Perplexities.--Household Wants.--Indian Mode of boiling Eggs.--Clearings.--A valuable Addition.--Description of the Ruins.--Casa del Gobernador.--Hieroglyphics.--Ornaments over the Doorways.--Ground Plan.--Doorways.--Apartments.--Great Thickness of the back Wall.--A Breach made in the Wall.--Prints of a Red Hand.--Sculptured Beam of Hieroglyphics.--Wooden Lintels.--Loss of Antiquities by the Burning of Mr. Catherwood's Panorama.--Terraces.--A curious Stone.--Circular Mound.--Discovery of a Sculptured Monument.--Square Stone Structure.--Sculptured Heads.--Staircase.--House of the Turtles. Morning brought with it other perplexities. We had no servant, and wanted breakfast, and altogether our prospects were not good. We did not expect to find the hacienda so entirely destitute of persons with whom we could communicate. The mayoral was the only one who spoke a word of Spanish, and he had the business of the hacienda to attend to. He had received special orders from his master to do everything in his power to serve us, but the power of his master had limits. He could not make the Indians, who knew only the Maya, speak Spanish. Besides this, the power of the master was otherwise restricted. In fact, except as regards certain obligations which they owed, the Indians were their own masters, and, what was worse for us, their own mistresses, for one of our greatest wants was a woman to cook, make tortillas, and perform those numerous domestic offices without which no household can go on well. The mayoral had given us no hope of being able to procure one; but in the midst of our anxieties, and while we were preparing breakfast for ourselves, we perceived him coming across the terrace, followed by a train of Indians, and closing the procession was a woman, at that time really a welcome visiter. The mayoral said that the evening before, on his return to the hacienda, he had gone round to all the huts, and proposed to woman after woman, promising liberal pay and good treatment, but they all refused until he came to this one, and with her he had been obliged to stipulate that she should not remain at the ruins in the night, but should return home every evening. This was a great drawback, as we wanted to breakfast early, but we had no choice, and were glad to get her upon her own terms. She was taller than most of the Indian women, and her complexion was somewhat darker. Her dress fitted more closely to her body, and she had more of it. Her character was unimpeached, her bearing would have kept presumption at a distance, and, as an additional safeguard, she had with her a little grandson, named Jose, whose complexion indicated that the descending line of her house had no antipathies to the white race. Her age might be a little over fifty, and her name was Chaipa Chi.