heraldic devices. Over his head wave the battle pennon of Yucatan and the oriflamme of his tribe.

I know not if this Mexican drawing resurrects the dead, or is an apparition of the artist, but one thing at least is certain, men and women have lived and their hearts have throbbed in days "outside of history," in this mysterious land. Everywhere are the tidal remains of an ancient humanity, which overflowed from its primal springs in the East and rolled in upon these shores, till then, unprofaned by human touch. These sons of Shem brought with them civilization, but when the offspring of Japheth found their habitat they were descending to savagery. Here, as with the savage tribes of the north, the evil element in our human nature was quering the mental and the moral man, and revenge found its consolation in the atrocious cruelty it inflicted on the conquered and the weak. When the victorious enemy cut off the fingers and toes of Adonibezec, the wretched man rejoiced that in his time "seventy chiefs having their fingers and toes cut off gathered up the leavings of meat under my table." The story of this prehistoric race and its recession is war, tribal divisions, and a superstition tending to hardness of heart and contempt for human life. After all, the only real enemy Yucatan is now the subject

of man has been man. of luminous research, and in the shifting diorama of archæological and historical discussion, some fragments of additional information may help to solve the origin of the Mayas.

CHAPTER XVI

YUCATAN AND CHIAPAS-LAND OF GHOSTS

The spirit moveth there no more,
The dwellers of the hills are gone,
The sacred graves are trampled o'er
And foot-prints mar the altar stone.

-Whittier.

PLATO says that to improve by travel a man should begin his journey when he is between fifty and sixty. The sole object in going abroad, in Plato's opinion, is to meet and converse with theioiandres, inspired men who are found here and there in all lands. As I was within the Greek sage's limitation I decided that before the "clear call for me" came to cross the bar I would see some of the wonderful works of God, and of the noblest of His creatures, man. In my college days I had read of the marvellous remains of ancient cities hidden away in the wondrous forests of Central America, and now that I have seen them they remain with me as spectres with De Quincey, the opium eater, when he awoke from his dreams.

The morning I left Vera Cruz for Yucatan was intensely hot. The sun was a blazing furnace whose vertical rays melted the pitch in the planking of the steamer's deck. Two hours from the city we ran into a tropical storm, a frequent occurrence in the Gulf of Campeachy at this time of the year. No

clouds appeared in the sky, the sun, for no apparent reason, simply disappeared. Then those of us on deck noticed an ink-black cloud rise above the western horizon like a thing alive. The stewards hurried to raise the windows and close the doors of the smoking-room. Over the quarterdeck was a strong awning to which we scurried for cover, but the quartermaster warned us it would be no protection, so we ran for the saloon and from the lee windows watched the wild magnificence of the storm. The darkness was almost that of a moonless night. A rushing wind whistled through the cordage and the shrouds. Then came the rain, not as our rain in multitudinous drops, but in torrential fury. The deck at once was flooded and the scuttle holes ran like water from a steam pump. There was no lightning, but the wind raced across the sea like a soul in chase, still the sea was not running high, but the huge drops churned it into a white foam, as if a hail of rifle balls was fired into it from above. The storm passed off as quickly as it came, leaving the air much cooler and life on board more pleasant.

When our boat tied up at the solitary wharf of Frontera I called on the American vice-consul, Mr. Germain Hahn, to enquire about the route to Palenque, and ask instructions for the trip. The next day I boarded a small steamer and went up the Usumacinto River as far as the village of Januta. Here I hired a Yucatan Indian, who called himself by the peculiar name of Tipe-Chico, and from San

Juan, the head of navigation, canoed the Usumacinto to Salta. From San Juan an unbroken desolation of wilderness extends along both banks of the river, and stretches inland for many miles; but it is a tropical wilderness of enormous wealth, of the finest and rarest forest giants, of strange vines, of rope-like creepers and of unnamed trees. Now and then we passed a solitary Indian's hut, with a rood or two of cleared ground planted in bananas, corn, guava, and sweet potatoes. At times the land on each side is a level plain for two or three miles, then are seen sloping hills, covered with noble trees, whose foliage displays a charming variety of every shade, from the palest to the darkest green and purple. The tops of some are crowned with bloom of richest hue, while the boughs of others droop with the weight of the profusion of fruits and flowers. In a country so extensively covered with forests as Yucatan, having every advantage of a tropical sun and the rankest mould of vegetation, it is natural to look for trees of great variety and large dimensions. Heedless, and bankrupt in all curiosity, must he be who can sail up this river without stopping occasionally to look upon the strange and wonderful trees which avenue its waters. Here on each bank, and stretching inland for miles, are the vuletra, the touronira, and the moro, towering in majestic grandeur straight as masts, sixty or seventy feet high, without knot or branch. The hormigullo, famous for its toughness, and the encino negro, for its hardness and dura

bility, the palo gateado, taking a higher polish than mahogany, the ebony and sapoytillo, as close fibred as our hickory, the pimientillo and pino Colorado, yielding sweet smelling resin, the locust tree and palo gateado, all help to fill out the great forests between Frontera and Salta.

From time to time we passed the alluvial bottoms where palms of almost every known species grow, from the groo-groo and morich towering high into the sky to the fan palm of the desert, whose fronds are reservoirs of water. Of exogenous trees the majority were leguminous, hanging their seeds in pods and forming flowers like a vetch or pea. From these lowlands steaming exhalations escaped bearing the deadly germs of marsh fever and malaria. The sun was setting when we arrived at Salta, a miserable burg, where we passed the night. The next morning on burros we began the journey for Palencia, fifteen miles from the ruins. Our path carried us through an arid and treeless plain, hillocked with ant hills and scorched and burnt with a blazing sun. Night brought us to the miserable peon village of Palencia, and as we could get no accommodation in the cane cabins we were obliged to sleep in our hammocks. The place swarmed with mosquitoes, and while TipeChico slept soundly I arose and built a fire, in whose smoke I passed the night. But if Tipe was immune to the plague of mosquitoes he did not escape a more serious pest. While asleep he was sucked by a vampire. When I met him in the morn