It was fortunate for the particular objects of our expedition that, go where we would in this country, the monuments of its ancient inhabitants were before our eyes. Near the village of Ticul, almost in the suburbs, are the ruins of another ancient and unknown city. From the time of our arrival the memorials of it had been staring us in the face. The cura had some sculptured stones of new and exceedingly pretty design; and heads, vases, and other relics, found in excavating the ruins, were fixed in the fronts of houses as ornaments. My first stroll with the cura was to these ruins.

At the end of a long street leading out beyond the campo santo we turned to the right by a narrow path, overgrown with bushes covered with wild flowers, and on which birds of beautiful plumage were sitting, but so infested with garrapatas that we had to keep brushing them off continually with the bough of a tree.

This path led us to the hacienda of San Francisco, the property of a gentleman of the village, who had reared the walls of a large building, but had never finished it. There were fine shade trees, and the appearance of the place was rural and picturesque, but it was unhealthy. The deep green foliage was impregnated with the seeds of death. The proprietor never visited it except in the daytime, and the Indians who worked on the milpas returned to the village at night.

A short distance in the rear of the hacienda were the ruins of another city, desolate and overgrown, having no name except that of the hacienda on which they stand. At this time a great part of the city was completely hidden by the thick foliage of the trees. Near by, however, several mounds were in full sight, dilapidated, and having fragments of walls on the top. We ascended the highest, which commanded a magnificent view of the great wooded plain, and at a distance the towers of the church of Ticul rising darkly above. The cura told me that in the dry season, when the trees were bare of foliage, he had counted from this point thirty-six mounds, every one of which had once held aloft a building or temple, and not one now remained entire. In the great waste of ruins it was impossible to form any idea of what the place had been, except from its vastness and the specimens of sculptured stone seen in the village, but beyond doubt it was of the same character as Uxmal, and erected by the same people. Its vicinity to the village had made its destruction more complete. For generations it had served as a mere quarry to furnish the inhabitants with building-stone. The present proprietor was then excavating and selling, and he lamented to me that the piedra labrada, or worked stone, was nearly exhausted, and his profit from this source cut off.

A few words toward identifying these ruins. The plan for reducing Yucatan was to send a small number of Spaniards, who were called vecinos (the name still used to designate the white population), into the Indian towns and villages where it was thought advisable to make settlements. We have clear and authentic accounts of the existence of a large Indian town called Ticul, certainly in the same neighbourhood where the Spanish village of that name now stands. It must have been either on the site now occupied by the latter, or on that occupied by the ruins of San Francisco. Supposing the first supposition to be correct, not a single vestige of the Indian city remains. Now it is incontestible that the Spaniards found in the Indian towns of Yucatan, mounds, temples, and other large buildings of stone. If those on the hacienda of San Francisco are of older date, and the work of races who have passed away, as vast remains of them still exist, though subject to the same destroying causes, why has every trace of the stone buildings in the Indian city disappeared?

And it appears in every page of the history of the Spanish conquest, that the Spaniards never attempted to occupy the houses and villages of the Indians as they stood. Their habits of life were inconsistent with such occupation, and, besides, their policy was to desolate and destroy them, and build up others after their own style and manner. It is not likely that at the early epoch at which they are known to have gone to Ticul, with their small numbers, they would have undertaken to demolish the whole Indian town, and build their own upon its ruins. The probability is, that they planted their own village on the border, and erected their church as an antagonist and rival to the heathen temples; the monks, with all the imposing ceremonies of the Catholic Church, battled with the Indian priests; and, gradually overthrowing the power of the caciques, or putting them to death, they depopulated the old town, and drew the Indians to their own village. It is my belief that the ruins on the hacienda of San Francisco are those of the aboriginal city of Ticul.

[Engraving 17: Ticul vase]

From the great destruction of the buildings, I thought it unprofitable to attempt any exploration of these ruins, especially considering the insalubrity of the place and our own crippled state. In the excavations constantly going on, objects of interest were from time to time discovered, one of which, a vase, was fortunately only loaned to us to make a drawing of, or it would have shared the fate of the others, and been burned up by that fire. The engraving below represents two sides of the vase; on one side is a border of hieroglyphics, with sunken lines running to the bottom, and on the other the reader will observe that the face portrayed bears a strong resemblance to those of the sculptured and stuccoed figures at Palenque: the headdress, too, is a plume of feathers, and the hand is held out in the same stiff position. The vase is four and a half inches high, and five inches in diameter. It is of admirable workmanship, and realizes the account given by Herrera of the markets at the Mexican city of Tlascala. “There were goldsmiths, feather-men, barbers, baths, and as good earthenware as in Spain.”

It was not yet considered safe for me to return to Uxmal, and the sight of these vases induced me to devote a few days to excavating among the ruins. The cura took upon himself the whole burden of making arrangements, and early in the morning we were on the ground with Indians. Amid the great waste of ruins it was difficult to know what to do or where to begin. In Egypt, the labours of discoverers have given some light to subsequent explorers, but here all was dark. My great desire was to discover an ancient sepulchre, which we had sought in vain among the ruins of Uxmal. These were not to be looked for in the large mounds, or, at all events, it was a work of too much labour to attempt opening one of them. At length, after a careful examination, the cura selected one, upon which we began.

It was a square stone structure, with sides four feet high, and the top was rounded over with earth and stones bedded in it. It stood in a small milpa, or corn-field, midway between two high mounds, which had evidently been important structures, and from its position seemed to have some direct connexion with them. Unlike most of the ruined structures around, it was entire, with every stone in its place, and probably had not been disturbed since the earth and stones had been packed down on the top.

The Indians commenced picking out the stones and clearing away the earth with their hands. Fortunately, they had a crowbar, an instrument unknown in Central America, but indispensable here on account of the stony nature of the soil, and for the first and only time in the country I had no trouble in superintending the work. The cura gave them directions in their own language, and under his eye they worked actively. Nevertheless, the process was unavoidably slow. In digging down, they found the inner side of the outer wall, and the whole interior was loose earth and stones, with some layers of large flat stones, the whole very rough. In the mean time the sun was beating upon us with prodigious force, and some of the people of the village, among others the proprietor of the hacienda, came down to look on and have an inward smile at our folly. The cura had read a Spanish translation of the Antiquary, and said that we were surrounded by Edie Ochiltrees, though he himself, with his tall, thin figure and long gown, presented a lively image of that renowned mendicant. We continued the work six hours, and the whole appearance of things was so rude that we began to despair of success, when, on prying up a large flat stone, we saw underneath a skull. The reader may imagine our satisfaction. We made the Indians throw away crowbar and machete, and work with their hands. I was exceedingly anxious to get the skeleton out entire, but it was impossible to do so. It had no covering or envelope of any kind; the earth was thrown upon it as in a common grave, and as this was removed it all fell to pieces. It was in a sitting posture, with its face toward the setting sun. The knees were bent against the stomach, the arms doubled from the elbow, and the hands clasping the neck or supporting the head. The skull was unfortunately broken, but the facial bone was entire, with the jaws and teeth, and the enamel on the latter still bright, but when the skull was handed up many of them fell out The Indians picked up every bone and tooth, and handed them to me. It was strangely interesting, with the ruined structures towering around us, after a lapse of unknown ages, to bring to light these buried bones. Whose were they! The Indians were excited, and conversed in low tones. The cura interpreted what they said; and the burden of it was, “They are the bones of our kinsman,” and “What will our kinsman say at our dragging forth his bones?” But for the cura they would have covered them up and left the sepulchre.

In collecting the bones, one of the Indians picked up a small white object, which would have escaped any but an Indian’s eye. It was made of deer’s horn, about two inches long, sharp at the point, with an eye at the other end. They all called it a needle, and the reason of their immediate and unhesitating opinion was the fact that the Indians of the present day use needles of the same material, two of which the cura procured for me on our return to the convent. One of the Indians, who had acquired some confidence by gossiping with the cura, jocosely said that the skeleton was either that of a woman or a tailor.

The position of this skeleton was not in the centre of the sepulchre, but on one side, and on the other side of it was a very large rough stone or rock firmly imbedded in the earth, which it would have taken a long time to excavate with our instruments. In digging round it and on the other side, at some little distance from the skeleton we found a large vase of rude pottery, resembling very much the cántaro used by the Indians now as water-jar. It had a rough flat stone lying over the mouth, so as to exclude the earth, on removing which we found, to our great disappointment, that it was entirely empty, except some little hard black flakes, which were thrown out and buried before the vase was taken up. It had a small hole worn in one side of the bottom, through which liquid or pulverized substances could have escaped. It may have contained water or the heart of the skeleton. This vase was got out entire, and is now ashes.

One idea presented itself to my mind with more force than it had ever possessed before, and that was the utter impossibility of ascribing these ruins to Egyptian builders. The magnificent tombs of the kings at Thebes rose up before me. It was on their tombs that the Egyptians lavished their skill, industry, and wealth, and no people, brought up in Egyptian schools, descended from Egyptians, or deriving their lessons from them, would ever have constructed in so conspicuous a place so rude a sepulchre. Besides this, the fact of finding these bones in so good a state of preservation, at a distance of only three or four feet from the surface of the earth, completely destroys all idea of the extreme antiquity of these buildings; and again there was the universal and unhesitating exclamation of the Indians, “They are the bones of our kinsman.”

But whosesoever they were, little did the pious friends who placed them there ever imagine the fate to which they were destined. I had them carried to the convent, thence to Uxmal, and thence I bore them away forever from the bones of their kindred. In their rough journeys on the backs of mules and Indians they were so crumbled and broken that in a court of law their ancient proprietor would not be able to identify them, and they left me one night in a pocket-handkerchief to be carried to Doctor S. G. Morton of Philadelphia.

Known by the research he has bestowed upon the physical features of the aboriginal American races, and particularly by his late work entitled “Crania Americana,” which is acknowledged, in the annual address of the president of the Royal Geographical Society of London, as “a welcome offering to the lovers of comparative physiology,” this gentleman, in a communication on that subject, for which I here acknowledge my obligations, says that this skeleton, dilapidated as it is, has afforded him some valuable facts, and has been a subject of some interesting reflections.

The purport of his opinion is as follows: In the first place, the needle did not deceive the Indian who picked it up in the grave. The bones are those of a female. Her height did not exceed five feet three or four inches. The teeth are perfect, and not appreciably worn, while the épiphyses those infallible indications of the growing state, have just become consolidated, and mark the completion of adult age.

The bones of the hands and feet are remarkably small and delicately proportioned, which observation applies also to the entire skeleton. The skull was crushed into many pieces, but, by a cautious manipulation, Doctor Morton succeeded in reconstructing the posterior and lateral portions. The occiput is remarkably flat and vertical, while the lateral or parietal diameter measures no less than five inches and eight tenths.

A chemical examination of some fragments of the bones proves them to be almost destitute of animal matter, which, in the perfect osseous structure, constitutes about thirty-three parts in the hundred.

On the upper part of the left tibia there is a swelling of the bone, called, in surgical language, a node, an inch and a half in length, and more than half an inch above the natural surface. This morbid condition may have resulted from a variety of causes, but possesses greater interest on account of its extreme infrequency among the primitive Indian population of the country.

On a late visit to Boston I had the satisfaction of examining a small and extremely interesting collection of mummied bodies in the possession of Mr. John H. Blake, of that city, dug up by himself from an ancient cemetery in Peru. This cemetery lies on the shore of the Bay of Chacota, near Arica, in latitude 18 deg. 20’ south. It covers a large tract of ground. The graves are all of a circular form, from two to four feet in diameter, and from four to five feet deep. In one of them Mr. Blake found the mummies of a man, a woman, a child twelve or fourteen years old, and an infant. They were all closely wrapped in woollen garments of various colours and degrees of fineness, secured by needles of thorn thrust through the cloth; The skeletons are saturated with some bituminous substance, and are all in a remarkable state of preservation. The woollen cloths, too, are well preserved, which no doubt is accounted for, in a great degree, by the extreme dryness of the soil and atmosphere of that part of Peru.

Mr. Blake visited many other cemeteries between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean as far south as Chili, all of which possess the same general features with those found in the elevated valleys of the Peruvian Andes. No record or tradition exists in regard to these cemeteries, but woollen cloths similar to those found by Mr. Blake are woven at this day, and probably in the same manner, by the Indians of Peru; and in the eastern part of Bolivia, to the southward of the place where these mummies were discovered, he found, on the most barren portion of the Desert of Atacama, a few Indians, who, probably from the difficulty of access to their place of abode, have been less influenced by the Spaniards, and for this reason retain more of their primitive customs, and their dress at this day resembles closely that which envelops the bodies in his possession, both in the texture and the form.

Doctor Morton says that these mummies from Peru have the same peculiarities in the form of the skull, the same delicacy of the bones, and the same remarkable smallness of the hands and feet, with that found in the sepulchre at San Francisco. He says, too, from an examination of nearly four hundred skulls of individuals belonging to older nations of Mexico and Peru, and of skulls dug from the mounds of our western country, that he finds them all formed on the same model, and conforming in a remarkable manner to that brought from San Francisco; and that this cranium has the same type of physical conformation which has been bestowed with amazing uniformity upon all the tribes on our continent, from Canada to Patagonia, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. He adds, that it affords additional support to the opinion which he has always entertained, that, notwithstanding some slight variation in physical conformation, and others of a much more remarkable character in intellectual attainments, all the aboriginal Americans of all known epochs belong to the same great and distinctive race.

If this opinion is correct, and I believe it if this skeleton does present the same type of physical conformation with all the tribes of our continent then, indeed, do these crumbling bones declare, as with a voice from the grave, that we cannot go back to any ancient nation of the Old World for the builders of these cities; they are not the works of people who have passed away, and whose history is lost, but of the same great race which, changed, miserable, and degraded, still clings around their ruins.

To return to the ruins of San Francisco. We devoted two days more to excavating, but did not make any farther discoveries.

Among the ruins were circular holes in the ground like those at Uxmal. The mouth of one was broken and enlarged, and I descended by a ladder into a dome-shaped chamber, precisely the same as at Uxmal, but a little larger. At Uxmal the character of these was mere matter of conjecture; but at this short distance, the Indians had specific notions in regard to their objects and uses, and called them chultones, or wells. In all directions, too, were seen the oblong stones hollowed out like troughs, which at Uxmal were called pilas, or fountains, but here the Indians called them holcas or piedras de molir, stones for grinding, which they said were used by the ancients to mash corn upon; and the proprietor showed us a round stone like a bread roller, which they called kabtum, brazo de piedra, or arm of stone, used, as they said for mashing the corn. The different names they assigned in different places to the same thing, and the different uses ascribed to it, show, with many other facts, the utter absence of all traditionary knowledge among the Indians; and this is perhaps the greatest difficulty we have to encounter in ascribing to their ancestors the building of these cities.

The last day we returned from the ruins earlier than usual, and stopped at the campo santo. In front stood a noble seybo tree. I had been anxious to learn something of the growth of this tree, but had never had an opportunity of doing it before. The cura told me that it was then twenty-three years old. There could be no doubt or mistake on this point. Its age was as well known as his own, or that of any other person in the village. The following woodcut represents this tree. The trunk at the distance of five feet from the ground measured 17 1-2 feet in circumference, and its great branches afforded on all sides a magnificent shade. We had found trees like it growing on the tops of the ruined structures at Copan and Palenque, and many had for that reason ascribed to the buildings a very great antiquity. This tree completely removed all doubts which I might have entertained, and confirmed me in the opinion I had before expressed, that no correct judgment could be formed of the antiquity of these buildings from the size of the trees growing upon them. Remarkable as I considered this tree at that time, I afterward saw larger ones, in more favourable situations not so old.

[Engraving 18: Seybo Tree]

The campo santo was enclosed by a high stone wall. The interior had some degree of plan and arrangement, and in some places were tombs, built above ground, belonging to families in the village, hung with withered wreaths and votive offerings. The population tributary to it was about five thousand; it had been opened but five years, and already it presented a ghastly spectacle. There were many new-made graves, and on several of the vaults were a skull and small collection of bones in a box or tied up in a napkin, being the remains of one buried within and taken out to make room for another corpse. On one of them were the skull and bones of a lady of the village, in a basket; an old acquaintance of the cura, who had died within two years. Among the bones was a pair of white satin shoes, which she had perhaps worn in the dance, and with which on her feet she had been buried.

At one corner of the cemetery was a walled enclosure, about twenty feet high and thirty square, within which was the charnel-house of the cemetery. A flight of stone steps led to the top of the wall, and on the platform of the steps and along the wall were skulls and bones, some in boxes and baskets, and some tied up in cotton cloths, soon to be thrown upon the common pile, but as yet having labels with the names written on them, to make known yet a little while longer the individuals to whom they had once belonged. Within the enclosure the earth was covered several feet deep with the promiscuous and undistinguishable bones of rich and poor, high and low, men, women, and children, Spaniards, Mestizoes, and Indians, all mingled together as they happened to fall. Among them were fragments of bright-coloured dresses, and the long hair of women still clinging to the skull. Of all the sad mementoes declaring the end to which all that is bright and beautiful in the world is doomed, none ever touched me so affectingly as this the ornament and crowning charm of woman, the peculiar subject of her taste and daily care, loose, dishevelled, and twining among dry and mouldering bones.

We left the campo santo, and walked up the long street of the village, the quiet, contented character of the people impressing itself more strongly than ever upon my mind. The Indians were sitting in the yards, shrouded by cocoanut and orange trees weaving hammocks and platting palm leaves for hats; the children were playing naked in the road, and the Mestiza women were sitting in the doorways sewing. The news of our digging up the bones had created a sensation. All wanted to know what the day’s work had produced, and all rose up as the cura passed; the Indians came to kiss his hand, and, as he remarked, except when the crop of maize was short, all were happy. In a place of such bustle and confusion as our own city, it is impossible to imagine the quiet of this village.