Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol 2

The second volume from Stephens explorations in the Yucatan, accompanied by Catherwood with his excellent engravings. This is a continuation of the same form provided in Volume 1, but covers many more Mayan ruin sites which are discovered, explored, excavated and mapped.

As with volume 1, I read the Project Gutenberg version (it doesn't have the excellent cover the GR listing does, more is the pity), which contained seventy engravings. It remains fairly workman like in its descriptions - the travel, the people they meet, the obtaining of food and water, the excavations, the findings, etc. It seemed to me in this volume that they were more focussed on the culture and people, I suppose there is only so much can be written about the many, many ruins they visit, unearth and record.

I expected, at the end we get the description of the fire which destroyed the warehouse of artifacts that Stephens had collected from the ruins (as mentioned in Vol 1), but there was no mention (unless I missed it!). How devastating, and such a pity so much of what he saved was lost.

Volume 2 has various appendices - a manuscript in the Maya language with side-by-side translation - it discusses the Mayan ancient history, but I didn't find it very readable. Second up is an explanation of the ornithology of Yucatan, with an observation list. The third is a letter related to the red hand as a symbol comparing Mayan with North American Indian usage.

I read this over along period of time as it was on my phone and was read 'while waiting' for whatever, when I didn't have a book to hand.

I gave volume one 4 stars, for me this was still interesting, but did become a little repetitive. It is still worthy of 4 stars.