Treasure Seekers: Code of the Maya Kings Page #2

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savages never carved these stones,

architecture, sculpture and painting,

all the arts which embellish life,

had flourished

in this overgrown forest,

and yet none knew that

such things had been,

or could tell of

their past existence.

He's the first who is

really able to say,

Look at these stone figures;

these must be portraits of

their kings and queens.

And he uses the word queen

which is really quite astonishing,

in seeing men and women in the

monuments, for 100 years later,

all the men and women that Stephens

saw will have been reduced

by 20th century archeologists to

a group of anonymous calendar priests.

Stephens has this kind of Yankee

can-do observation.

The best part of many of

Stephens' insights is that

they prove to be absolutely true.

Yet Stephens was deeply puzzled

by the mystery at the heart of Copan.

Who could have built

this extraordinary city?

The local Indians didn't seem to know.

Stephens needed their help

to explore the ruins,

but the owner of the land interfered.

Finally, it seemed that the only

solution was to buy Copan.

So the lawyer put on

his diplomatic coat,

and went to the village to negotiate.

You are perhaps curious to know

how old ruins sell in Central America.

I paid $50 for Copan.

There was never any difficulty

about price.

I offered that sum, for which

Don Jose Maria thought me only a fool.

If I had offered more,

he would probably have considered me

something worse.

Ownership settled, the team set about

surveying the ruined city,

measuring and mapping its buildings.

Catherwood is a remarkable

character as well.

I wish we knew more about him.

One gains some sense of the

Stephens personality,

just from the written word.

The Catherwood personality

doesn't emerge much.

Stephens treats him very formally,

and he appears as Mr. Catherwood.

At first Mr. Catherwood found it

almost impossible to draw the monuments.

Their tropical luxuriance defied

his restrained British hand.

Stephens mentions coming upon him

in the woods one day.

Catherwood is standing in front of

a big upright monument.

It is a statute of one of the Copan

rulers, and all intricately carved.

Catherwood's standing there almost

obscured by a pile of crumpled paper,

which represents the output so far

that day of unsuccessful attempts

to draw this thing.

Fortunately, Catherwood had

brought along a camera lucida a box

with a prism inside which allowed him

to trace a reflected image.

To please the perfectionist

Mr. Catherwood,

every detail had to be correct.

With the coming of Spring,

they were ready to begin

the search for the next great goal,

Palenque.

The territory to the north,

through the Sierra Madras Mountains,

was wild and uncharted.

As one local said, the road to

Palenque were only for birds.

Snakes and clouds of mosquitoes

dogged their steps.

To Stephens the worst part was

the local custom of carry a visitor up

the steepest trail on a chair,

strapped to the back of an Indian.

I rose and fell with every breath,

felt his body trembling under me,

and his knees seemed giving way.

The slightest irregular movement on my

part may bring us both down together.

I would have given him a release

for the rest of the journey

to be off his back.

On and on they traveled.

It took more than a month

to reach the fabled ruins

that had first inspired their journey.

Palenque seemed to hang on

the edge of the mountains.

It's graceful buildings dominating

the plain below.

Wherever we moved,

we saw the evidence of their tastes,

their skills in arts,

their wealth and power.

In the midst of desolation and ruin,

we looked back to the past,

cleared away the gloomy forest

and fancied every building perfect,

lofty and imposing.

Palenque's architecture

was different from Copan's,

but Stephens noticed many similarities,

particularly the mysterious writings.

Examining it carefully,

he reached a remarkable conclusion:

There is room for the belief that

the whole of this country

was once occupied by the same race,

speaking the same language,

or at least having the same

written characters.

The Indians Stephens met

spoke many languages

and were as mystified

by the ruins as he was.

Yet, intuitively, Stephens seemed

to sense a link between them.

Stephens, I think, is the first person

who can make the connection

between the Indians that he sees

and meets and the ancient ruins.

Whereas other people want to say,

oh, these pathetic peasants,

these miserable Indians,

they could never have built this.

We must look for some

alternative solution

to where these things

would have come from.

He believes that here

is complete continuity.

And that, I think, is one of the most

radical ideas to come out of his book.

At night, Stephens and Catherwood

slept in the imposing ruin

they called The Palace.

The rainy season had begun,

and the mosquitoes,

venomous during the day,

were even worse at night.

Catherwood was already

racked with malaria,

but somehow they kept on working,

for 22 days and sleepless nights,

bewitched by the beauty of Palenque.

Exhausted, they pushed on,

further north and east to the Yucatan,

but Catherwood was too ill

to continue.

Vowing to return,

they headed home to New York.

In 10 months the two explorers

had accomplished the impossible.

They had rediscovered an ancient

American civilization grander

than anyone had ever dreamed.

Now they were ready to

astound the world with its story.

Stephens's books was incredible popular

when it appeared in the summer of 1841,

Incidents of Travel

in Central America,

Chiapas, and Yucatan.

Harper and Brothers had printed up

a goodly print run,

and it sold out pretty quickly.

Stephens writes a real page-turner.

It is such a personal view,

and it becomes one of the great

bestsellers of the entire 19th century.

It goes through dozens of editions.

And there is an enormous American

desire to know more about

this part of the world.

They were lionized

after the publication.

They were quite the thing

in New York.

It was reviewed everywhere.

Just an amazing publication epic,

so the trip was a success

and they planned to go again.

Seventeen month after they'd left Mexico,

Stephens and Catherwood

were back in the Yucatan,

exploring the city of Uxmal.

On this second journey,

they concentrated their efforts

on this one region of Mexico.

Inching their way through the jungle,

they discovered many ruined cities

entirely unknown, with names

like Coba, Labna, and Sayil.

Stephens felt they were

racing against time.

Everywhere they went, they found

ruins collapsing into piles of rubble.

Catherwood even learned how to sketch

from his mule to save time.

At Uxmal, the artist drew the face of

a god on the side of a pyramid.

Years later, it was destroyed.

Catherwood's illustration is

our only record of it.

They performed the greatest service,

perhaps, in freezing in time

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