204 



THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



nately the sea had fallen sufficiently to 

 enable the crew to put off in the dory to 

 a key nearby where mangrove wood was 



cut, and with scarcely enough fires to 

 keep steam up, she crept into Belize one 

 morning, after an absence of eight days. 



This small temple, standing a few hundred yards outside the walls to the north, presents a feature 

 common in Maya architecture — namely, the roof comb, a wall purely decorative in purpose and usually 

 embellished with an elaborate design in stucco 



On the coast of Yucatan, i 

 As untenanted of man 

 As a castle under ban 



By a doom. 

 For the deeds of bloody hours, 

 Overgrown with tropic bowers, 

 Stand the teocallis towers 



Of Tuloom. 



Here are corridors, and there. 

 From the terrace, goes a stair ; 

 And the way is broad and fair 



To the room 

 Where the inner altar stands ; 

 And the mortar's tempered sands 

 Bear the print of human hands, 



In Tuloom. 



One of these is fair to sight, 

 Where it pinnacles a height ; 

 And the breakers blossom white. 



As they boom 

 And split beneath the walls. 

 And an ocean murmur falls 

 Through the melancholy halls 



Of Tuloom. 



We are tenants on the strand 

 Of the same mysterious land. 

 Must the shores, that we command, 



Reassume 

 Their primeval forest hum, 

 And the future pilgrim come 

 Unto monuments as dumb 



As Tuloom? 



1 These stanzas are from the poem "Tuloom," by Erastus W. Ellsworth, 1855 



