Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1914 — YUCATAN, the AMERICANEGYPT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

YUCATAN, the AMERICANEGYPT

AGES past, so the Greek historians tells us. there was a continent called Atlantis that was peopled by a highly cultured _ race. Warriors they were and on conquest bent. The Greek gods, fearing the subjugation of their own people, cast about for means to stay the victorious onrush of the Atlantean, and finding &one,' appealed to ox-eyed Juno, who perBuaded Jove to destroy the Atlanteans by sinking Atlantis to the bottom of the sea.

Tradition has it that at the same time another continent rose, like Aphrodite, from the sea, and that some of the Atlantean survivors escaped into this newborn country and there established another empire. How much of truth and how much of romance there is in this is impossible to state, but there is one thing certain, the peninsula of Yucatan is an infant, comparatively speaking, and of neptunic parentage. Its entire area is nothing but limerock (madrepora) containing the shells of living species and that of fossils bridging the pliocene and pleistocene periods, about 12,000 years ago, the traditional dateof the Atlantis disaster. Yucatan a Strange Land. Yucatan from a topographical and geographical point of view is a strange and remarkable land. It is practically an absolute flat and there are no rivers and fio lakes as generally known. The crust of rock covering the peninsula Is very' porous and full of immense subterranean caverns. The abundant rainfall of ages filtered through this crust and filled these caverns, these great masses of water under pressure gradually n pertor&ted the rock and found an outlet To the sea underground. The crust over these subterranean streams in some places, caving, formed pools, nearly all circular and with steep sides and with a depth of water from a few feet to several hundreds, but rarely exceed 200 to 300 feet in diameter: \ The pools —cenotes as they are called there —are not plentiful and not all have potable water. None have really good water. All are heavily charged with the different salts, naturally, and as a matter of necessity each of the large wells was the nucleus of a settlement and which later grew into a city. No metals or any of their chemical compounds or combinations are found on the peninsula, but on the south and where the peninsula connects with the mainland and the geological formation changes, there are large copper deposits, which were known to the “Maya. His smelting furnaces and the scoriae from them can be found today along the banks of the Rio Hondo, the boundary of British Honduras and Mexico. Of soil there is very little. Planters in that country do not buy plowß, but use giant powder to cultivate and plant with: still it seems paradoxical, the whole peninsula is covered with a thick, luxuriant and barely penetrable forest of precious hardwoods, such as mahogany, cedar, rosewood, satinwood, lignum vitae, ebony and hundreds of other beautiful woods. Predominating is the achras sapote, or the chicle gum tree. There are* enough of these to make chewing gum for the whole world. Last, but not least, It is the home of the agave sisalensis. or henequen. which produces the fiber for the American Arheat growers' binder twine and for which he pays the Yucatecan state henequen trust some $50,000,000 a rear. With fruit trees end game, pelt-

ed and winged, the peninsula Is singularly blessed. - ■ “ ■ This is the land of which the Maya made- himself the lord and master when he came from the mystic land of “We-know-not.” At a later period, probably a thousand years before the Spanish conquest, there came to him from across the sea and from the west some mys- • tic wise men, who became his teachers and instructors In the arts and sciences.

The peninsula, away from the highway of nomadic tribes and nations and unknown at that time to the captains of industry, was the home of the dove of peace, the synjbol of Which to the Maya was the quetzal, the jewel of the jewelbirds. The Mayan, not having to keep up an enormous standing army to keep peace or to defend his country from a foreign invasion, not being bothered within by trust, monopolies, isms, schismß or the high cost of living, devoted their time to the mystic and wise men. who evidently found a willing and apt pupil in the Maya, as the result shows. They soon became expert stone cutters, masons, painters and architects. They were excellent astronomers, proof of which is theih calendar, and naturally they must have known the fundamental elements of mathematics. Having passed the Btage of pictographs, they had evolved a system of hieroglyphics from which to the letter was hut a step. And so they prospered, multiplied and built their magnificent and stupendous temples and palaces. But as time passed they became (as it always was and will be with men) divided against each other, with disastrous results.

A few decades before the coming of the Spaniard, one of these internecine wars commenced and did not end until the common danger compelled them to lay aside their petty quarrels and combine against their greater foe, who slew them by the hundred thousands.

Population Decimated. Tradition says that the Mayans numbered about 2,000,000 at the time of the conquest, but scarcely 3,000 full-blooded and free Indians remain today.

Physically they are short and sturdy of body, colored somewhat lighter than the northern Indians, and that they are of Mongolian origin is plainly shown by their skulls. Some writers seek to connect the Maya with the hero god, Itzamma,. who, they say, led the Maya from the east across, or rather through the sea, thus giving the Mayan an Atlantean origin; but a close study of Mayan architecture, myths and tradition rejects that theory and accepts the western immigration of the Maya as the only tenable one. Of all the Indian tribes of the American continent, the Maya was the most highly cultured and civilized. They were the only architects on the continent and the teachers of the Aztec. They understood the art of paper-making from the fiber of the agave sisalensis, kept records and were writers of books and had libraries which, oh, everlasting shame, were ruthlessly burned by their “civilized” conquerors. Not satisfied with this crime against humanity aB a whole, they even blotted from the memory of the surviving Indians their traditions and folklore and reduced a highly moral and civilized people to most abject slaves, to whom the meaning of the term “morality” Is unknown.

SCENE IN YUCATAN