st attempting to enter it the rush of wind was so strong that it
made us fall back gasping for breath, confirming the accounts we had
heard in Nohcacab. Our Indians had for torches long strips of the
castor-oil plant, which the wind only ignited more thoroughly, and with
these they led the way. It was one of the marvels told us of this
place, that it was impossible to enter after twelve o'clock. This hour
was already past; we had not made the preparations which were said to
be necessary, and, without knowing how far we should be able to
continue, we followed our guides, other Indians coming after us with
coils of rope.

The entrance was about three feet high and four or five wide. It was so
low that we were obliged to crawl on our hands and feet, and descended
at an angle of about fifteen degrees in a northerly direction. The
wind, collecting in the recesses of the cave, rushed through this
passage with such force that we could scarcely breathe; and as we all
had in us the seeds of fever and ague, we very much doubted the
propriety of going on, but curiosity was stronger than discretion, and
we proceeded. In the floor of the passage was a single track, worn two
or three inches deep by long-continued treading of feet, and the roof
was incrusted with a coat of smoke from the flaring torches. The labour
of crawling through this passage with the body bent, and against the
rush of cold air, made a rather severe beginning, and, probably, if we
had undertaken the enterprise alone we should have turned back.

At the distance of a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet the passage
enlarged to an irregular cavern, forty or fifty feet wide and ten or
fifteen high. We no longer felt the rush of cold wind, and the
temperature was sensibly warmer. The sides and roof were of rough,
broken stone, and through the centre ran the same worn path. From this
passage others branched off to the right and left, and in passing along
it, at one place the Indians held their torches down to a block of
sculptured stone. We had, of course, already satisfied ourselves that
the cave or passage, whatever it might lead to, was the work of nature,
and had given up all expectation of seeing the great monuments of art
which had been described to us; but the sight of this block encouraged
us with the hope that the accounts might have some foundation. Very
soon, however, our hopes on this head were materially abated, if not
destroyed, by reaching what the Ind