g many difficulties, when my ropes and
cables, made of withes and the bark of the _habin_ tree, were finished
and adjusted to the capstan manufactured of hollow stones and trunks of
trees; and I had placed the ponderous statue of Chaacmol on rollers,
already in position to drag it up the inclined plane made from the
surface of the ground to a few feet above the bottom of the excavation;
my men, actuated by their superstitious fears on the one hand, and
their profound reverence for the memory of their ancestors on the other,
unwilling to see the effigy of one of the great men removed from where
their ancestors had placed it in ages gone by resolved to bury it, by
letting loose the hill of dry stones that formed the body of the
mausoleum, and were kept from falling in the hole by a framework of thin
trunks of trees tied with withes, and in order that it should not be
injured, to capsize it, placing the face downward. They had already
overturned it, when I interfered in time to prevent more mischief, and
even save some of them from certain death; since by cutting loose the
withes that keep the framework together, the sides of the excavation
were bound to fall in, and crush those at the bottom. I honestly think,
knowing their superstitious feelings and propensities, that they had
made up their mind to sacrifice their lives, in order to avoid what they
considered a desecration of the future tenement that the great warrior
and king was yet to inhabit, when time had arrived. In order to overcome
their scruples, and also to prove if my suspicions were correct, that,
as their forefathers and the Egyptians of old, they still believed in
reincarnation, I caused them to accompany me to the summit of the great
pyramid. There is a monument, that served as a castle when the city of
the holy men, the Itzaes, was at the height of its splendor. Every anta,
every pillar and column of this edifice is sculptured with portraits of
warriors and noblemen. Among these many with long beards, whose types
recall vividly to the mind the features of the Afghans.

On one of the antae, at the entrance on the north side, is the portrait
of a warrior wearing a long, straight, pointed beard. The face, like
that of all the personages represented in the bas-reliefs, is in
profile. I placed my head against the stone so as to present the same
position of my face as that of UXAN, and called the attention of my
Indians to the similarity of his and my own featur