EXPLORERS' FIND.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 171, 21 July 1928, Page 16 (Supplement)

EXPLORERS' FIND.

HCMDUNAN MAYA CAVE-

RELICS OF LOST RACE;

ANCIENT POTTERY REVEALED.

We are on our way back to the three large caves on the edge of the Great Southern Pine Ridge, south-east of here, wrote Mr. Gregory Mason, head of the American exploration party in British Honduras recently. They would hold a population of 1000, and the signs indicate they once did so. These three caves are close together in a dense mahogany forest not far from a vague and uninhabited spot in the Pine Kidge which the bushmen t call Augustin—because a man by that name once tried to raise cattle there—and nearer an abandoned mahogany cutters' camp called "Schultz's Camp," on the banks of a creek called the Rio Frio. One finds none of these places on maps of British Honduras. In fact there is no good map of British Honduras on the market. One finds these caves only as we found them, and the story of that sounds somewhat like fiction. Thirty years ago a young man named Alfred August was hunting .deer in the mahogany forest near the rim of the Great Southern Pine Ridge when he came upon an old Indian who had been bitten on the ankle by what is probably the most poisonous of the many venomous snakes of this region— a yellow-jawed tommygoff. The Indian believed-, the bite of this serpent to be necessarily fatal and he was sitting on a log awaiting death when August appeared. Although a good deal of the blood in Alfred August's veins is British, he was born m the bush and he is now, and was even then, what is locally known as a "snake doctor." He j went to work with his bush remedies' and cured the Indian. Indian Points to Cave. When August refused to take any payment for his services the aborigine, seeking other means of expressing his gratitude, offered to show the youth "a wonderful cave near here, where the fathers of my nation lived for many, many years." This appealed to the youth and when the old man had fully recovered from the .snake bite he took August to the cave. It made a strong impression on the young bushman, especially a lot of pots which the Indian showed him on the edge of a creek which flowed through one corner or compartment of the cave, welling out of the rock from some hidden source and disappearing at a spot some distance away in the same mysterious manner. Many of these pots and vases were beautifully painted, but what I attracted the attention of August was the fact that in the bottom of every one of them a hole had been bored. | For thirty years August remembered the cave but he mentioned it to only one or two of his closest friendSj and not until comparatively recently. This sounds incredible—until one meets Alfred August. He seems to be suffering from extreme and chronic shyness. He was induced to tell me about the cave by his friend. John. Ross, El Cayo, agent of P. W. Schufeldt, an AmeHcan of large business interests in this colony, who is also conspicuous as an ornithologist and as a hospital host to Americans who visit this, country. \\V found the cave of August's memory, and everything in "it coincided with his recollection, except that we did not find the cache of punctured pots by the edge of the creek. Rare Vases are Found. All the pots and vaseß which we found, except two, had been broken, perhaps accidentally. Of the remaining two, one had been deliberately punctured, having a neat round hole through the bottom like the vessels August remembered seeing. The other was intact, and is of a valuable variety. It is a cylindrical vase seven and one-half inches high and six inches in diameter, of a thin red ware with an inch and threequarters wide yellow band around the outside top, and in this band is a row of red hieroglyphs encircling the vessel. They are repetitions of the same glyph, which looks something like the symbol for fire ceremony. We also found two other glyphs repeated in a decorative band on fragments of another vase, and one of these glyphs is recognisable as the sign for "Ben," the name of one of the twenty Maya days. Glyphs with the same meaning often vary in appearance, so that even 'the specialist who spends nearly all his time on the Maya glyphs is often at fault in his reading, or completely baffled. The Mayas worshiped their days as cods who had Once lived on earth. Owing to the combination of twenty-day names with a 365-day year, there are four dominical days, with which the year can begin. These days were called "Yearbearers," and were the objects of special devotions, conducted with offerings of fltowers, incense, beeswax candles and occasionally, human blood. It is interesting to note that the present year is "Ben." The significance of the broken vase bearing repetitions of the "Ben", glyph was undoubtedly religious. The punctured pot which we found may have been punctured to render it useless for people who might occupy the cave. Or it might have been broken to render it suitable for burial with a corpse. The Mayas often indulged in this practice. The evening we were in camp at Mountain Cow, Walter Smith nearlv stepped on a five-foot yellow jawed tommygoff. Austin killed the reptile with his shotgun. A few minutes later a large tarantula disputed our right of way. Austin blew it to pieces with birdshot from ,thc .41-calibre barrel of his small collecting gun called a "gamegetter." Thompson, Austin and I were just getting into our hammocks when Thompson spied another tarantula on the side of a box of beef. Austin reached for the "zamegetter." " "But I don't want my beef tins punctured," protested Thompson. "These small shot won't go through that board," said the ornithologist, putting a humming bird load in the gun. There was a little report, and the tarantula seemed to dissolve like one of' those quick blot-outs in motion pictures.