On my voyages between Livingston and New Orleans I had frequently passed along the coast of Yucatan and had twice caught sight of the small ruined temple on the Island of Mugeres; but it was not until the winter of 1888-89 that I was able to set foot in the country with the purpose of examining some of the ruins, and I then chose Chichén Itzá as the site giving promise of the best results. There were disadvantages in thus breaking new ground, not the least of which was the absence of my faithful companions Gorgonio Lopez and his brothers, and I was well aware how greatly I should miss their assistance. Landing at Progreso on Christmas Eve I went on by rail, for a distance of about twenty-five miles, through a flat and uninteresting country to the city of Merida, and at once commenced preparations for the journey to Chichén.
I was soon to have experience of the inconvenience which may easily arise from the want of a good harbour, for the captain of the steamer carrying all my heavy baggage, encountering a heavy "norther" as he approached the port of Progreso, preferred the open sea to anchorage on a lee shore, and passed on to make the round of the gulf ports before returning to land my cargo at Progreso a fortnight later.
Merida, as described by Stephens, was a charming, old-fashioned, out-of-the-world, sleepy city, with a cultivated and hospitable upper class of Spaniards and a picturesque population of Mestizos and Indians. Merida, as I found it, was a modernized Spanish-American town in the throes of a "hemp" boom. The picturesqueness of the half-caste population remained, but there all the charm ended. There is only one product of the country which Europeans have found profit in cultivating for export, and that is the Agave rigida, a plant nearly related to the American aloe, which is known locally as "Henequen," and produces a fibre that has become of considerable commercial importance under the name of "Sisal hemp." It is to the increased demand for this fibre that at the time of my arrival the people of Yucatan owed a somewhat sudden access of riches. The rocky soil seems to suit the plant to perfection, the cultivation is simple and not very laborious, and cheap machinery had been devised for the extraction of the fibre from the leaves, so that for some time past it had been possible to sell the product at two cents a pound and leave a fair margin of profit. The henequen fibre is much inferior to that extracted from the stem of the banana and known as Manila hemp, but so small has the world become that a hurricane in Manila which destroyed the banana plants at once brought wealth to Yucatan. The loss of the Manila crop was accentuated by the increased demand for twine in North America for use in the reaping and binding machines which are so largely employed in harvesting the gigantic
