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It was Van Roon who, following in the footsteps of Madame Blavatsky, had sought out the haunts of the fabled mahatmas in the Himalayas, and Van Roon who had essayed to explore the fever swamps of Yucatan in quest of the secret of lost Atlantis; lastly, it was Van Roon, who, with an overland car specially built for him by a celebrated American firm, had undertaken the journey across China.
Where the city of Mexico now stands was a famous capital, from whose ruins were taken the great Calendar stone and the double statue of the god of war and the god of death. In Palenque and Uxmal, capitals of Yucatan, were immense palaces and temples, with the weird ornamentation of Mayan imagination; and equal wonders exist in the high uplands where the Incas ruled Peru.
A second expedition was arranged, and a party of more than six hundred men, many of them American citizens, assembled on the island of Contoy, off the Yucatan coast, and on May 19, 1850, landed at Cardenas. But there was no uprising on the part of the people. The Spanish authorities, informed of the expedition, sent ships by sea and troops by land.
In surprise I wheeled to see my English acquaintance who had visited the interior of Yucatan with me. I greeted him, thanked him, but of course did not take him seriously, and I proceeded to expound the nature of my venture. To my further surprise, he not only wanted to go, but he was enthusiastic. "But it's a hard, wild trip," I protested.
The same mysterious, or at least unexplained, red hand is impressed on the walls of the ruined palaces and temples of Yucatan the work of a vanished people. There is one singular fact in the history of savage art which reminds us that savages, like civilised men, have various degrees of culture and various artistic capacities.
"It seems to me like the air is perfumed with poison somehow; and the poison is very easy to take." "It's the lotus effect," said Higgins presently. "I know it. I got a taste of it down in Yucatan once. It makes you want to sit down against the roots of a tree and have a woman bring you drinks. It's bad medicine when you've got work to do. I feel it now. The old lotus effect. Poco tiempo!
A leading British periodical once accused the writer of calling the Gulf of Mexico the Caribbean Sea, because of his unwillingness to admit the name of any other state in connection with a body of water over which his own country claimed predominance. The Gulf of Mexico is very clearly defined by the projection, from the north, of the peninsula of Florida, and from the south, of that of Yucatan.
"They will easily believe that you may have been wrecked," said Malinche; "for they rescued a man who had been living many years among a tribe at Yucatan, to the west of Tabasco. There were other white men living among them, though these they could not recover.
MEXICO. The constitution made for Mexico after the last revolution gave the suffrage to all citizens without distinction of sex and women have voted in Yucatan but the elections throughout the country have not been settled enough for them to exercise their right.
At Labna there is among the ruins an ancient gateway, beautiful in design and construction, a view of which is given in the Frontispiece. The best account of some of the other ruins on this peninsula can be found in the volumes of Mr. Stephens, entitled “Incidents of Travel in Yucatan.” At Zayi there is a singular building, which, as seen at a distance by Mr.
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