Page:Queen Moo's talisman; the fall of the Maya empire (IA queenmoostalisma00leplrich).djvu/23

 In connection with the statue it must be observed that the ancient Mayas held a belief similar to that entertained by the Egyptians, regarding the condition of the soul after death, and in the same way made a statue of the deceased, with the idea that this would give the individual a hold upon life. The natives who aided in bringing Coh's statue to light, out of the mausoleum where it had remained concealed for thousands of years, invariably spoke of it as the "Enchanted Prince", and frequently assured its discoverer that he had succeeded in finding it because he himself had dwelt there in past ages, and was one of the great men whose effigies were seen on all sides.

When the larger portion of the charred viscera found in the urn was burned, to reduce it to ashes, the natives standing by exclaimed—"A majestic shade ascends amid the smoke! It is the form of the enchanted Prince, that seems to fade into nothingness." So impressed were the men by what their imagination had evoked, that all ran from the spot in a state of agitation.

On the day when the statue, weighing three thousand pounds, was taken out of the monument, a party of hostile Indians suddenly emerged from the forest. One of their number was aged, and he remarked to his companions, "This represents one of our great men of antiquity." Then the young men paid homage to the statue by bending one knee, in a manner peculiar to those people.

Traditions of their ancestors are not altogether lost among the natives, as some travelers assert. Many still perform rites and ceremonies in the depths of forests or in unexplored caverns, in the darkness of the night, but keep their secrets to themselves, remembering the tortures inflicted on their fathers by the Spanish priests to oblige them to forego the religious observ-