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In December, last year, being at the hacienda of X-Kanchacan, where are situated the ruins of the ancient city of Mayapan, a sick man was brought to me. He came most reluctantly, stating that he knew what was the matter with him: that he was doomed to die unless the spell was removed.
In the time of the Spaniards there was in the forest at Lake Peten a solitary native town, founded nearly a century previous to their time by a Maya prince of Itza, who, with a portion of his people, fled from Yucatan to that lonely region to escape from the disorder and bloodshed of a civil war. This was the civil war which destroyed Mayapan, and broke up the Maya kingdom of Yucatan.
I will not describe here the majestic monuments raised by the Mayas. Mrs. Le Plongeon, in her letters to the New York World, has given of those of UXMAL, AKE and MAYAPAN, the only correct description ever published.
Mayapan may have stood upon the foundations of a very ancient city which was several times rebuilt, but the city destroyed in 1420 could not have been as old as either Palenque or Copan. The ruins of Uxmal have been regarded as the most important in Yucatan, partly on account of the edifices that remain standing, but chiefly because they have been more visited and explored than the others.
In both cases they are pyramidal in shape, and have level summits of considerable extent, which were reached by means of stairways on the outside. The great mound at Chichen-Itza is 75 feet high, and has on its summit a ruined stone edifice; that at Uxmal is 60 feet high, and has a similar ruin on its summit; that at Mayapan is 60 feet high; the edifice placed on its summit has disappeared.
The gnomon, discovered by me in December, last year, in the ruined city of Mayapan, would tend to prove that the learned men of Mayab were not only close observers of the march of the celestial bodies and good mathematicians; but that their attainments in astronomy were not inferior to those of their brethren of Chaldea.
He has a Bedouin groom, a Chinese body-servant, and Heaven only knows what other strange people!" "Chinese!" "Yes, I saw him; a squinting Cantonese he calls Kwee. I don't like him. Also, there is a secretary known as Strozza, who has an unpleasant face. He is a fine linguist, I understand, and is engaged upon the Spanish notes for Barton's forthcoming book on the Mayapan temples.
It is probable that the principal edifices at Mayapan were not all built wholly of stone, for they have mostly disappeared. Only one remains, a circular stone building 25 feet in diameter, which stands on a pyramidal foundation 35 feet high. On the southwest side of it, on a terrace projecting from the mound, was a double row of columns without capitals, 8 feet apart.
If we are to judge by the great number of ruined cities scattered everywhere through the forests of the peninsula; by the architectural beauty of the monuments still extant, the specimens of their artistic attainments in drawing and sculpture which have reached us in the bas-reliefs, statues and mural paintings of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza; by their knowledge in mathematical and astronomical sciences, as manifested in the construction of the gnomon found by me in the ruins of Mayapan; by the complexity of the grammatical form and syntaxis of their language, still spoken to-day by the majority of the inhabitants of Yucatan; by their mode of expressing their thoughts on paper, made from the bark of certain trees, with alphabetical and phonetical characters, we must of necessity believe that, at some time or other, the country was not only densely populated, but that the inhabitants had reached a high degree of civilization.
Some small sheets of water, called aguadas, may be found here and there, and are fed by the underground current; but they are very rare. There are three or four near the ruins of the ancient city of Mayapan: probably its inhabitants found in them an abundant supply of water.
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