f February we returned to Nohcacab. We had sent
Albino before to make all our necessary arrangements, and on the
fifteenth we took our final leave of this village. We had no regret; on
the contrary, it was pleasant to think that we should not return to it.
Our luggage was again reduced to the smallest possible compass:
hammocks, a few changes of clothes, and Daguerreotype apparatus, all
the rest being forwarded to meet us at Peto. The chief of our Indian
carriers was a sexton, who had served out his time, an old neighbour in
the convent, whom we had never seen sober, and who was this morning
particularly the reverse.

[Engraving 18: Building at Sacbey]

To understand our route it will be necessary for the reader to consult
the map. On setting out our direction was again south, and again our
road was over the sepulchres of cities. At the distance of two miles we
saw "old walls" on an eminence at the right; a little farther three
ruined buildings on the same side of the road; and beyond these we came
to the ruins of Sacbey. These consist of three buildings, irregularly
disposed, one of which is represented in the engraving opposite. It
faces the south, measures fifty-three feet front by twelve feet six
inches deep, and has three small doorways. Another, a little farther
south, is about the size of the former, and has three apartments, with
two columns in the centre doorway. The third is so ruined that its plan
could not be made out.

Near as they were to the village, the padrecito had never seen them.
They stand about a hundred feet from the path, but so completely buried
among the trees, that, though I had visited them before under the
guidance of an Indian, I passed now without observing them.

A short distance beyond is one of the most interesting monuments of
antiquity in Yucatan. It is a broken platform or roadway of stone,
about eight feet wide and eight or ten inches high, crossing the road,
and running off into the woods on both sides I have before referred to
it as called by the Indians Sacbey, which means, in the Maya language,
a paved way of pure white stone. The Indians say it traversed the
Country from Kabah to Uxmal; and that on it couriers travelled, bearing
letters to and from the lords of those cities, written on leaves or the
bark of trees. It was the only instance in which we had found among the
Indians anything like a tradition, and the universality of this legend
was illustrated by the circumstanc