tiges of a stone wall
along the brink. On this side Doctor Cabot had erected a railing for
protection, which the mischievous boys of Piste afterward pulled down;
we tempted them with a reward of two reales apiece for the discovery of
the offenders, but none of them ever accepted the offer. These boys,
by-the-way, with the inhabitants of Piste generally, both men and
women, seemed to consider that the opening of this path was for their
especial benefit, and at first they made it a point to be on the spot
at the same hour with us. Upon one occasion we were so annoyed by the
presence of two ladies of that village, who seemed determined not to go
away, that we were obliged to come to an amicable understanding by
means of a peremptory notice that all persons most give us the benefit
of their absence at that hour; and every day, when the sun was vertical
and scarcely endurable on the surface of the earth, we bathed in this
deep senote.

[Engraving 36: Senote at Chichen]

We returned to the hut well satisfied with our first day at Chichen;
and there was another circumstance which, though painful in itself,
added materially to the spirit with which we commenced our labours at
this place. The danger apprehended from the rainy season was coming to
pass, and under the anticipation of a failure of the next crop, corn
had risen from two reales to a dollar the load. The distress occasioned
in this country by the failure of the corn crop cannot well be
imagined. In 1836 this calamity occurred, and from the same cause that
threatened to produce it now. Along the coast a supply was furnished
from the United States, but it would not bear the expense of
transportation into the interior, and in this region corn rose to four
dollars a load, which put the staff of life completely beyond the reach
of the Indians. Famine ensued, and the poor Indians died of starvation.
At the time of our arrival the criados, or servants, of the hacienda,
always improvident, had consumed their small stock, and, with no hope
from their milpas, with the permission of the master were about moving
away to regions where the pressure would be less severe. Our arrival,
as the major domo told us, arrested this movement; instead of our being
obliged to hunt them up, the poor Indians crowded round the door of our
hut, begging employment, and scrambling for the reales which Albino
distributed among them; but all the relief we could afford them was of
short duration, and