rred
no risk in introducing to it a stranger. A light cloud of almost
imperceptible dust, ascribed to the dripping of the waters of the rainy
season, or perhaps made visible by the rays of the midday sun, rested
on the surface, but underneath were the same crystal fluid and the same
clear bottom. Very soon we were in the water, and before we came out we
resolved to postpone our journey till the next day, for the sake of an
evening bath.

[Engraving 7: A Senote]

As the reader is now on ground which I trust he has travelled before, I
shall merely state that the next day we rode on to the hacienda of San
Jose, where we stopped to make some preparations, and on the fifteenth,
at eleven o'clock, we reached the hacienda of Uxmal.

It stood in its suit of sombre gray, with cattleyard, large trees, and
tanks, the same as when we left it, but there were no friends of old to
welcome us: the Delmonico major domo had gone to Tobasco, and the other
had been obliged to leave on account of illness. The mayoral remembered
us, but we did not know him; and we determined to pass on and take up
our abode immediately in the ruins. Stopping but a few minutes, to give
directions about the luggage, we mounted again, and in ten minutes,
emerging from the woods, came out upon the open field in which, grand
and lofty as when we saw it before, stood the House of the Dwarf; but
the first glance showed us that a year had made great changes. The
sides of the lofty structure, then bare and naked, were now covered
with high grass, bushes, and weeds, and on the top were bushes and
young trees twenty feet high. The House of the Nuns was almost
smothered, and the whole field was covered with a rank growth of grass
and weeds, over which we could barely look as we rode through. The
foundations, terraces, and tops of the buildings were overgrown, weeds
and vines were rioting and creeping on the facades, and mounds,
terraces, and ruins were a mass of destroying verdure. A strong and
vigorous nature was struggling for mastery over art, wrapping the city
in its suffocating embraces, and burying it from sight. It seemed as if
the grave was closing over a friend, and we had arrived barely in time
to take our farewell.

Amid this mass of desolation, grand and stately as when we left it,
stood the Casa del Gobernador, but with all its terraces covered, and
separated from us by a mass of impenetrable verdure.

On the left of the field was an overgrown milpa,