408 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



open, and an old Indian was then lighting candles at 

 the altar for vesper prayers. In front, setting a little 

 back, were the apartments of the major-domo, and at 

 the other end of the range the mansion of the master, 

 in the corridor of which we were set down, and crawl- 

 ed out of our coaches. There was something mon- 

 strously aristocratic in being borne on the shoulders of 

 tenants from such a hacienda as that we had left to this 

 stately pile. The whole appearance of things gave an 

 idea of country residence upon a scale of grand hospi- 

 tality, and yet we learned, to our astonishment, that 

 most of the family had never seen it. The only one by 

 whom it was ever visited was the son who had it in 

 charge, and he came only for a few days at a time, to 

 see how things were conducted, and examine the ac- 

 counts of the major-domo. The range consisted of a 

 single suite of rooms, one in the centre about eighty 

 feet long, and one on each side, communicating, about 

 forty feet long each, and a noble corridor extended 

 along the whole front and rear. 



We had an hour of daylight, which I could have em- 

 ployed very satisfactorily on the spot, but the servant 

 urged us to go immediately and see a cenote. What a 

 cenote was we had no idea, and Mr. C, being much 

 fatigued, turned into a hammock ; but, unwilling to lose 

 anything where all was strange and unexpected, I fol- 

 lowed the servant, crossed the roof of the reservoir, ce- 

 mented as hard as stone, passed on to an open tank 

 built of stone, covered with cement inside and out, 

 about one hundred and fifty feet square and twenty feet 

 deep, filled Avith water, in which twenty or thirty In- 

 dians were swimming ; and, descending to the foot of 

 the tank, at the distance of about a hundred yards 

 came to a large opening in the ground, with a broad 



