And so the reader has wandered with us round two square miles of woodland, and glanced at the wonders of a city which in the days of its greatness numbered its citizens by scores of thousands; a city which architecturally, though possibly not culturally, remains the greatest monument of Central American civilisation. FOOTNOTES: [2] _Vara_--a linear measure used in Spanish America, equal to thirty-three English inches. [3] _Chaces_--an old-time form of spelling "chases." CHAPTER VII VALLADOLID AND AFTER There are two kinds of brigands in Yucatan. There is the honest fellow who cuts your throat without apology or waits behind a tree and puts a bullet into your back at a ten-yard range; and there is the oily-tongued "_con permiso_" (detestable phrase! ever on Yucatecan lips) rascal who, permission or not, will see to it that your last centavo is his, if he can manage it. At Valladolid, whither we went from Chichen, we made our first serious acquaintance with the latter. One or two pleasant little episodes had occurred at Merida, but they were only in the nature of dress rehearsals. Valladolid--railhead, frontier-town--is the back of beyond in Yucatan. To-day it is the most important township on the border-line dividing the enslaved Indians from those few thousands who are still maintaining their independence against the criminal-recruited forces of Diaz. In the revolt of 1847 and in all the lesser Indian risings it has been the jumping-off ground for the rebels. It is a long dirty street of shabby houses, ending in a weed-choked down-on-its-luck sort of plaza, at one side of which is a huge gaunt stuccoed church surrounded by tumbling three-foot walls. The whole place has a shamefaced, seen-better-days kind of air; and if it is indeed true that it has claims to be reckoned a health resort, one feels, as did the martyr to gout, when recommended to a very dull town for its baths, that "one prefers the gout." It was on the 28th of May, 1543, that Montejo founded the town on the sight of the Indian settlement of Chanac-há. This native name means "large water," in reference to a great lagoon of sweet water on the northward. It was the fertility of the country around due to this swamp (for it was nothing else) which had attracted the Spaniards. But this in turn betrayed them, for, ere a year had elapsed, the place had proved so malarious that it was determined to move the town to the neighbouring Indian pueblo of Zaci. There on the 24th of March, 1544, the Valladolid of to-day was founded, its plaza being on the site of a huge Mayan temple built on a lofty pyramid. Not a stone or trace of the Indian work now remains, but tradition relates that in the temple was an idol of pottery, regarded as of great sanctity and to which the Indians for miles round made pilgrimages for adoration.