II.
A DAY IN YUCATAN.
The First-born.—An Opportunity accepted.—An Index Point.—Cocoa-nut Milk.—The Market-place.—Euchre as a Food.—A Grave Joke.—The Drink of the Country.—The Cocoa Palm.—The Native Dress.—A Hacienda.—A Pre-adamite Haciendado.—Jenequen.—Prospecting.—Almost a Panic.—Done into Rhyme.
Every thing is affected by first impressions. Sometimes they can never be overcome. That like or dislike often abides incurable. The first sight of a foreign shore is a love or a hate forever. How perfect Ireland is in my memory, because it looked so beautiful, rising, a green wave of stillness and strength, out of that sick and quaking sea, over which I had been rolling so long! Egypt is not a river of verdure so much as a strip of blazing sand, for Alexandria, and not Cairo, is its first-born in my experience.
Mexico has its first picture in my gallery. Whatever grandeurs of mountain or glories of forest it may unfold, its first impression will always be that first day in Yucatan. I never dreamed a month before of seeing Yucatan. Even if Mexico itself had crossed the mind as a possibility of experience, Yucatan had never been included in that concept. That prettily sounding name was as far off as Cathay or Bokhara.
Yucatan was, to me. Central America; a museum of ancient monuments; an out-of the-world corner. In fact, it did not belong to Mexico till Maximilian's time. He annexed it, and they hold together still. We often strike an unknown rock in our sail through life, and Yucatan was the unexpected shoal on which we first stranded. It happened in this wise:
The City of Merida makes a landing as near as possible to the
