THE OMATTA SUNDAY BEE: NOVEMBER 17, 1012.
Old City Discovered in Jungle,!
(Copyright, 1012. by Frank a. Carpenter )
4 AMATKs, Quikte mala.-Have
IT I you ever heard of Qulra
I JL I Seven hundred years before
.oiummis discovered America,
when our ancestors of north
ern Kurono a H... i -...
Hn with their fingers
on straw, tt w ,hB mosl cIvlllleJ J
mJMWC"? I'Phere. It had it,
Tel'' U men wh ""ler.
stood fine masonry and artists who did
wonderful carving, it was thA capital of
a great population, which filled the vallev
u.f a.m ""B- valij. which In
its rertlllty Is equal to that of the Nile,
the Ganges, the Amaion or the Congo.
The Valley of (he Motmrun.
Today thl valley Is covered wtth Jun
Elc Palm trees of lM varieties wave
their fanlike leaves over It. and
lianas, from the thickness of your finger
to that of your leg. bind the great trees
together. Mixed wtth the palms are ma-
uoi,unies and other hardwoods, so that
tho vegetation Is almost Impenetrable.
The undergrowth Is dense and It Is a
good woodsman who can cut his way for
two miles through -the Jungle Inside of
twelve hours. Tho soli and climate are
such that the clearing of today becomes
ft forest within a few years and plant will
shoot up to from a doien to twenty feet
In tho course of six months.
At the same time the decay of the vege
tation Is rapid. Cut It down an'd It rots
to quickly that within a few months the
smaller trees havo disappeared, and, by
tho aid of the vast armies of ants, the
larger ones last but a few years.' For
this rca-ion all of the woodwork of that
ancient civilization has long slnco passed
away. The stonework remains, and
within the last thirty or forty months
American archeologlsts have been dig
ging It out of tho Jungle and trying to
discover the character of the people who
lived here 1.000 and more years ago.
What they have found and what they
are doing 1 shall tell you further on In
this letter.
Where the Tin tun Lie.
But first let me give the location. I
doubt whether many of you have ever
heard of tho Motagua river and of this
Bl eat .Garden of Eden known as the Mo
tagua valley. It was well fitted for the
home of a great people. If you remem
ber your history you will find that the
first civilizations have sprung up In val
leys. The soil there Is rich and the river
mokes It easy to carry tho products from
one place to another. Tho fight for food
la not hard, and the people have leisure
to cultivate the gentler arts. Other peo
ples come to buy of their abundance.
Commerce follows and in time civiliza
tion grows. So the civilization of Egypt
sprang up in the valley of the Nile; so
that of Babylon and Nineveh In tho delta
of the Euphrates, and so that of old
India along the banks of the Ganges.
It was somewhat the same In Central
America. The continent here consists of
b backbone of mountains, with a narrow
ttrlp of lowlands along the coast. The
Motagua river flows out of the moun
tains In Guatemala, 'and It has a valley
about five miles wide running from this
backbone to the sea. The mountains are
so situated that they catch the water
laden winds of the Caribbean and give It
n heavy rainfall. At the same time they
shelter It from the wind and make It a
tropical paradise.
TJie Home of the Mayans.
This paradise was the. Garden of. Eden
of this nation 1,000 years ago. Its
people' were the Mayans. They conquered
the jungle and lived here no one knows
how long, until In time they were con
quered by the wilder tribes, and the
jungle again ca ne into Its own. !
The exact dat.J of these events are un-
Known. It was probably 1,000 years ago
when the Jungle again resumed Its sway,
hnd from then until now nature has
reigned supreme: It Is only during the
last century that anyone has known that
a civilization ever existed here. And It is
only now, when a railroad has been cut j
through to get to the highlands and when
the American fruit men have begun to cut
down the trees and make their banana
plantations, that any Idea of the extent
of tha't civilization has come to be known.
In building the railroad, the grades cut
through a circular Indian mound as high
as a four-story house, and for forty-five
miles along the hills on one side of the
valley were found graves with walls made
of smooth round stones, brought from the
neeks and rivers. On the other side of
tho Motagua mounds of greater height
were discovered, and In them pieces of
pottery, whistles of clay and the sfone
utensils of various kinds. 'mere were
il.o pieces of Jade and obsidian.
It Is now known that the ruins arc
scattered over an area of about 300,00)
acres, and that they Include not only
these grave mounds, but mighty monu
ments and the remains of a great city.
The City of Qnlrlwua.
Our first knowledge of this city came
jtiout seventy years ago, when the Ste
phens expedition went through Central
America, and a man named Catherwood
(nw some of tho ruins. Wc learned more
about it In 1883, when Alfred, P. Mauds
ley made his way througli this region
and phqtographed some of the monu
ments. The real work of excavation, however,
was begun just about two years ago,
when the St. Iuls Society of the Ar
theological Institute decided to do some
woik In Gautemala, and at the Instance
j
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through The Bee'i Real Es
tate asd Classified Colusa as.
of Victor M. Cutter, manager of the1
Gautemala division of the United Fruit
company, came to Qulr.'gua and began
their work here. The United Fruit com
pany has aided them In their work, grant
ing them seventy-flvo acres of land,
which contained the most important porta
of the ruined city, and forming what is
to be known as Qulrigua park.
It Is In that tract that the excavations.
are now going on. 'They are under the
charge of Dr. Edgar L. Hewitt and Prof,
Sylvanus G. Morley, who have gangs of
natives at work. They are now uncover
ing what was once the great temple city
of the Mayan, and' they have already
cleared away the junglo over a great part
of the tract. They have cut down ma
hogany and other trees, and are now
digging up monuments 'so gigantic that
they remind one of the mighty statues of
the upper Nile.
Thirteen Mighty Monuments.
Before I describe the city Itself, let me
tell you something about these mighty
monuments. There are thirteen of them
which have been already uncovered, al-
uiougn some are sun Bunnell creep in ine
earth. These are gigantic monoliths, of
sandstone, solid blocks from twenty to
thirty feet high, some of which must
weigh many tons. These great figures
stand right In the jungle. One, for In
stance, Is supposed to be thirty-six feet'
In length. It rises twenty feot above the
ground, and It Is said to extend at least
twelve feet below It. It leans like the
Tower of Pisa, but It was probably
straight when It was erected.
Another monument Is twenty-four feet
In height and four feet In diameter, and
a third, mammoth stone, which I photo
graphed, was thirty-three feet In circum
ference. All of these monument") are
covered with carvings, and the arche
ologlsts have translated some of the
writings upon them. They believe them
to have been made along about C00 years
after Christ, and In that case they would
be over 1,200 years old.
It rciiunt riict Iiik n L'lvlllzntloii.
Tt Is difficult to reconstruct a civiliza
tion when one has nothing but stones to
tell the story. So far the archeologlsts
have not gotten much beyond tho trans
lation of the dates, and they are not
absolutely sure of them. They bellove the
monuments to be largely religious, and
that tho city of Qulrigua was a temple
city and the place of worship of many
people.
I can only give you the note which I
have made of the monuments as they
stood before me. What they mean, you
must figure out for yourself. Here, for
Instance, Is a great stone column which
rises eight feet out of the earth and ex
tends many feet below the surface. It
is about ten teet wide and the whole Is
covered with carving. On one side Is u
woman's figure. 1 take my tape measure
and find that the face Is about a foot
thick. It Is evidently that of a queen,
for the head has a crown, and In the
lady's ears are plugs, which remind me
of tho women of Burma, who wear greut
plugs In their ears. f
The lady who sat as a model for this
engraving may have been a Mayan
princess, and she was probably vain.
Many ear plugs made of jade have been
found among the rulnr. This monument
Is as big as the caboose of a freight
train. It Is of sandstone, and notwith
standing Its 1.3C0 years of life, is still
beautiful.
But let us go on through the Jungle.
We walk a few rods along the path
that has been cut and come to a stono
which has a woman's face on one side
and that of a monkey on thp other.
This In like some of the East Indian
monuments, It makes' one wonder
whether- the ancestors of these people
did not come from Asia.
Still farther on Is the leading monu
ment of which 1 have spoken. It Is
as high as a two-story house, nnd has
a gigantic head rawed out near tho
top. The face Is of wonderful work
manship, and It seems as though the
thing might talk. The eyes are fat and
bulgy, the noso Is that of a Jew. thn
forehead Is low, and the beard, which
hides the chin, is like that which one
sees on the statues of the Egyptian
kings. The great ears on each side
of tho face are half hidden by plugp
of Jade, and thp features remind us of
thpse of the Assyrians, or Egyptians.
The Original Ilnll Hnoir,
Stranger than all these, however. Is
the monument which has been recently
exhumed. It is a great stone upon
which, In alto-relievo. Is carved a great
round face which bears the happy ex
pression so often seen In the cartoons
of Theodore Itoosevelt. The' open
mouth shows great teeth and a joyful
grin Is seen at the corners. The ar
cheologlsts here say that this Is the
Simon-pure origin of the Roosevelt
smile. It proves the antiquity of the
genealogical tree of our former presi
dent, and It may be that when the
cartoons of the man who heads the
luill moose party are exhumed from
tho debris of a thousand years hence
the archeologlsts of tho future may con
nect the two In their long narrative of
past civil Izatloni.
I.Ike (he Chlnear.
Other monuments moke me think of the
Tartars. . They have Tartar features, and
they look not unlike tho giants In stone
which guard the Ming tombs at Nanking
and near the- Nanko pass through the
great wall of China. In connection with
this Is tho evident deification of the
turtle, which has always been the Chinese
emblem of longevity, as Is shown by g.
gantlc stone turtles In many parts of
north China. One of the biggest monu
ments I have seen here outside the great
shafts Is a turtle which weighs about
twenty tons and Is at least eight feet In
height. It Is entirely "covered with hiero
glyphics and Is one great mass of carv
Inf. linn- the Monument Were llnllt.
These monuments which surround the
ancient city of Qulrigua are said to be
the largest of their kind upon the Ameri
can continent, and the wonder Is how the
people of those ancient times could have
lifted such enormous weights. AVe have
no record that the' had beasts of burden,
and machinery was as yet unlnvented.
They probably used levers, pulleys and
cables and rolled the stones into place
upon Inclined planes. There are evidences
that the great stones were brought down
upon rafts at tho time of the floods, and
the remains of an ancient canal is shown.
Tlie stone Itself Is such that It hardens
with age. being comparatively soft when
It comes from the quarry, and the carv
ing may "have been done with stone axes
and stone chisels, aided by knives of ob
sidian. In (lulrlcun City.
So nvuch for the monuments about Qulr
igua. Now let us look at the main part of
the city. I found the men working there
when I visited It yesterday. They were
laboring in the heart of the Jungle. Palms
and mahogany trees, some of the latter
lin feet high, shaded them, and the trunks
of great trees lay among the debris of
the temple mounds which they were cut
ting out. They have alreudy cleaied.u
space of six or eight acres which Is filled
with great mounds under Which lie some
mighty temples of the past. The mounds
are twenty or thirty feet high, and you
cun see the stones of temples showing
out. On the tops of some of them giew
trees many feet thick and In mound No,
1 I saw negroes cutting out tho stumps
of mahogany trees. They were taking
away the earth In one corner and there
under the supervision of Mr. Morley the
ancient walls were being relald. The tem
ple on which he was working was about
thirty feet wide ami 100 feet long. The
stones taken out were covered with carv
ings and upon them were the faces of
men and women. There were also glyphs
or characters cut In the stone.
The stones I first saw were a part of n
frieze and Mr. Morley showtd me that
the wall of the temple was nine feet
thick, and that the whole of the outside
Is covered with caning. One door has
been oxcavattd and the slabs over this
are seven feet long. I saw one piece or
sandHtiiiie which luid a hole cut through
It, and It seemed to mo as though it
might have been the top of a letter bov.
The (iriuiil llnxat
From this temple I went to others. ;
climbing up the steps until I could look j
down on the great court in which the
mounds of temples lay. The wholo medu
me think of the stadium at Athens; a-id
I can see that when the earth Is nl
clpared away the site will bo very Im- 1
poxlng. Much of the 'buildings has al-'
ready been uncovered, and you can walk
about through the ancient structures and
wonder what kind, of people put them1
into shaie.
There Is no doubt but that the stone a"'
came from some distance. The soil of th
court Is a sandy loam, and there are iv,
rocks of any kind within three miles of
It excepting those in the temples. Th
chlef quarries are three miles away, and
It is believed that the heaviest monu-'
ments were brought here by turning the
course of the Qulrigua river so that It
i an past tho temples. .
The city seems to have been laid with
a grand plazai or court, with a smaller
court adjoining for the temples or main
buildings. The main buildings surround
a court. They had terraced walls from
thirty to sixty feet high, and In some of
them are rooms with walls of square
stones and doorways arched with flat
stones. To the north of the plaza. Is a
pyramid, which Is ISO feet square at the
bate and forty feet high. Near this
pyramid Is a round, carved stone so big
that It would take forty horses to haul If
It was put upon a wagon. This stone Is
covered with carvings, and among them
Is that of a woman, elaborately dressed,
Nearby lies another great stonet which
looks like the head of a tiger, and all
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Atthesignof
THE CROWN
UP WE GQLDIH STAIRS
J -fit..
about are blocks of carved stone of one
kind or other.
All about the excavated city ) an Im
mense banana plantation. The seventy
flvo acres of park contain some Jungle,
but the'frult company haa cut down tlui
dense woods surrounding this, and bana
nas are now growing among the logs and
In the ashes of the burned vegetation.
Some of tlie trees on thn gTound ar
twenty feet In clrcumfeience, and these
giants of the Jungle show the work that
hm to be done In the clearing.
A part of the park will probably be left
as It is, for It Is as fine a specimen of
tropical Jungle as can be found on the
faco of the globe. I am told that tho
woods contain deer, monkeys, hloths and
ant-caters, and 1 nuw biids of bright
plumage flying about tlie trees. As It Is
now the tulns can be cudly reached by
rallioad, the cty of Qulrigua being only
a mlli and a half from the track and
about sixty miles Inland from I'ucrto
liarrlos on the Caribbean sea.
Word liiml thr Miixii.
And now in closing let me say a word
about tho people who probably buirt this
city and made these wonderful carvings.
They arc practically unknown, although
the work of archeologlsts may In time
result In further knowledge. There are
evidences on the monuments of skulls
and crossbones, showing that they had ,
the same symbol of life and death that
n have and some of tho carvings ae
evidences of the dates I have given, Dr.
Ilewott believes that their civilization
was largely religious, and that the gov
ernment wan a theocratic republic. He
thinks that they lived In houses some
what similar to tho bamboo huts, of tlie
tropics, and that these great temples,
monuments and pyramids were put up
only as a means of worshiping their
gods. Somo of the other archeologlsts
think that the faces on tho monuments
were those of the queens, kings dr priest
esses of that day.
These people are believed to hare be
longed to the Mayans, a race stock which
Included many nations and which lived in
southern Mexico, and In a great part of
Guatemala and Salvador, According tq
the Mayan traditions they came from the
north, and It Is said that It was not long
after the time of Chiin that they mads
their way -south into Mexico, They are
supposed to have been In Yucatan about
COO A. D.. and here In Guatemala a little
laterr The people of Yucatan are said to
be among their descendants, and the
same may be true of some bf the tribes
of Guatemala.
THANK G. CAHPENTEP;,
