wheat-crop of the Western States, so that during my stay in Yucatan the price of henequen rose to thirteen cents a pound!
This was not a fortunate state of affairs for me, as I had need of many hands to help in clearing the ruins, and now that every proprietor was eager to increase the size of his henequen plantation, field-labourers were in great demand; I could only hope that as Chichén Itzá lay far from the centre of commercial activity, the villages in its neighbourhood might for some time yet escape the effects of the "boom." I had been accustomed in Guatemala and Honduras to depend to a great extent on the assistance of the local officials in engaging labourers; but although, through the kindness of the English Minister, I had come with ample recommendations from the Mexican Government to the local authorities, I found that I could not look for the same favourable result in Yucatan, as the Indians are less under the control of officials than they are under that of a small number of powerful Spanish families who are all large land-holders. Although the status of slavery does not legally exist, custom is slow in dying, and the greater number of Indian labourers are still tied to the soil.
After a month of weary waiting in Merida, during which time the only pleasant episodes were a short visit to Mr. E. Thompson, the United States Consul, who was at work exploring the ruins at Labná, and a day spent at the celebrated ruins of Uxmal, I was at last able to set out to the eastward, travelling the first day by rail, and then in a springless cart, known as a "volan coche," to the town of Yzamal. This town occupies the site of an ancient Indian city, and the great pyramidal foundations which formerly supported the Maya temples are still the most prominent feature in the landscape.
At Yzamal I was most hospitably received by Dr. Gaumer, an American gentleman who has long been a collector of natural-history specimens for the Editors of the 'Biologia Centrali-Americana,' and to him and to Mrs. Gaumer I was indebted for numerous acts of kindness during my stay in the country. Thence I pushed on to the town of Valladolid, which, with the exception of Comitan in Honduras, I may safely say is the most dead-alive town it has ever been my fate to enter. Here I presented letters from the Government to the local authorities, and made the best arrangements I could effect for a supply of labourers. I then returned by the main road as far as 'Citas, and on the 6th February rode by a bush track to Pisté, a small village about two miles distant from the ruins of Chichén Itzá.
When Stevens and Catherwood visited Chichén in 1842, a flourishing hacienda had been established among the ruins, and the ground was in part kept clear for pasturing cattle. A few years later, in 1847, the untamed Indians from the south made a raid into the settled portion of Yucatan,
