CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE MAYAS. 663 



the same height, while the doorways are but three feet high and 

 eighteen inches wide. In some of those houses domestic utensils 

 have been found, very small. Any traveler may examine the 

 strange little houses; and doubtless the belief in the phantom 



SOUTHEAST CORNER OF NORTH WING OF CAN'S PALACE, UXMAL. 



alux is an outgrowth of tradition concerning the dwarfish people 

 who constructed them. 



Directly opposed to the alux is Huahuapach, a gigantic spec- 

 ter supposed to put himself in the way of belated travelers and 

 make them fall so as to injure themselves. This, again, would be 

 some dim recollection of those big men whose bones have at vari- 

 ous times been unearthed in different parts of the peninsula. Sev- 

 eral historians testify to such gigantic remains having been dug 

 from the ground in the early part of the Conquest. We have also 

 been assured by people of Spanish descent, now living in that 

 country, that they themselves have disinterred enormous skulls 

 and other bones of the human body. None had the curiosity to 

 keep them. To this may be added that on the walls of certain 

 ancient structures there are imprints, eleven inches long, of hands 

 that had been dipped in red liquid and pressed upon the stones, as 

 it was customary for the owner of the building to do. 



