The name senote is given to all these deposits of water, also to some immense natural circular wells from 50 to 300 feet in diameter.  The walls are more or less perpendicular, generally covered with tropical vegetation.  The current in some is swift, but no inlets or outlets are visible.  The water is deliciously pure and sweet, much better than that of wells opened by man in the same country.  These enormous deposits generally have a rugged path, sometimes very steep, leading to the water’s edge, but daring natives throw themselves from the brink, afterward ascending by stout roots that hang like ropes down the walls, the trees above sucking through these roots the life-sustaining fluid more than a hundred feet below.

In the west part of Yucatan is a village called Bolonchen (nine wells), because in the public square there are nine circular openings cut through a stratum of rock.  They are mouths of one immense cistern, if natural or made by hand the natives do not know, but in times of drought it is empty, which shows that it is not supplied by any subterranean spring.  Then the people depend entirely on water found in a cave a mile and a half from the village; it is perhaps the most remarkable cavern in the whole country.  The entrance is magnificently wild and picturesque.  It is necessary to carry torches, for the way is dark and dangerous.  After advancing sixty or seventy feet we descend a strong but rough ladder twenty feet long, placed against a very precipitous rock.  Not the faintest glimmer of daylight reaches that spot; but after a while we stand on the brink of a perpendicular precipice, the bottom of which is strongly illuminated through a hole in the surface rock more than 200 feet above.  Standing on the verge of this awful pit in the dim light, the rocks and crags seem to take on most weird shapes.  We go down into the great hole by a ladder eighty feet high and twelve wide, and, reaching the bottom, are as yet but at the mouth of the cave, which, by the bye, is called Xtacunbi Xunan (the hidden lady), because, say the Indians, a lady was stolen from her mother and hidden there by her lover.  Now, to our right, we find a narrow passage, and soon another ladder; the darkness is intense and the descent continuous, though irregular, like a series of hills and dales, ladders being placed against the steepest places.

After an exhausting journey we reach a vast chamber, from which crooked passages lead in various directions to wells, seven in all, each named according to the peculiar kind of water.  One, always warm, is called Chocoha (hot water); another, O[c]iha* (milky water), and Akabha (dark water).  About 400 paces away from the chamber, passing through a very narrow, close passage, there is a basin of red water that ebbs and flows like the sea, receding with the south wind, increasing with the northwest.

   Transcriber’s note:  [c] denotes upside-down ‘c’ in original.