“It’s all right,” he said; “there is no reason why you should look so distressed. My having had the start of you was a mere chance, as it would have been mere chance had it been the other way. You need have no fear on my account, for I am only an amateur, travelling for pleasure. With you the case of course is different. But I do not intend to publish anything. Come, I have had a place got ready; and as for the ruins I make them over to you. You can name the town, claim to have discovered it, in fact do what you please. I shall not interfere with you in any way, and you may even dispense with mentioning my name if you so please.”
I was deeply touched with his kind manner, and I am only too charmed to share with him the glory of having explored this city. We lived and worked together like two brothers, and we parted the best friends in the world.
This town, which I shall call “Lorillard,” in honour of the munificent man who partly defrays the cost of the expedition, rises on the left bank of the Usumacinta in the 17th degree lat. (see Map), in a region hitherto unclassified, between Guatemala, Chiapas, and Tabasco. (We are able to determine approximately its position from the bearings we took along our route.)
It was discovered twelve years ago by Suarez of Tenosiqué, and has been visited at different times by monteros and by Balay de Palisada. It has been called “Phantom city,” from a passage in Stephens’ Journal,[160] in which he reproduces a conversation with the merry “Cura” of Santa Cruz del Quiché, who told of “a great Indian city four days’ journey from Santa Cruz, on the road to Mexico, as being densely populated, and in the same condition as other places of Central America. He had heard of it at Chayul many years before, where he had ascended the Sierra, whence the vast panorama of Yucatan and Tabasco to the sea could easily be distinguished, and that he had seen in the far distance a city occupying an immense space, its white towers shining in the sun.”
[Illustration: MAP TAKEN FROM THE GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY.]
I do not think that this mysterious city, if ever it was in existence, is Lorillard, for its bearings do not agree with those of the American traveller; but there are many others in the forests, and monteros may come upon palaces which will answer the description of the “cura,” who assured Stephens that “the palaces of Santa Cruz del Quiché, which in 1841 were found in an advanced state of dilapidation, were in a perfect state of preservation thirty years before, and that they had reminded him of the buildings of his own country; that at Coban, in the province of Vera Paz, stood an ancient city (Utatlan) as large as Vera Cruz, now deserted, but almost as perfect as when its inhabitants had abandoned it. He had walked in the silent streets, among its colossal buildings, and found its palaces as entire as those at Vera Cruz.”[161]