Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/514

436 Once only I attempted an exploration. From the door of this palace, almost on a line with the front, rose a high steep mountain which we thought must command a view of the city in its whole extent, and perhaps itself contain ruins. (See Frontispiece.) I took the bearing, and, with a compass in my hand and an Indian before me with his machete, from the rear of the last-mentioned building cut a straight line up E. N. E. to the top. The ascent was so steep that I was obliged to haul myself up by the branches. On the top was a high mound of stones, with a foundation-wall still remaining. Back towards the mountain was nothing but forest; in front, through an opening in the trees, we saw a great wooded plain extending to Tobasco and the Gulf of Mexico; and the Indian at the foot of the tree, peering through the branches, turned his face up to me with a beaming expression, and pointing to a little spot on the plain, which was to him the world, cried out, "Alli esta el pueblo," "there is the village." This was the only occasion (with the exception of an aqueduct) on which I attempted to explore, for it was the only time I had any mark to aim at.

Besides the claps of thunder and flashes of lightning, we had one alarm at night. It was from a noise that sounded like the cracking of a dry branch under a stealthy tread, which, as we all started up together, I thought was that of a wild beast, but which Mr. Catherwood, whose bed was nearer, imagined to be that of a man. We climbed up the mound of fallen stones at the end of this corridor, but beyond all was thick darkness. Pawling fired twice as an intimation that we were awake, and we arranged poles across the corridor as a trap, so that even an Indian could not enter from that quarter without being thrown down with some considerable noise and detriment to his person.

In addition to mosquitoes and garrapatas, or ticks, we suffered from another worse insect, called by the natives niguas, which, we are told, pestered the Spaniards on their first entry into the country, and which, says the historian, "ate their Way into the Flesh, under the Nails of the Toes, then laid their Nits there within, and multiplied in such manner that there was no ridding them but by Cauteries, so that some, lost their Toes, and some their Feet, whereas they should at first have been picked out; but being as yet unacquainted with the Evil, they knew not how to apply the Remedy."

This description is true even to the last clause. We had escaped them until our arrival at Palenque, and being unacquainted with the evil, did not know how to apply the remedy. I carried one in my foot for several days, conscious that something was wrong, but not knowing what, until the nits had been laid and multiplied. Pawling