CITY LOST IN A JUNGLE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 10052, 10 February 1927, Page 3

CITY LOST IN A JUNGLE.

SURPRISE FOR EXPLORERS. SITE COVERED BY TREES., GROWTH OF SEVEN MONTHS. , A dramatic story of his return, to the great ruined Maya City, of Lubaantun, in British Honduras, has been told by Mr Mitchell-Hedges, the explorer. ■ -, Lubaanton lies, some 55 mile©,- by, river from Punta Gorda, and after an adventurous journey Mr Hedges.' and his party reached, the Maya Indian village of San Pedro: "Half a mile beyond, high- above the river;,., was the welcome sight of our old, shack," he said. "The following morning we took the trail to- the- ruins—to find they., had magically disappeared. It was as if some giant hand had swept across and entirely obliterated them. Only ten months had elapsed since we had left the great ruined city thoroughly cleaned and shining ber neath the blazing sun. Now 12ft ofsolid jungle covered all.. "Even more surprising was the fact that since we left, the Indians had planted- corn. This had .grown- - and been picked, so that the immense growth had sprung from the earth in a period of no more than seven months. There were many paw-paw trees 1G and 17ft high, bearing fruit. Cobune palms were waving everywhere in this gigantic-super-heated hot-house. "In a week we had a camp erected. In a fortnight the great stairways, pyramids, plazas and courtyards were once more standing out above the jungle. "It was a wonderful sight as we fired acres of the cut-down vegetation, which had dried rapidly in the sun. Great columns of smoke, resembling a violent volcanic eruption were shooting hundreds of feet into the air; the jungle was a raging furnace. Hot aslies and volumes of acrid smoke swept over us while the crackling and roaring flames quivered in the air. "As we cleared the immense stone edifices; the great ruined Ma#a city, a veritable . city of mystery, grew more impressive and vast every day. ' Standing on the highest pyramid in the setting sun, the full impressivenees of the ruins came to me with irresistible force.

"Into my mind crepl a conviction which may be the (solution to the inscrutable mystery of Lubaantun. It was that this gigantic citadel was a Maya city of the dead —a vast cemetery—that within • Hhe' -I great amphitheatre the last .mystical and solemn rites were held and sacrifices made to the spirits of the de-, parted. "We found hundreds of stone-: faced mounds surrounding Lubaantun. Excavations in three of them yielded 270 specimens, comprising flint and obsidian -spear-heads, amall axe-heads cut from a curious bluishgreen stone, pottery and figurines. The excavations proved beyond doubt that these mounds are burial places."