ening
had a levee of visiters. The sensation we had created in the village
had gone on increasing, and the Indians were really indisposed to work
for us at all. The arrival of a stranger even from Merida or Campeachy
was an extraordinary event, and no Ingleses had ever been seen there
before. The circumstance that we had come to work among the ruins was
wonderful, incomprehensible. Within the memory of the oldest Indians
these remains had never been disturbed. The account of the digging up
of the bones in San Francisco had reached them, and they had much
conversation with each other and with the padrecito about us. It was a
strange thing, they said, that men with strange faces, and a language
they could not understand, had come among them to disinter their ruined
cities; and, simple as their ancestors when the Spaniards first came
among them, they said that the end of the world was nigh.

It was late the next day when we reached the ruins. We could not set
out before the Indians, for they might disappoint us altogether, and we
could do nothing until they came, but, once on the ground, we soon had
them at work. On both sides we watched each other closely, though from
somewhat different motives: they from utter inability to comprehend our
plans and purposes, and we from the fear that we should get no work out
of them. If one of us spoke they all stopped to listen; if we moved,
they stopped to gaze upon us. Mr. Catherwood's drawing materials,
tripod, sextant, and compass were very suspicious, and occasionally
Doctor Cabot filled up the measure of their astonishment by bringing
down a bird as it flew through the air. By the time they were fairly
broken in to know what they had to do, it was necessary to return to
the village.

The same labour was repeated the next day with a new set of men; but,
by continual supervision and urging, we managed to get considerable
work done. Albino was a valuable auxiliary; indeed, without him I could
hardly have got on at all. We had not fairly discovered his
intelligence until we left Uxmal. There all had a beaten track to move
in, but on the road little things were constantly occurring in which he
showed an ingenuity and a fertility of resource that saved us from many
annoyances. He had been a soldier, and at the siege of Campeachy had
received a sabre-cut in a fleshy part of the body, which rather
intimated that he was moving in an opposite direction when the sabre
overtook him. Having