Deep in the thickest bush, the trees around shrouding them with a curtain of speckled green, stood a group of buildings upon which we were probably the first white men to look, as there is no record of a Spanish landing in Cancun. At such a moment the most matter-of-fact being must yield to a certain feeling of solemnity. You are gripped by the romance of the quest after a vanished civilisation. But in Cancun at least there are winged fiends who serve as a very practical reminder that you cannot afford to day-dream but must get to work at once. While our men lit a palm-leaf fire to keep the mosquitoes at bay, we cut through the bush to see how many buildings there were and where to begin. There were four, and the first we tackled was an oblong building, 26 feet by 10, erected on a platform built up some 4 feet from the ground-level, making a terrace all round varying in width from 12 to 16 feet. On the west were two small doorways, and on the east three. These were so small that it was necessary to crawl through. Digging down, however, we found under a foot of earth the true flooring. This was a cement of lime and sand, and was two and a half inches thick over the entire floor. The interior of the building was in the same style as those of the mainland, having what is known as the Mayan arch, running up almost to a point, the rough corners of the stones standing out like steps inverted, a slab being laid across the two walls, thus making a narrow ceiling. The outside walls were built up to the same level as the pointed roof, and the space between was filled with rubble, making a flat roof now entirely overgrown with cactus and trees. Above the centre door was a gap where the wall had fallen and where once stood what must have been more than a life-sized figure. On the platform below we found the head and shoulders, a fine piece of carving: legs, body and arms were smashed almost past recognition, and the feathered headdress had entirely disappeared. The head and bust was so heavy that it took the four of us to carry it a few yards and set it against the pyramidal mound near by where we could photograph it, and where it could be for the future out of the line of fire of falling stone.