'That's quite a story,' said Fallon. 'The Spaniards took two hundred years to get on top of the Mayas, and the Lakondon tribe they never licked. The Mayas were kept down until 1847 when they rose in rebellion here in Quintana Roo. It was more populated in those days and the Mayas gave the Mexicans, as they now were, a hell of a trouncing in what was known as the War of the Castes. Try as they might the Mexicans could never get back in again.- In 1915 the Mayas declared an independent state; they dealt with British Honduras and made business deals with British firms. The top Maya then was General Mayo: he was a really tough old bird; but the Mexicans got at him through his vanity. They signed a treaty with him in 1935. made him a general in the official Mexican army and invited him to Mexico City where they seduced him with civilization. He died in 1952. After 1935 the Mayas seemed to lose heart. They'd had a tough time since the War of the Castes and the land was becoming depopulated. On top of famine, which hit them hard, the Mexicans started to move colonists into Chan Santa Cruz. There are not more than a few thousand of the indios sublevados left now, yet they still rule the roost in their own area.' He smiled. 'No Mexican tax collectors allowed.'
Halstead had broken off his conversation with his wife. 'And they don't like archeologists much, either,' he observed.
'Oh, it's not as bad as it was in the old times,' said Fallon tolerantly. 'In the early days of General Mayo any foreigner 'coming into Quintana Roo was automatically a dead man. Remember the story I told of the archeologist whose bones were built into a wall? But they've lost a lot of steam since men. They're all right if they're left alone. They're better than the chicleros.'
Halstead looked at me and said, 'Still glad to be-along with us, Wheale?' He had a thin smile on his face.
I ignored him. 'Why isn't all this common knowledge?' I asked Fallon. 'A government running a species of slavery and a whole people nearly wiped out surely calls for comment.'
Fallon knocked out his pipe on the leg of the table. 'Africa is popularly known as the Dark Continent,' he said. 'But mere are some holes and corners of Central and South America which are pretty blade. Your popular journalist sitting in his office in London or New York has very limited horizons; he can't see this far and he won't leave his office.'
He put the pipe in his pocket. 'But I'll tell you something. The trouble with Quintana Roo isn't the Indians or the chicleros; they're people, and you can always get along with people somehow.' He stretched out his arm and pointed. There's your trouble.'
I looked to where he was pointing and saw nothing unusual -- just the trees on the other side of the strip.
'You still don't understand?' he asked, and swung round to Rudetsky. 'What kind of a job did you have in clearing this strip?'
The hardest work I've ever done,' said Rudetsky. 'I've worked in rain forest before -- I was an army engineer during the war -- but this one beats all hell.'
That's it,' said Fallon flatly. 'Do you know how they classify the forest here? They say it's a twenty-foot forest, or a ten-foot forest, or a four-foot forest. A four-foot forest is getting pretty bad -- it means that you can't see more than four feet in any direction -- but there are worse than that. Add disease, snakes and shortage of water and you realize why the chicleros are among the toughest men in the world -- those of diem that survive. The forest is the enemy in Quintana Roo. and well have to fight it to find Uaxuanoc.'
II
We went to Camp Two next day, travelling in a helicopter which flew comparatively slowly and not too high. I looked down at the green tide which flowed beneath my feet and thought back to the conversation I'd had with Pat Harris about Jack Gatt and our hypothetical encounter in Quintana Roo. While I had envisaged something more than Epping Forest I certainly hadn't thought it would be this bad.
Fallon had explained the peculiarities of the Quintana Roo forest quite simply. He said, 'I told you the reason why there is no native gold in Yucatan is because of the geology of the area -- there's just a limestone cap over the peninsula. That explains the forest, too, and why it's worse than any other.'
'It doesn't explain it to me,' I said. 'Or maybe I'm particularly stupid.'
