Page:Here and there in Yucatan - miscellanies (IA herethereinyucat00lepl 0).djvu/93

 a very low narrow passage, there is a basin of (red Water) chachá, that ebbs and flows like the sea; receding with the south wind, increasing with the northwest.

To reach the most distant well, we go down yet one more ladder, the seventh. On one side there is a perpendicular wall, on the other a yawning gulf; so that when one of the steps, merely round sticks tied with withes, gives way beneath our feet, we tightly grasp the one above. Having reached the bottom of the ladder, we crawl slowly and painfully through a broken, winding passage about 300 feet long; then see before us a basin of crystalline water; and how thirsty we are! This basin is 1,400 feet from the mouth of the cave, and about 450 feet below the earth's surface. Several hundred people during five months in every year depend entirely on that source for all the water they use. With their frail pitchers and flaring torches they wend their way, gasping for breath, through the intricate passages. The journey back is even harder, for they are tired and loaded; yet these people are such lovers of cleanliness that, arriving at their poor huts, before tasting food, they will use some of the water that has cost them so much, to bathe their smoke-be-