258 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



Mani. I had heard of this place on my first visit to 

 Uxmal, of rehcs and heirlooms in the hands of the 

 cacique, and of ruins, which, however, we were ad- 

 vised were not worth visiting. The morning, nev- 

 ertheless, did not open with much promise. On 

 first emerging we found about the door of the casa 

 real a crowd of loungers, of that mixed race who 

 might trace their ancestry to the subjects of TutuI 

 Xiu and the conquerors, possessing all the bad qual- 

 ities of both, and but few of the good traits of either. 

 Some of them were intoxicated, and there were 

 many half-grown, impudent boys, who kept close 

 to us, watching every movement, and turning aside 

 to laugh when they could do so unobserved. 



We set out to look at the ru*ms, and the crowd 

 followed at our heels. At the end of a street lead- 

 ing to the well we saw a long '^building, pierced in 

 the middle by the street, and part still standing on 

 each side. We saw at a glance that it was not the 

 work of the antiguos, but had been erected by the 

 Spaniards since the conquest, and yet we w^ere con- 

 ducted to it as one of the same class with those we 

 had found all over the country ; though we did meet 

 with one intelligent person, who smiled at the igno- 

 rance of the people, and said that it was a palace of 

 El Rey, or the king, Montejo. Its true history is 

 perhaps as much unknown as thatiof . the more an- 

 cient buildings. In its tottering front were inter- 

 spersed sculptured stones taken from* the aboriginal 

 edifices, and thus, in its own decay, it publishes the 



