Yucatan And Chiapas - Land Of Ghosts

( Originally Published 1905 )

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 Quin cey, 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 durability, 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 morning his great toe was still bleeding, and his hammock was stained with clotted blood.

Nobody in Yucatan, could explain to me how the vampire manages to draw such a large quantity of blood—from six to ten ounces—while its victim all the time remains in a profound sleep. I never heard of any one waking while the vampire sucked him; indeed so gently does this nocturnal surgeon draw the blood that the patient by some mysterious process is lulled into a profound sleep. The vampire measures about two feet from wing tip to wing tip, has very sharp teeth, not unlike those of a rat, and attacks sleeping animals as well as human beings. If he inflicts a wound with his teeth, one would think that the pain would cause the person who is sucked to awake, but it does not. When the victim rises in the morning he is languid and weak, and it is only when he sees the blood in his hammock that he realizes that the vampire was with him during the night. There are two species of the vampire in the forests of Yucatan and Guatemala, and both suck living animals. One is larger than the common bat, the other measures about two feet from wing to wing extended. We left Palencia in the early morning, passed through a matted and tangled forest, overgrown with bush, vines and creepers. When we emerged from this dense tropical bush the ruins of Palenque were in sight. Before us rose a mass of buildings of such vastness and such majestic design that at first glance the mind refused to accept the ruined city as a reality. I looked for it to dissolve, and, "like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind."

Buried in a dense tropical jungle, intensely hot, swarming with mosquitoes, scorpions, snakes and centipedes, Palenque, of Yucatan, is a fascinating study for the antiquarian and archaeologist. One who has never visited the matted forests which surround the prehistoric and dismantled cities of Guatemala and Yucatan cannot imagine the inextricable confusion of gnarled roots, overturned tree trunks, climbing vines and decaying vegetation that bury everything in a gloomy, seething, deceptive covering. One step forward may land you on a fallen column, and the next bury you waist-deep in the rotting trunk of a fallen forest giant among scorpions, centipedes and ravenous ants. In the midst of an immense tropical wilderness of rapid growth and decay, in a desolation of solitude, striking by its isolation from human homes, lie buried for unnumbered years the ruined cities of Central America—Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Tlalpan, Palenque. Who built them ? When we enter their gloomy but imposing halls we enter an infinity whose limits we cannot measure.

Every explorer, ethnologist and antiquarian who has visited and written on these marvellous remains of an unknown race claim that these ruins present problems which cannot be solved. From the days of Alvaredo, who conquered Central America, to the young Harvard student whom I met wandering among the lithic halls of the Royal Palace at Uxmal, these forest cities are a mystery. Desire Charnay writes that these great cities were built by the Mayas, who dwelt in these lands in pre-Spanish times. But the Mayas were in Yucatan when the Spaniards entered it, as Alvaredo learned to his cost, and they knew nothing of the builders.

Dupaix, who plunged into these pathless forests in 1806, claimed to have found proofs that these cities were raised by the Quiches, a race antedating by many generations the Nahuas, Mayas, and Yucatecas. And so it goes, from Pedro de la Laguna, who in 1802 sent a report to Madrid of his journey to Palenque down to Adolf Bandelier, who wrote a "Report of an Archaelogical Tour in Central America," there is no agreement of opinion, and no solution of the problem.

It is impossible to contemplate these mystic monuments of a lost civilization without experiencing a sense of awe and bewilderment. Scattered around the bases of the imposing palaces and halls still standing are huge blocks of diorite or serpentine that the eternal onslaught of time or the repeated shakings of earthquakes have hurled from the tops of the towers or lofty walls.

At Uxmal I entered the Hall of Rain. It stands on a pyramid, fifty feet high, with a base line two hundred and fifty by three hundred feet. Within the building was a patio, or court, one hundred feet square. The floors are concreted, the walls covered with stucco, and the cornices and settings moulded and carved into weird and grotesque figures. From the floor of the building, stairways of stone lead to towers thirty feet high. There are miles of ruins here, some structures almost entirely dismantled, others still standing in fairly good condition. The Palace of the Priests, the Arch of Triumph, the House of the Soothsayers, and a building called the Kabah, are still almost intact, and furnish wonderful examples of arabesques, fretwork and grecques. At Palenque many of the buildings are overgrown with vines and bush ropes, and are hard to explore. The Temple of the Sun, a huge structure, is covered and filled with sculptured figures of elephants, dragons, serpents, and monstrous creatures like the ogres and gargoyles of mediaeval churches. The imagination of the designer ran riotous over the temple. Here carved in stone are toucans, parrots, macaws, double-headed and feathered snakes, " monsters of the deep and the creeping and flying species of the land." The Temple of the Cross has been stripped of its statues, many of its weird and uncanny figures, and its wonderful cross and hieroglyphics. Fortunately these are all preserved in the National Museum of Mexico. In a previous chapter on the National Museum, I described the foliated cross found in this temple. I may add that it is doubtful if the mysterious writing on the cross will ever be deciphered, for the key to the characters is lost, and the ancient dwellers of Yucatan are gone forever.

The Royal Quetzal, the wonderfully coloured bird represented on the cross, is extinct. I saw a mounted specimen in the museum in Mexico City, a marvel of beauty and plumage. It is scarcely possible for the imagination to conceive anything more rich and gorgeous than the golden green colour which adorned the plumage of this splendid bird, or more elegant than the plumes which swept from the lower part of the back, forming a long tail of metallic brilliancy. The wings and back were of the most brilliant emerald and gold, the breast of fiery red, while the marvellously coloured plumes, when full grown, attained a length of three and a half feet. The quetzal still exists in the forests of Guatemala, the most beautiful of living birds, but the Royal Quetzal has disappeared for all time.

From the top of the Temple of the Cross the view was magnificent. Thirty miles to the north was the lake of Catasja, surrounded on all sides by forests of priceless and unfamiliar trees, while everywhere around lay oceans of ruined buildings. The immense temple, the ruined buildings, the great pyramids filled me with amazement. A few paces to the south rose the Temple of Inscriptions; beyond it the Pantheon; to the south-east, in the form of a triangle, was the Temple of the Sun; and beyond it again was another Basilica of the Cross. Everywhere the tropical forest was alive with snakes, pythons and constrictors, and birds of fascinating and beautiful plumage. At Chichen Itza I visited a temple perched on a high artificial mound, and approached by flights of stone steps from its four sides, on whose interior walls still exist paintings which are to-day the oldest and best examples of mural work, by the ancient dwellers of these mysterious lands, found in Central or South America.