Page:A Glimpse at Guatemala.pdf/374

240 This excellent example of Maya art I determined to carry home with me, and at once set my men to work to reduce the weight of the stone, which must have exceeded half a ton, by cutting off the undecorated ends of the slab and reducing it in thickness. This was no easy matter, as we had not come provided with tools for such work, but shift was made with the end of a broken pickaxe and some carpenter's chisels; by keeping mozos at work at it, three at a time, in continual rotation, at the end of a week the weight of the stone had been reduced by half, and we were able to move it to the river-bank and pack it in the bottom of our largest canoe.

On the 26th March we struck our camp and all started up the river together, and on the following day, at the Paso de Yalchîlan, I lost the pleasant companionship of M. Charnay, who here rejoined his men and returned direct to Tenosique. It was very hard work hauling the canoe, heavily laden with the stone lintel, against the swift current of the river, and we were four days getting as far as the the mouth of the Rio Lacandon. On the 30th March we reached the first inhabited rancho at Santa Rosa, and next day I met Mr. Schulte at the mouth of the Rio Salinas and accepted a passage in his canoe to the Paso Real, leaving the mozos and my heavily-laden canoes to follow more slowly. On the way up-stream we landed on the left bank of the river not far from the mouth of the Rio Salinas, and passed a few hours in examining the ruins of a town of considerable extent. I could find no stone houses standing, but there were several fragments of sculptured stones bearing hieroglyphic inscriptions lying amongst the numerous foundation mounds, and the whole site would probably repay careful exploration.

From the Paso Real the stone lintel was carried by Indians to Sacluc, where I purchased a saw from one of the woodcutters and was again able slightly to reduce the weight of the stone. From Sacluc it was hauled across the savannah to the neighbourhood of Flores on a solid-wheeled ox-cart, the solitary wheeled vehicle then existing in the province of Peten; then it was again slung on a strong pole and carried by sixteen Indian mozos through the forest to the British frontier village of El Cayo, where it was again packed in the bottom of a canoe and sent down the river to Belize: it now rests at Bloomsbury in the British Museum.

At the time of my visit Menché was supposed to lie within the Guatemalan frontier, and a few years later leave was obtained for me from the Government of that Republic to remove some other carved lintels from the ruins. Gorgonio Lopez and his brothers were sent down the river for this purpose, and after making careful moulds of all the carved lintels still in position in the houses, they removed some others from those houses which had fallen into ruin; these they packed in the canoes and hauled up the