32 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



stock, -would eventually ruin any harcln-ood floor surface. The floor- 

 ing experts asked for a month 's time to heat the ball-room and dry- 

 out of the sub-floor, but this was refused and the work was awarded to 

 another company, which went ahead and laid the floor amid the worst 

 possible physical surroundings. Within a month the floor cracked 

 and buckled, and the wise operators who had at first refused the job 

 were awarded a contract for replacement. 



In connection with the existence of bad physical surroundings in 

 the job itself there is the fact that flooring contractors are dften 

 poorly equipped to handle storage of stock flooring strips for future 



use. They supply themselves plentifully, but frequently keep their 

 stocks in warehouses that are neither heated nor especially well pro- 

 tected from falling weather. The result is that a lot of strips that 

 are damaged by the weather are forced into commission because the 

 contractor does not wish to stand the loss, and the ill effect of the 

 procedure eventually hits the manufacturer. As a remedy for this 

 undesirable feature, numerous mill operators are refusing to sell stock 

 to any contractor who is not equipped with a heated storage com- 

 partment for its safe-keeping. C. 



X : «g^<;i&:;j^^i;h«:>stMK iii*k>itiMMiTOX!>ui^ ^ 





The Ebony God 



The figure which appears in this account is not the profile of a 

 billikin, but the portrait of an ancient Mexican idol. The original 

 is now in the possession of the chief of a tribe of the Maya 

 Indians, that inhabit a wild and isolated region of country forty 

 or fifty miles square, surrounding the old town of Bacolor, that 

 lies in the highlands to the west of the great logw-ood acaches, or 

 swamps, tributary to the streams leading down to the Hondo 

 river, that empties into the Chelumal bay. This once famous city 

 is now mostly in ruins and is rarely visited by white men, although 

 it contains many features of note well worth while for the traveler 

 to see. One of these is the strange 

 pictured rocks common to that 

 vicinity. Many of these rude 

 paintings, or depictions of man, 

 bird and beast, though lacking in 

 artistic merit, are extremely in- 

 teresting. Those that are located 

 in sheltered places, beneath pro- 

 jecting rocks, are, after the lapse 

 of ages, in a good state of preser- 

 vation. They were painted with 

 some kind of colors more indeli- 

 ble and durable than any paint 

 or ink known at the present time, 

 and by the artists of a race of 

 people who have passed into ob- 

 livion and were forgotten centu- 

 ries ago. 



We know very little of this 

 country, which is a part of the 

 states or territories of Quintana 

 Roo and Campeche in the extreme 

 southeastern part of Mexico. They 

 are teeming with undeveloped 

 sources of wealth, and it seems 

 strange that they have not been 

 opened up more than they are, 

 when we consider that it is the 

 nearest land lying directly to the 

 south of u9, just across the Gulf, 

 at our very door. The great 

 wealth of fine cabinet woods, dye 

 woods, medicinal herbs, gums and 

 many other products stored away 

 in its forests, are incalculable in variety and quantity. 



It was while prospecting for mahogany that the writer was 

 pushing his way through this lonely country, with burro and afoot, 

 and accompanied by a listless mozo, that by rarest chance he came 

 across and was permitted to examine minutely and bring about 

 an introduction between the camera and this remarkable object, 

 the Ebony God. It never will be known how far back in the 

 dark ages of antiquity it was when this idol of wood was so 

 laboriously yet somewhat skilfully carved from a block of this, 

 one cf the hardest of woods, taken from the trunk of an ebony 

 tree. 



THE EBONY GOD. 



Little of the strange history of this unique image could be 

 obtained, but doubtless myriads of benighted human beings, in 

 idolatrous worship, have bowed and prayed to this inanimate god. 

 It is not worshiped now, however, in the sense that was originally 

 intended, but is preserved more as a relic of antiquity. As to 

 size, its perpendicular measurement is about ten inches from the 

 base to the crest of its helmet, and seven inches horizontally at 

 its widest part. It is jet black, highly polished and without a 

 blemish. It certainly is a conclusive proof of the great durability 

 of ebony, yet it would be an easy task to find in the forests of 



that country today many equally 

 good specimens of this beautiful 

 wood. 



The large shallow holes so pe- 

 culiarly wrought in the back of 

 the idol, taper rapidly to a point 

 and are set in such a way and of 

 such an angle that their conical 

 shaped cavities come together and 

 open into each other near the bot- 

 tom, but leave a portion of wood 

 between their adjacent rims, thus 

 affording a means of attachment 

 by passing a sinew or thong of 

 rawhide through them. In this 

 way the idol was designed to be 

 suspended from the limb of a cer- 

 tain species of tree held sacred 

 for this purpose, from which ele- 

 vated position it was intended to 

 look down upon the host of its 

 worshipers. These holes were so 

 proportioned that the image bal- 

 anced perfectly, and when sus- 

 pended to the swaying branch 

 W'Ould move from the slightest im- 

 pulse. It would tip up and down 

 with a gentle seesaw motion, and 

 was then thought to be nodding 

 assent to the earnest supplication 

 or wail of its heathen worshipers; 

 or if perchance its motion was 

 from side to side, it was taken as 

 the disapproval of them, and in 

 either case there was no appeal from the infinite decision. From the 

 design of these holes and the carving of its facial features, it is evi- 

 dent that they were made with tools so primitive that possibly they 

 were only chips or fragments of shell used even before the advent 

 of the lost art of tempering tools of copper. These shell or stone 

 bits, were held against the wood while being turned or revolved 

 by a twisting motion of the wrist or arm. So very slow was 

 the process that the image was simply worn into the desired 

 shape by constant rubbing, and scientists inform us that years, or 

 even the greater part of a lifetime of strenuous effort was .spent 

 in the making of one of these idols. J. V. Hamilton. 



