CHAPTER XL.
JOURNEY RESUMED—ARRIVAL AT UXMAL—HACIENDA OF UXMAL—MAJOR-DOMOS—ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG SPANIARD—VISIT TO THE RUINS OF UXMAL—FIRST SIGHT OF THE RUINS—CHARACTER OF THE INDIANS—DETAILS OF HACIENDA LIFE—A DELICATE CASE—ILLNESS OF MR. CATHERWOOD—BREAKING UP.
At daybreak the next morning, with new Indians and a guide on horse-back from the hacienda, we resumed our journey. The surface of the country was the same, limestone with scrub-trees. There was not soil enough to absorb the water, which rested in puddles in the hollows of the stones. At nine o'clock we reached another hacienda, smaller than the last, but still having a lordly appearance, where, as before, the women were drawing water by a wheel. The major-domo expressed his sense of the honour conferred upon him by our visit, and his anxiety to serve us, gave us a breakfast of milk, tortillas and wild honey, and furnished us with other Indians and a guide. We mounted again; very soon the sun became intensely hot; there were no trees to shade us, and we suffered excessively. At half-past twelve we passed some mounds of ruins a little off the road, but the sun was so scorching that we could not stop to examine them, and at two o'clock we reached Uxmal. Little did I think, when I made the acquaintance of my unpretending friend in New York, that I should ride upwards of fifty miles on his family estates, carried by his Indians, and breakfasting, dining, and sleeping at his lordly haciendas, while the route marked out for our return would bring us to others, one of which was larger than any we had seen. The family of Peon, under the Spanish dominion, had given governors to the province of Yucatan. On the establishment of independence, its present head, a staunch Royalist, retired in disgust from all kinds of employment, and the whole of the large family estates were managed by the Señora Doña Joaquina. Unfortunately, Don Simon had left for Merida, and we had missed him on the way. Moreover, owing to the heat of the sun and our awkward saddles, we arrived at the end of this triumphal march in a dreadfully jaded and forlorn condition, and perhaps we never dismounted more utterly worn out and uncomfortable.
The hacienda of Uxmal was built of dark grey stone, ruder in appearance and finish than any of the others, with a greater appearance of antiquity, and at a distance looked like an old baronial castle. A year before it had been given to Don Simon by his father, and he was
