g,
however, their dilatory manner of doing business, we engaged them to be
on the ground at daylight. In the mean time we got together all the
spare ropes in the village, including one from the noria, and at eight
o'clock the next morning we set out.

For a league we followed the camino real, at which distance we saw a
little opening on the left, where one of our Indians was waiting for
us. Following him by a narrow path just opened, we again found
ourselves among ruins, and soon reached the foot of the high mound
which towered above the plain, itself conspicuous from the House of the
Dwarf at Uxmal, and which is represented in the engraving above. The
ground in this neighbourhood was open, and there were the remains of
several buildings, but all prostrate and in utter ruin.

[Engraving 31: Mound a Xcoch]

The great cerro stands alone, the only one that now rises above the
plain. The sides are all fallen, though in some places the remains of
steps are visible. On the south side, about half way up, there is a
large tree, which facilitates the ascent to the top. The height is
about eighty or ninety feet. One corner of a building is all that is
left; the rest of the top is level and overgrown with grass. The view
commanded an immense wooded plain, and, rising above it, toward the
southeast the great church of Nohcacab, and on the west the ruined
buildings of Uxmal.

Returning in the same direction, we entered a thick grove, in which we
dismounted and tied our horses. It was the finest grove we had seen in
the country, and within it was a great circular cavity or opening in
the earth, twenty or thirty feet deep, with trees and bushes growing
out of the bottom and sides, and rising above the level of the plain.
It was a wild-looking place, and had a fanciful, mysterious, and almost
fearful appearance; for while in the grove all was close and sultry,
and without a breath of air, and every leaf was still, within this
cavity the branches and leaves were violently agitated, as if shaken by
an invisible hand.

This cavity was the entrance to the poso, or well, and its appearance
was wild enough to bear out the wildest accounts we had heard of it. We
descended to the bottom. At one corner was a rude natural opening in a
great mass of limestone rock, low and narrow, through which rushed
constantly a powerful current of wind, agitating the branches and
leaves in the area without. This was the mouth of the well, and on our
fir