Their disappointment was short-lived. Tuloom, after all, was the endgame, their essential final prize. It lay three miles south and the next day they set off down the coastline, walking on white powdered sand and cooling their bare feet in the crystalline waters. The youngest Molas accompanied them as a guide. About halfway, they had to climb a series of steep cliffs. At the top of each, the distant tower, which was called “Castillo,” or castle, came closer to view, a wild, dramatic sight, a stone fortress perched on a cliff looming high above the sea.
Climbing up the last ravine, they headed through thick jungle with old stone walls and ruined buildings barely visible through the trees, and finally they arrived at the foot of a grand staircase leading up to a temple at the top of the Castillo. Scattered trees grew out of the steps and the gloom of the forest hovered over them. Not since Copán, their first ruins, did they feel as engulfed by nature. “We had undertaken our long journey to this place in utter uncertainty as to what we should meet,” Stephens wrote. “Impediments and difficulties accumulated upon us, but already we felt indemnified for all our labor. We were amid the wildest scenery we had yet found in Yucatán.”
They cut their way up the imposing thirty-foot-wide stairway, bordered by massive balustrades, then hauled their luggage up, and took possession of two rooms in the temple. Stephens wrote: “We looked over an immense forest: walking around the molding of the wall, we looked out upon the boundless ocean.” Standing on the ledge behind the temple poised high on the cliff, they stared down into the perfectly clear aquamarine water lapping at the coral sand below.
Present-day photo of the so-called “Castillo,” or castle, at Tulum. (Carlsen)
The “Castillo” as seen from the coast. (Catherwood)
Knotted roots and vines snaked over the building and the men spent the first day clearing away as much vegetation as possible. As the foliage was pulled away, a structure of almost classical simplicity emerged, designed with Grecian symmetry. The façade faced west toward the jungle and the staircase dominated the middle, rising three stories to the square temple at the top. Large enclosed apartments on the second level spread out on each side from the stairway like identical wings, their roofs fallen in, platforms in front. Each wing had its own staircase down to the forest floor and thick columns framed the doorways. At ground level just below the apartments two small temples projected from the base on each side, both with single doorways leading to inner chambers. From the front, the entire structure had the appearance of a perfectly balanced, stepped layer cake. At its back—from out at sea—the blank sloping wall that formed the rear of the main building gave the impression of an impregnable citadel growing directly out of the cliff high above the water.
There was no daguerreotype for Tuloom. This time the images would be captured by Catherwood’s pencils and brushes alone. And hours were spent clearing away enough of the surrounding jungle so that he could stand back with sufficient perspective to do his work. Then Cabot went hunting and Stephens took measurements.
He found a massive wall surrounding the site that was up to 26 feet thick and rose to a height of 16 feet in places. It formed three sides of a giant rectangle enclosing the whole precinct of Tuloom. The fourth side was the open cliff facing the sea. It would have been ideally defensible against enemies. They discovered five narrow gateways through the wall and two stone watchtowers built in the corners. From the beginning of the expedition they had heard of walls protecting the old cities but had only found remnants of them. Here the wall was almost entirely intact, suggesting to Stephens that Tuloom had been built more recently than other ruins, especially given the forces of nature all around them. He measured it by walking along its top. “Even then it was no easy matter,” wrote Stephens. “Trees growing besides the wall threw their branches across it, thorns, bushes, and vines of every description grew out of it, and at every step we were obliged to cut down the Agave Americana, which pierced us with its long, sharp points.” From end to end it measured 2,800 feet, or more than half a mile. Young Molas told them that he had found a large number of scattered ruins outside the wall, which led Stephens to assume the buildings inside formed the religious and administrative center of a much larger city.
Small temple at Tulum. (Catherwood)
Catherwood continued to work at top speed. At one point, Stephens, looking down from the platform outside the temple doorway, watched him. The scene left in Stephens an indelible image of pure Catherwood stoicism. The artist had set up his camera lucida on a raised stone platform not far from the base of the Castillo’s staircase. He stood shaded from the sun by overhanging branches. Stephens wrote: “The picturesque effect being greatly heightened by his manner of keeping one hand in his pocket, to save it from the attacks of mosquitoes, and by his expedient of tying his pantaloons around his legs to keep ants and other insects from running up.”
On a number of scattered structures they found curious masks and other sculpted decorations over cornices and doorways, along with wall tablets carved with images similar to those at Labphak. Painted frescoes covered the inner walls of several buildings, most of them effaced beyond recognition. They discovered a cenote filled with brackish water just inside the north wall, obviously the source of water for Tuloom’s inner sanctum.
And yet they were desperate to leave. Stephens’s shoes had worn so thin he was now restricted to moving about only when absolutely necessary. And along with the natural beauty came the murderous mini-vampires. The mosquitoes were driving them out. Every night was torture. “We held our ground against them for two nights,” Stephens wrote. The men were apparently without their netting. On the third evening they were finally forced out of the temple, only to be driven back in again, seeking relief but never able to find it. They had all but given up sleeping. “A savage notice to quit was continually buzzing in our ears and all that we cared for was to get away.”
Catherwood had gotten down on paper the major structures and they were packing to leave when Cabot, in one last search for an ocellated turkey, cut his way into the jungle and stumbled on another group of remarkable buildings. They stood less than a hundred feet from the Castillo but had been entirely invisible in the density of the foliage until Cabot came directly upon them. A few feet to one side and he would have passed them without noticing. Even Molas knew nothing of them. Now there was no way they could escape until the trees and undergrowth were cleared and Catherwood had a chance to record them.
One of the structures consisted of twin temples, one on top of the other. The unique building was richly decorated with sculpted figures in niches above the doorways and the walls inside were covered in paintings. Unfortunately the murals were so coated in moss and mold, their subjects were impossible to make out. They also found two rounded stelae, somewhat like those at Copán and Quiriguá but much less ambitious. They stood little more than six feet high and the sculpting was worn and indistinct. Stephens does not record how many hours or days the new discoveries added to their stay but a substantial amount of clearing was necessary for Catherwood to complete his drawings.3 Finally they were measured, drawn, and added to his site plan, and the men fled before their bloodthirsty, devoted antagonists.
They had come to the end. Tuloom was their last great ghost city, haunted with wonders no less astonishing than those of their first, Copán. Both places were victims of nature, lost to time, and, as with so much of what they had witnessed between, provocative and mystifying. It was by chance they had journeyed at the end to Tuloom, which by coincidence had been one of the final holdouts at the end of the once-great Maya civilization. Spanish chaplain Juan Díaz may have exaggerated when he reported in 1518 that Tuloom was “so large that Seville would not have appeared larger or better.” But he was certainly correct that what he saw from the sea was a still-occupied city of impressive elegance and splendor. Later scientific investigations would show that Tuloom survived for decades after the conquistadors arrived because the Spaniards chose to invade Yucatán from the west
, the Gulf of Mexico, avoiding the wild jungle they had seen along the east coast. Tuloom was never conquered but was gradually abandoned during the late 1500s as the diseases brought by the Spanish finally reached the site, breached the great wall, and scattered and killed its inhabitants. Stephens sensed the difference in Tuloom. He observed that the enormous wall was largely intact and many buildings in good preservation despite the blunt forces of nature.
Young Molas told them that he had heard of other great buildings “covered with paintings in bright and vivid colors” and located deep in the forest to the west. The men questioned an old Indian at the rancho who had reported stumbling upon them while hunting. But he was evasive and gave information too ambiguous for them to venture miles through the jungle in search of them, especially in Stephens’s case, without shoes.
Yet even if they could not penetrate it, the forest intrigued them. The huge swath of land from the Molas rancho inland forty-five miles to Chemax was covered by tropical jungle watered by the trade winds and hurricanes that blew in from the sea. Not a road ran through it and white men never entered. Stephens was convinced, he said, “ruined cities no doubt exist.” Eighty years later he would be proven right when archaeologists discovered the ancient city of Coba some thirty miles northwest of Tuloom. The city, which dates from the Classic Maya era, was one of the most populous and complex centers in Yucatán and its main pyramid one of the tallest in the Mayan world. What Stephens also could not know was that the vast wilderness, which extended far to the north and south, was virtually empty at the time of their visit but would soon be populated again. Within a decade it would become refuge to a large population of Indians who sought the safety of its forests at the end of the War of the Castes.4
The expedition had run out of space and time. The month of May, and along with it the rainy season, the final arbiter of all their explorations, were coming on fast. They were ragged and exhausted, and they still faced the long sea journey back to Mérida.
They left the Molas settlement at the end of April. With the current and wind working in their favor, they made good time sailing north. They spent their second night on the long, thin outcropping of rock and sand known as Isla de Mujeres, or Island of Women, where they visited two stone temples overlooking the sea. They rounded Cape Catoche and headed west back to Yalahao. “The old pirates’ haunt seemed a metropolis,” said Stephens. Continuing west with a strong wind, they arrived the next day at Silan, known today as Dzilam de Bravo.
They must have looked the role of shipwrecked Crusoes as they waded ashore. Their clothes were in tatters and their faces sunburned and covered with beards. As planned, the horses were waiting for them with their handler, identified by Stephens only as Dimas, who had heroically brought them more than 150 miles from Yalahao.
Cabot was in heaven. The coast near Silan was thick with bird life and they set out for two days in pursuit of flamingoes and roseate spoonbills.
It would be another week before they reached Mérida. Along the way they stopped to examine several large overgrown mounds, and though some were immense in size and complete with fallen temples, they were undistinguished. Many of them had been whittled down to provide building materials for townspeople. In the town of Izamal an imposing Franciscan church and monastery had been built three hundred years earlier on the site of a huge pyramid, which had been dismantled to provide stones for their construction. In the backyard of a nearby house, they found a gigantic head protruding from a stuccoed wall. Catherwood dutifully made a record and created a dramatic image of the sculpture for his later book of hand-colored illustrations.
Not far outside Mérida, they stopped for the night at a hacienda named Aké. In the morning they investigated the mound call “El Palacio.” Following a grand stairway up to a broad platform they came upon thirty-six stone columns standing in three parallel rows, some fourteen to sixteen feet high, apparently at one time holding up a roof. The platform was overgrown and some of the columns had fallen. It was their last exploration, the end of their long journey. They would never see stone temples, pyramids, or ancient ruins again.
They spent several days in Mérida visiting friends and packing up artifacts and Cabot’s enormous collection of bird specimens. The capital was on war footing again, and the chief of the Mexican government, Santa Ana, was threatening invasion. Although Stephens wanted nothing to do Yucatán’s problems—he was already diverted by news from home about possible war with England and battles between Texas and Mexico—he still could not help himself. “I was in the Senate Chamber when the ultimatum of Santa Ana was read,” he confessed. “The clouds were becoming darker and more portentous.”
They made one last farewell “paseo” around Mérida’s plaza. “A volcano was burning and heaving with inward fires,” wrote Stephens, “but there was the same cheerfulness, gayety, and prettiness as before.”
Unfortunately, the only ship available at the port of Sisal was the old Alexandre, the same vessel—becalmed and encircled by sharks—on which they had sailed during their last voyage home. There was no certainty about when another ship would arrive so they grudgingly ordered their baggage to Sisal.
They put to sea on the Alexandre two days later, on May 18. The voyage was long but this time uneventful. When they finally drew into Havana Harbor, they learned that yellow fever had just broken out in the city. But their luck held: they recognized an American packet ship, the Anna Louise, entering the harbor and learned it was sailing the next day for New York.
Stephens had already made arrangements in Mérida for shipment to New York of the two heavy, glyph-covered lintels they had taken from Uxmal and Kabah. But they still had with them a large number of valuable relics and artifacts they had accumulated during the expedition—sculptures, clay figures, painted vases—all of which were crucial for Stephens’s long-dreamed-of National Museum of American Antiquities. These precious items, along with Cabot’s bird collection, they had transferred to the Anna Louise.
That night, Stephens, Catherwood, and Cabot went ashore to visit the tomb of Christopher Columbus, the one man who had done more than any other to connect the Old World with New. The famous admiral died in Spain in 1506. Three decades later his remains were brought first to Santo Domingo and then in 1795 to Havana (a century later they would be returned to Spain). In June 1842, his bones lay in a marble tomb in Havana’s cathedral, where the three men just off the Alexandre stood with a candle and their hats off to pay their respects.5
The next day they were at sea, and thirteen days later they sailed into New York harbor.
21
Home
At half past nine the night of July 29, exactly six weeks after he and Stephens had returned to New York, Catherwood locked the doors to his rotunda at Prince and Mercer Streets. As he turned to leave, he saw smoke. Within minutes flames shot up from within the cavernous wooden structure and a short time later firemen rushed to the scene and quickly set their hoses. They were able to preserve most of the exterior walls of the building, but within half an hour the roof fell in and flames from the inside flared into the sky with volcanic fury.
“Owing to the combustible state of the paintings and other materials in it,” the New York Herald reported the next day, “the interior was entirely consumed including the splendid panoramas of Jerusalem and Thebes.”1
Catherwood was ruined. His chief source of income—his panoramas—lay in ashes, his rotunda a shell. Worse, his dream with Stephens of a national antiquities museum was consumed in the flames as well. When they arrived in June, they had decided to store in the rotunda some of Catherwood’s original illustrations and all the artifacts they had collected, including the two priceless hardwood lintels carved with hieroglyphs and images of feathered Maya royalty. Stephens wrote that he had intended to ship the entire collection—the lintels, “vases, figures, idols, and other relics”—to the “National Museum at Washington” as soon as the sculpted stones they had obtained at Uxmal arrived from Mérida.2
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sp; They found that nothing had survived the inferno. “I had the melancholy satisfaction of seeing their ashes exactly as the fire had left them,” he wrote. “We seemed doomed to be in the midst of ruins.”
Despite a statement by one witness that lightning touched off the blaze, in the end it was believed that one of the two hundred gaslights used to illuminate the rotunda gallery had caused the fire. The financial loss to Catherwood and his partner, George Jackson, was enormous; the loss of the artifacts was incalculable. Physical damages were put at over $20,000, a huge sum at the time, and the partnership was insured for only $3,000. The night of the fire Catherwood told the Herald reporter that he had tried to save the archaeological treasures, but that the firemen failed to follow his instructions on where to direct their hoses.3 The losses were so devastating financially and psychologically, the rotunda was never rebuilt. And Catherwood would never create another panorama.
Miraculously, most of Catherwood’s artwork from the expeditions survived. Apparently he kept many of his paintings and drawings in his nearby residence at 86 Prince Street and at the Harper Brothers’ offices. These included at least some daguerreotype plates because Stephens noted later that the illustrations in their Yucatán volumes were based on daguerreotypes images as well as drawings Catherwood made “on the spot.”4 And Catherwood clearly had plenty of original material to work with when he later produced a beautifully illustrated book of his own on the ruins of Yucatán and Central America. His art now became his only lifeline connecting the great labors of his past with his work in the future. His former life had all but vanished; he had learned by now the humiliating details of the trial in London and knew there could be no reconciliation with his wife. His children and his collaboration with Stephens were all that he had left.
Jungle of Stone Page 35