The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1896-06-04

DuSleS CnaC are covered Win WllQ mowers
and wood ticks the latter the most pes
tiferous insect that ever tormented travel
ers. The site of the desolated city is
marked by grove of stunted trees with
thick foliage, the haunt of silent birds of
gorgeous plumage, for a popularity Of
tropical birds is that, however beautiful,
most of them are songless. In this great
waste of ruins it is impossible to form
any clear idea of what the place may
have been before the dawn of history. No
less than 40 artificial mounds may be
counted here, and each of them once held
aloft structure, whether temple or
palace who can say? now fallen into
shapeless heaps of polished stone, with
here and there a fragment of upright
walls. Its destruction has been rendered
more complete by the vicinity of the
modern village, because for many genera
tons it has served as a quarry to furnish
stones, ready cut for everybody's house
or stable. OF garden wall. Among these
ruins are many circular holes, dug deep
into the ground, which the Indians call
chulturies, or wells. Several of them
have been entered by means of ladders,
and at the bottom of each a small dome
shaped chamber is reported. Scattered
about are hundreds OF large obiong stones
followed out like troughs, which We're
evidently stones Tor grinding, not unlike
the piedras de motis Of the modern \ u
catecos. SomeW here about here, but
whether in this particular group of ruins
among the hundreds in Central Yucatan,
l am unable to say Mr.. John l..
Stephens, the we'll known author and ex-
ploIer, found some wonderful things,
nearly half century ago Among his
finds was a huge vase, with border
Of hieroglyphics on one side, and on the
other sculptured face, with plume and
! head dress very similar to those on the
carved and succeed walls of Palenque.
He also opened an ancient sepulchre, a
square stone structure with sides
four feet high, the top rounded over
with earth, having stones embedded
in it above several layers of large
flat stones. Inside was a human skele-
ton in a sitting posture, with its face
turned toward the west. The knees were
bent against the stomach, the arms doub-
led from the elbow, the hands supporting
the head; but when touched, the whole
framework fell in pieces. The skeleton
was not in the centre of the sepulchre, but
in one corner. and beside it was large,
rough rock. bedded firmly in the earth.
On the rock were needles of deerhorn,
| having sharp point at one end and an
eye at the other, and a few rude jars, in
Guiding a canliro, or water pot, much like
those used by the Indians of to-day. Says
Nh. Stephens lit was strangely interest
ING, with the ruined structures around us,
to bring to light these buried bones after
a lapse of unknown ages. Whose We're
they? Little did the pious friends who
4 placed them here imagine the fate to
which they were destined-to be borne far
away from tile bones of their kindred. In
| their long rough journey on the backs of
mules and Indians they We're SC crumbled
that even their ancient proprietor would
not be able to identity them in a court of
law and they finally left with me in a
pocket handkerchief to be carried to Phia-
delphia." Resuming our journey to Ticul,
the first peep OF dawning found us in the
saddle for the . miles more OF rough
riding before us Southeastward from
Nul the stony, i'll kept highway leads
over the so-called mica mountains
/ which ale not mountains at all, but the
worst hills III \ ucatan, being nothing but
immense, irregular heaps of stone, wholly
devoid of verdure. BY and by the day be-
came scorching, and the glare of the sun
upon the naked rocks was indescrib badly
painful to the eyes. Between this eternal
glare, the heat, the dust and the entire
absence of oculists in Yucatan, it is no
wonder that so many of the people are
afflicted with semi blindness. Late in the
afternoon we reached the last ridge of the
sierra, on the very brink of which the
little church of La Hermita clings like
the mud nest of a barn swallow. Directly
below it lies an Indian village with the
usual jaw dislocating title-OXcutzeab :;
and beyond, the plain slopes off to the
horizon, dotted with hamlets and walled
on both sides by low forests. Descending
by steep pathways, sometimes over rock
lodges, slippery as glass, down which our
donkeys actually slid, we came at length
upon fine, broad road, paved with pol
shed stones taken from the ruins of an
Gent towns. Here and thele amid the
dense foliage of the forest we had indis-
tinct glimpses of huge mounds and falle n
structures; but however great the tempta-
ton there was no time to linger by the
wayside amid prehistoric things, for al
ready darkness was upon the face of the
earth. Words fail to convey an idea of
ones impression in such time and place
our beasts pattering over stones cut by
hands long since turned to dust, and