The City of the Sacred Well

VAGABOND BOOKS \>L TRAVEL i;p jm II \f^ THE CITY OF THE SACRED WELL ^^-^..^^^c^ ^2.'^4»^.*^--/ J«fTt>«y ^* ^Wp* 'A last forward swing and the bride of Yum Chac hurtles far out over the well." THE CITY OF THE SACRED WELL BEING A NARRATIVE OF THE DISCOVERIES AND EXCAVATIONS OF EDWARD HERBERT THOMP- SON IN THE ANCIENT CITY OF CHI-CHEN ITZA WITH SOME DISCOURSE ON THE CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE MAYAN CIVILIZATION AS REVEALED BY THEIR ART AND ARCHITECTURE, HERE SET DOWN AND ILLUS- TRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY T. A. WILLARD THE CENTURY CO. NEW YORK & LONDON Copyright, 1926, by The Century Co. 360 Printed in U. S. A. PREFACE This book is primarily an attempt to recount the many thrilling experiences of Edward Herbert Thompson in his lifelong quest for archaeological treasures in the ancient and abandoned city of Chi-chen Itza, for centuries buried beneath the jungle of Yucatan. As a boy Mr. Thompson—or Don Eduardo, as he is affectionately known to the natives about the Sacred City—sat in his snug New England home and read of the adventures of Stephens in Yucatan, descriptions of the old Maya civiHzation, and the legends concerning the Sacred Well at Chi-chen Itza. Then and there he determined that his life-work should be the uncovering of the age-old secrets of the ancient city. When still a mere youth he was appointed by the President of the United States as the first American Consul to Yucatan, the appointment having been urged by the American Antiquarian Society and the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, both of which were anxious to have a trained investigator on the peninsula. Enthusiastically Mr. Thompson undertook his double mission. For over twenty-five years he remained at his post as consul. During this long period, sometimes at the head of regularly organized expeditions under the auspices of American archaeological institutions, at other times with only his faithful native followers, he discovered ruined cities until then unknown to the world and carried on exhaustive researches among those already discovered. vi Preface At last Mr. Thompson resigned the consular office, in order to carry on the various scientific undertakings that required all his time and energy. Chief among these was the search for relics that for hundreds of years had lain buried in the mud at the bottom of the Sacred Well. Many and many a night, under the gorgeous moon- light of Yucatan or by some cozy fireside in the States, I have listened entranced, as the hours glided by, to the true tales Don Eduardo tells of his experiences or of the customs and the folk-lore of the country. I know intimately this lovable, modest, blue-eyed six-footer, this dreamer and adventurer, gray-haired now but still with the heart of a boy. I know him better, perhaps, than does any other man, and if I do not write down the things he has told me they will never be written, for Don Eduardo will not do it. Therefore I have asked and received his permission to write, from memory and from his notes and my own, this book, which he has read and corrected. It is a faithful account of the many valuable archaeological finds he has made, but, though written as if Don Eduardo himself were speaking, it inevitably lacks the color and fire of his word-of-mouth narrative. It con- tains, further, such description of the Maya culture and history as may help the reader to understand this ancient civilization. The writer hopes that it may be acceptable to the avid reader of travel and adventure, and there is also the timid hope that it may be of some little educa- tional value to the serious-minded reader, to the end that he may feel that he has not wasted time on a mere *'yarn." T. A, WILLARD, ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author is Indebted, for information and assistance, to many good friends in Yucatan, but chiefly to Senor Juan Martinez H., to the late Teoberto Maler, and to Mr. and Mrs. William James for their timely hospitality. The books and writings of the old priests, as well as current books on the Maya era, also have been of much aid. T. A. W. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I Yucatan, the Land of the Mayas .... 3 II The Church of San Isidro and Its Fragrant Legend 24 III The First Americans 32 IV Don Eduardo's First View of the City of the Sacred Well 49 V The Ancient City 58 VI An Idle Day in the Jungle 88 VII The Sacred Well 97 VIII Sixty Feet Under Water 118 IX Two Legends 150 X The Conquest 166 XI The Finding of the Date-Stone . 179 XII The Construction of Maya Buildings . 189 XIII Story-Tellers of Yucatan 198 XIV Forgotten Michael Angelos 211 XV The Tomb of the High Priest 236 XVI The Legend of the Sacrificial Pilgrimage . 261' XVII Thirty Years of Digging 278 Appendix 285 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A last forward swing and the bride of Yum Chac hurtles far out over the well Frontispiece FACINQ PAGE The Nunnery, the only three-storied structure in the Sacred City 64 The second story of the Nunnery 65 All that remains of the third story of the Nunnery. Several inscribed stones built hit or miss into the wall were doubtless taken from the older city 65 El Castillo, the Temple of Kukul Can, on its great pyramid, is the center of the Sacred City and the largest edifice 1 12 Looking down into the Sacred Well. Because of the size of the well and the fringe of trees about it, the whole scene cannot be photographed 113 A sculpture in bas-relief showing a warrior priest in cere- monial attire, representing the Maya hero-god Kukul Can, the plumed serpent 240 A religious ceremony depicted in the Temple of Bas-Reliefs. This is but a small section from the interior walls, which contain more than eighty figures 241 THE CITY OF THE SACRED WELL THE CITY OF THE SACRED WELL CHAPTER I YUCATAN, THE LAND OF THE MAYAS IMAGINE yourself the sole owner of a plantation within which lies a city more than twelve square miles in area ; a city of palaces and temples and mausoleums ; a city of untold treasures, rich in sculptures and paintings. Would you not feel shamefully wealthy? And does it not seem strange that Don Eduardo, the master of such a plantation, takes the fact of his ownership with appar- ent calmness? But, before your fancy carries you too far, let me tell you a little more about this remarkable city, which may dampen your ardor for ownership, but which only in- creases its value in Don Eduardo's eyes. It is a dead city. Its thousands of inhabitants perished or abandoned it nobody knows how long ago—probably before Colum- bus first saw the shores of America. And it is in the heart of Yucatan, where Mexico, ending like the upflung tail of a huge fish, juts into the gulf, while Cuba serves as a sentinel a hundred and fifty miles to the eastward. Ths Treasure City, the City of the Sacred Well, with the queer-sounding name of the Chi-chen Itza (pronounce it Chee'chen Eet-za'), is for the most part overgrown 3 4 The City of the Sacred Well with tropical jungle. Its treasures are valuable only to the antiquarian. Early in our conversations about the City of the Sacred Well, Don Eduardo told me that because at the time of his purchase the plantation was well within the territory dominated by the dreaded Sublevados, the re- THE ANCIENT aXY OF CHI-CHEN ITZA IS AT NO GREAT DISTANCE FROM THE UNITED STATES, bellious Maya Indians, no planter dared live in or even visit the region for long, and so he was able to secure the land from its absentee owners cheap, as plantation prices run in Yucatan. "My life-interest has been American archaeology," he said, "and I came first to Yucatan, thirty years ago, to explore Its ruins and relics of an ancient civiUzation. Even before that I had read of the Immense Sacred Well Yucatan, the Land of the Mayas 5 at Chi-chen Itza—a well as wide as a small lake and deep enough to hold a fifteen-story building—and had made up my mind that I would be the man who some day made it yield up its secrets. For a long time I tried to persuade various wealthy Americans to finance the undertaking, but organizing a stock company to raise sunken galleons along the Spanish Main would be a sim- ple task as compared with my difficulties in promoting what seemed a will-o'-the-wisp project. At last, how- ever, I did succeed." But I am ahead of my story. The trip from New York to the City of the Sacred Well requires but a week and may now be accomplished luxuriously, whereas my earlier journeys over the same route were anything but comfortable. Mr. John L. Stephens, who was sent to Yucatan by the United States Government in 1841, describes, in his interesting book "Incidents of Travel In Yucatan," the difficulties of travel which he met. They might have daunted any spirit less courageous than his. His four volumes, al- though written nearly eighty years ago, retain their pris- tine freshness and are still authoritative. I recommend them heartily to the reader.

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