The American Egypt Part 24

The woods of Yucatan are full of acacias of many species, among them the logwood (_Haematoxylon campechianum_). Mahogany is found and is especially common in the south, where it is much used by the Indians for canoes, the whole trunk being hollowed out. The leafiest tree in the country is the ceiba (_Bombax ceiba_), called by the Mayans _yaxche_ or _yastse_. This n.o.ble tree often attains a considerable height, gives an extraordinary shade, and has ever been held as sacred by the Mayans. It figures in their mythology. Their ancestors believed that there were seven heavens, each having a hole in the centre and each immediately above the other. A ceiba was believed to stand in the centre of the earth, and its branches grew through the successive holes in the seven heavens until the leaves reached the highest. By the branches of the tree the dead climbed through the series of heavens until they reached the utmost Mayan paradise. There is a tradition that a ceiba grew in Valladolid. It was cut down but sprouted again, having this time four boughs each directed to a cardinal point. A hawk had its home on the highest branch, and the bird was considered to be the spirit of the tree, its cry of "_suki, suki_," it is said, having given the ancient Indian town Zaci, on the site of which Valladolid was built, its name.

There is another tree which rivals the ceiba in shadiness, but this you only see on the haciendas which have been long in cultivation. It is a laurel introduced into the Peninsula from Cuba some forty years ago by a Spaniard named Cervera. His grandson, appropriately enough, showed us at Yaxche near Merida the finest examples we saw, laurels so large and leafy as to rival in size and shade our forest beech. They were probably the Portugal Laurel (_Cerasus lusitanica_ or _Ficus laurifolia_).

A fairly large tree is the mamey (_Luc.u.ma mammosa_), belonging to the same family as the sapota, and bearing a fruit almost rivalling that of the latter in popularity among the Indians. It is egg-shaped, with a rough brown skin, and inside is a pinky pulp tasting like quince marmalade with a distinct flavour of almond-paste about it. By a beneficent dispensation of Providence in a country where gra.s.s cannot grow, there does grow a tree, the ramon (_Alicastrum Brownei_), called by the Mayans _os_, upon which Yucatecan horses thrive. It is certainly very comforting when you camp for the night in the forest to be able to send the Indians to cut an armful of the branches thus generously provided by Nature's baiting stable, and to hear your cattle contentedly munching it while you sup. The ramon grows fifty to sixty feet high and has an abundance of evergreen leaves which form the fodder. The fruit of the ramon is eaten boiled either alone or mixed with honey or Indian corn, and the milky juice is used medicinally in cases of asthma. Tree-palms grow everywhere in the woods, some of them reaching eighty feet. The more common kinds, notably the _Sabal mexicana_, called by the Mayans _x?aan_, are used to thatch the Indian huts. There are cocoanut palms in plenty, particularly on the islands.

From the _Lignum vitae_ the Indians make bows. From a small tree (_Pretium heptaphyllum_) the ancient Mayans obtained the incense used in their temples which they called _pom_ and which the Mexicans call _copal_.

In fruit trees Yucatan is fairly rich. She has the sweet and sour orange in plenty and the lemon and lime, the latter of which often grows wild in the woods. Bananas and plantains are everywhere. A small variety of the former, the banana-apple (_Musa paradisiaca_), has a flavour finer than the Canary banana. Then there is the _Anona squamosa_ or custard-apple, the _Anona muricata_ or guanabana, the aguacate, alligator pear (_Persea gratissima_), the caumita and the papay (_Carica papaya_), called by the Mayans _put_, of which the fruit is pear-shaped, about a foot long, of an orange-salmon colour and deliciously juicy. The finest pineapples in the whole of the Mexican Republic are said to be those grown in Cozumel, and the cultivation of cocoa, which grows wild throughout Yucatan, is being seriously taken up. There are one or two types of plums cultivated by the Mayans, and figs, tamarinds and mangoes are grown. _Camote_, a kind of sweet potato, and tomatoes are produced, usually in the milpas with the maize. Tobacco, sugar-cane, and cotton are agricultural products to which increasing attention is being given. Many kinds of gourds are grown by the Mayans. Chief among these is the calabash tree (_Crescentia cujete_), the gourd of which is universally used in Yucatan in its entirety as a drinking-bottle--the Indians carrying them slung over their backs full of water--and halved as drinking-cups or dippers, and is often elaborately carved or painted.

The Spanish name for these drinking-gourds is _jicaras_, the Mayans calling them _luts_.

The flowers of Yucatan are disappointing. They suffer, as do the larger plants, from the dryness of the soil, due to the fact that, heavy as the rains are when they come, they rapidly drain away through the porous limestone. In the gardens of cities and villages you see roses, the gorgeous scarlet trumpet-shaped tulipans, magnolias, vari-coloured irises, clematis and other bright-tinted creepers, red and yellow foxglove-like flowers, and over all and everywhere convolvuluses, white, purple, and blue. Some of these latter are cultivated by the Mayans in the fields, as for instance a small white one which they call _x?taventun_, from the honey collected from which the Indians distil an alcoholic drink which has a soft aromatic smell of the flower, and the intoxicating effect of which (it is enough to make the mouth of the dipsomaniac water) lasts for three days and leaves no headache behind it!

The wild flowers are for the most part small. Amid the ruined cities you almost always find quant.i.ties of the small yellow flower, called by the Mayans _x?canlol_, of the _Tecoma stans_, a shrubby climber. The woodland paths everywhere are bright with the jasmine-like amapola; while the roadsides are made more picturesque by a climber bearing white sweet-smelling flowers. At Chichen there was much _Salvia coccinea_, a small brilliant scarlet-flowered shrub called by the natives _zic x?in_. Here again we saw _Heliotropium parviflorum_, which the Indians call _xnaheax_. In the woods you see many orchids growing like mistletoe on the trees. Among the genera met with, the _Oncidium_ and _Epidendrum_ are the commonest, and of these the species _Schomburgkia tibicina_ and the _Epidendrum bicoruntum_ are those oftenest found. We saw very few wild ferns. Here and there are beautiful flowering cactuses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: YUCATAN BY THE AUTHORS]