promise. On
first emerging we found about the door of the casa real a crowd of
loungers, of that mixed race who might trace their ancestry to the
subjects of Tutul Xiu and the conquerors, possessing all the bad
qualities of both, and but few of the good traits of either. Some of
them were intoxicated, and there were many half-grown, impudent boys,
who kept close to us, watching every movement, and turning aside to
laugh when they could do so unobserved.

We set out to look at the ruins, and the crowd followed at our heels.
At the end of a street leading to the well we saw a long building,
pierced in the middle by the street, and part still standing on each
side. We saw at a glance that it was not the work of the antiguos, but
had been erected by the Spaniards since the conquest, and yet we were
conducted to it as one of the same class with those we had found all
over the country; though we did meet with one intelligent person, who
smiled at the ignorance of the people, and said that it was a palace of
_El Rey_, or the _king_, Montejo. Its true history is perhaps as much
unknown as that of the more ancient buildings. In its tottering front
were interspersed sculptured stones taken from the aboriginal edifices,
and thus, in its own decay, it publishes the sad story that it had
risen upon the ruins of another race.

Near this building, and at the corner of the street, is the well
referred to in the conclusion of my legend of the House of the Dwarf at
Uxmal. "The old woman (the mother of the Dwarf) then died, but at the
Indian village of Mani there is a deep well, from which opens a cave
that leads under ground an immense distance to Merida. In this cave, on
the bank of a stream, under the shade of a large tree, sits an old
woman, with a serpent by her side, who sells water in small quantities,
not for money, but only for a criatura, or baby, to give the serpent to
eat; and this old woman is the mother of the Dwarf." The entrance to
the well was under a great shelf of overhanging rock, forming the mouth
of a magnificent cavern, wild enough to sustain the legend. The roof
was high, and the villagers had constructed steps, by which, walking
erect, we reached a large pool of water, whence women were filling
their cantaros. At one side was an opening in the rock above, which
should have been, and was intended to be, made directly over the water,
for the purpose of drawing it up in buckets; and as this mistake
occurred in a ca