CHAPTER XXXIV.
PRECAUTIONS AGAINST THE ATTACKS OF MOSQUITOES—MODE OF LIFE AT PALENQUE—DESCRIPTION OF THE PALACE—PIERS—HIEROGLYPHICS—FlGURES—DOORWAYS— CORRIDORS—COURT-YARDS—A WOODEN RELIC—STONE STEPS—TOWERS—TABLETS—STUCCO ORNAMENTS, ETC. ETC.—THE ROYAL CHAPEL—EXPLORATION—AN ALARM—INSECTS—EFFECT OF INSECT STINGS—RETURN TO THE VILLAGE OF PALENQUE.
At daylight I returned, and found Mr. C. and Pawling sitting on the stones, half dressed, in rueful conclave. They had passed the night worse than I, and our condition and prospects were dismal. Rains, hard work, bad fare, seemed nothing; but we could no more exist without sleep than the "foolish fellow" of Æsop, who, at the moment when he had learned to live without eating, died. In all his travels through the country Pawling had never encountered such hard work as since he met us.
The next night the mosquitoes were beyond all endurance; the slightest part of the body, the tip end of a finger, exposed, was bitten. With the heads covered the heat was suffocating, and in the morning our faces were all in blotches. Without some remedy we were undone. It is on occasions like this that the creative power of genius displays itself. Our beds, it will be remembered, were made of sticks lying side by side, and set on four piles of stones for legs. Over these we laid our pellons and armas de agua, or leathern armour against rain, and over these our straw matting. This prevented our enemies invading us from between the sticks. Our sheets were already sewed up into sacks. We ripped one side, cut sticks, and bent them in three bows about two feet high over the frame of the beds. Over these, the sheets were stretched, and, sewed down all around, with a small space open at the head, had much the appearance of biers. At night, after a hard days work, we crawled in. Hosts were waiting for us inside. We secured the open places, when each, with the stump of a lighted candle, hunted and slew, and with a lordly feeling of defiance we lay down to sleep. We had but one pair of sheets apiece, and this was a new way of sleeping under them; but, besides the victory it afforded us over the mosquitoes, it had another advantage; the heat was so great that we could not sleep with our clothes on; it was impossible to place the beds entirely out of the reach of the spray, and the covering, held up a foot or two above us and kept damp, cooled the heated atmosphere within.
