stone, and a silicious sand to cut the hardest blocks, some of them of great dimensions. In the Temple of the Cross were found three large mural tablets, and on each in low relief, an exact carving of the Roman cross. One of these is now in the Smithsonian Institute, Washington; the other two are in the National Museum, Mexico. That in the lithic hall of Mexico has the Royal Quetzal bird, now extinct, perched on the upright. The tablet shows a man offering a child ex voto to the cross, and bears the Maya hieroglyphics. These Palenque letterings display considerable skill in the chiselling and an advanced stage in the hieroglyphic art. They are probably phonetic and symbolic in their character. That their mysterious import will ever be deciphered is doubtful, for the race and language are dead. It is impossible to contemplate these mysterious monuments without experiencing curiosity to know something of the race that built them. The cities may have been very populous, for the poor lived then, as now, in houses of cane and wood. A broad, mandible-digging ant, called by the natives cay, infests the forests and jungles of Yucatan and Guatemala in such swarms that in a week they will turn a level plain into numberless cellular hillocks, often several feet high, leaving the diminutive mounds so honeycombed that a careless traveller will sometimes sink up to his knees in the loosened earth. These ants destroy all post-holes and marks of posts, so that it is impossible to trace the limits of the ancient Maya towns. What was perishable disappeared long ago, and only the adamantine temples and palaces remain. Yet from the mural paintings still traceable, from the abundant material found in excavating, from the remains of their statuary and stone engravings, we may learn something of these mysterious people. Palæontologists claim to be able from a single fossil bone to reconstruct the complete skeleton, and the archeologist, unwilling to admit his neighbour's superiority, contends he can resurrect a race with its mental and physical attributes from the ruins of its buried cities. Be that as it may, there are in the Mexican National Museum drawings and automata of the ancient people and warriors of Yucatan. One of these, a valiant chief leading his warriors into battle, is photographed on my memory. His war bonnet is a coronet fashioned from the rare and beautiful plumes of the cacique bird. Pendant from the lobes of his ears are rings set with the precious green jade-stone. Armlets and bracelets of silver gleam on his naked arms. A richly wrought uit or breech-cloth girds his loins, and his limbs are protected with coloured and elaborately worked leggings. Two thonged hueratics or sandals serve him for shoes, while in his terrible right hand he poises his serrated lance tipped with obsidian or flint. On his left arm is fastened his shield, painted with |