is believed that yet other 
216 Mexican Notes. [ ZOE 
of stone-paved streets, a large ruined church, many ruined stone 
houses and all accommodation fora population of 8,000 people, now 
given over to owls and bats and a tropical vegetation well fitted to 
drive the ardent botanist daft, and inhabited by uncounted millions 
of eager mosquitoes, vigorous enough to bring him back to his senses 
again. How it comes to pass that with this high airy place at hand, © 
the modern town should be on the low and necessarily unhealthy 
location about the estero, is wonderful. But the Mexican mind is in 
some things an unknown quantity and incomprehensible, and he un- 
derstands not the first principle of modern sanitation or convenience, 
as we see such things. | 
As for these massive hilltop ruins, what scenes have they wit- 
nessed! One thing is certain, these Spaniards made here a solid 
stone-built city, intended not for a day, but for centuries. Walls laid 
in lime mortar, three or four feet thick, for the church, and two to 
three feet thick for the dwelling -houses, were not built in a day, nor 
fora day. The visitor now sees these massive walls dug into, and 
the ground in and about the buildings deeply excavated by treasure 
hunters. Even to this day old Spanish dollars are occasionally 
found. Indeed, may not this old hilltop, so long the home of these 
wild buccaneers, be the still secure hiding-place of their fabulous 
treasures? For the final evacuation by the Spaniards was unex- 
pected and precipitate. Ata time when many of the settlers or free- 
booters were absent, the neighboring tribes of Indians, whose en- 
slaved labor had made these paved streets and massive buildings, and 
_ who because of the enslavement and forced labor had become hostile, 
_ made an attack upon the town, and drove away all the people, many 
of whom buried their silver Pesos, having no way to remove them at 
the time. It is related that the last person to leave the city was a 
priest, who remained to secure some of the valuables belonging to 
the church, and when he came out he was so surrounded by savages 
__ that escape was cut off: So, to avoid torture, he ran to the precipice 
_ just in front of the church and jumped off to certain death upon the 
rocks below. Other than silver treasures remain to this day hidden _ 
at San Blas. Bronze cannon and valuable silver bells lie buried in 
_ the sands of the spit that forms the harbor. Not long ago a ship 
_ was loaded with cannon dug out of the sands, some of the gunsbeing 
_ sixteen feet long, and they were exported and sold as old metal. It _ 
ship loads still remain hidden. The low 
