Page:Here and there in Yucatan - miscellanies (IA herethereinyucat00lepl 0).djvu/23

 used to worship every year when on their way to Mugeres and Cozumel, whither they went as Mahometans journey to Mecca.

After the bush was cut down we succeeded in measuring a temple: it was ten feet in height, built on the summit of an artificial mound forty feet high, with stone steps on the east side. In the base of the mound there were very small rooms, in which we were just able to stand upright.

Surrounding the courtyard where the temple was there were other apartments of the same size, that may have served as lodgings for pilgrims; only people under three feet high could be comfortable in them. As we stooped to crawl in and out, we conjured up visions of diminutive individuals going back and forth, and up and down the almost perpendicular stairs, in quaint and scanty attire, bearing offerings to propitiate the dear gods of the sea. All the other buildings at Meco were equally small; and the natives affirm, as a matter of course, that they were built and inhabited by dwarfs.

There is another of these strange cities further down the coast, called Nizucte; and though exposed to a visit from hostile Indians, we found there three men, one accompanied by his wife and a pretty daughter of eighteen summers. They were from