The words had to be repeated several times, and in different dialects, before any kind of response was forthcoming. And even that proved far from perfect. Yet, from what was then translated to the Lambs, they were able to form a rough idea of who the Indians were.
It seemed the men were members of the Lancandone tribe, a degenerate group of Indians who had lived in the jungles for generations. They said they were the guardians of a ‘Great Temple’ where dwelt the ‘Old Ones’ whom they worshipped. No outsider was ever allowed to approach this holy place and they would take the lives of any who tried.
David Lamb, who was something of an expert on the legends of South America, listened to this halting conversation with increasing interest. He had heard mention of the Lancandones before – they were said to be the survivors of an ancient civilization that had once flourished in Central America. He recalled having read a little about them in notes by the French scholar and geographer, the Abbé Charles-Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (1814–1874), who had been the ecclesiastical administrator in Chiapas in the 1850s and had unsuccessfully tried to decipher Mayan sign language. (His most important work in this field, Voyage sur l’Isthme de Tehauntepec, 1861, has not yet been translated.) De Bourbourg said that these little white-skinned natives appeared from time to time in the frontier pueblos and townships of Chiapas and Western Guatemala and actually bartered with the natives. However, when any attempts were made to follow them to the ‘great stone city’ where they were said to live they responded by killing their pursuers.*
Although David Lamb satisfied himself that the men were indeed Lancandones, he could find out nothing else about them. And – he told the President – he and his party then had to make tracks back the way they had come. On their journey back to civilization, the Lambs picked up a few more fragments of information about the little men.
Apparently, in the tunnels beneath the city which the Lancandones guarded, there were supposed to be stored a number of sheets of solid gold on which was written in hieroglyphics a history of the ancient peoples of the world. These sheets also spoke of a Great Deluge and were said to have accurately predicted the Second World War, ‘which involved all the mightiest nations of the earth’.
President Roosevelt was evidently as fascinated by the encounter as the Lambs themselves had been, but neither the Head of State nor the couple could be sure if the lost city really existed or whether the stories about the subterranean tunnels were true.
In the intervening years we have learned a little more about the lost city and a great deal more about the underground passages.
Harold T. Wilkins, the former schoolmaster turned journalist who became an inveterate investigator of the legends of South America, has come up with further evidence about a lost city in the same vicinity and also assembled much useful information on the old traditions of subterranean passages. His research provides a useful basis on which to begin such an inquiry.
Wilkins briefly mentions the meeting between President Roosevelt and the Lambs in his Mysteries of Ancient South America which appeared shortly afterwards in 1946. He also records some intriguing supporting evidence which came to hand at the same time:
An English engineer who spent many years of his life in both Mexico and Argentina, and who died in Gloucester Royal Infirmary, in 1938, told me that, in the state of Jalisco, somewhere in the little-known southern extension of the great range of the Sierra Madre, about 121 kilometres [about 75 miles] east of the Cabo de Corrientes, are prehistoric ruins known to the Indian peónes. The region is one that is never visited by Mexicans, unless in times of insurrection when a band of revolucionarios has sought to escape the Government troops by fleeing to the recesses of the savage mountains. Jalisco is, of course, a province well known as one of the centres of the Aztec race, just as is the valley of Anahuac in the territory round the capital.
The Aztecos Indióds in Jalisco state say that these ancient ruins were once the home of a people who were civilized and benevolent. Whether they were of the Mayan race or some even more ancient people with Atlantean connections derived from the Hy-Brazilian pioneer and civilizer Quetzalcoatl, only exploration by competent field workers can decide. The dead city lies on a mesa [plateau] and from it, at certain hours of the day, or at dawn, comes the sound of an eerie, vibrant drumming. The sound is heard from afar, even on the Pacific! The Indians declare that the drumming emanates from los Espiritós (ghosts), and comes from stone vaults of a great temple where there was once worshipped ‘The ruler of the Universe’. One day, say the Indians, the wheel of life, or cycle of events, will come full circle, and the ancient people will return and re-introduce a golden age.
As soon as we begin our inquiries into underground tunnels in South America we find that there is as rich and long-lasting a tradition as that we have already learned about in Asia in general and Tibet in particular. Indeed, there is perhaps even more physical evidence – in the shape of tunnels that can actually be located – as well as even more remarkable and widespread reports about them, in this continent which has been described as ‘the cradle of the dim and ancient world’s earliest civilization’. And here, too, there is some remarkable evidence that these tunnels, though seemingly separated by the vast Atlantic from the acknowledged centre of Agharti in Asia, were nonetheless linked to it and once formed part of that great underground kingdom’s domains!
In searching for evidence we can go back to the very dawn of recorded history, for there is an ancient South American legend that the mighty Inca empire was founded by a group of people who emerged from a tunnel in Peru. The origins of this story are now lost in the mists of time, and only the barest details have come down to us in the form of folk tales. According to these tales, four brothers and four sisters emerged from a tunnel at Pacari–Tambo, which is east of Cuzco. The eldest brother then climbed a mountain and with mighty throws hurled four rocks to each of the four points of the compass. He then claimed possession of all that land within the range of the stones: a mighty empire, according to the legend.
However, dissent soon grew up amongst the brothers as to who should rule the empire, and the cruel, youngest brother, Ayar Uchu Topa, contrived the death of his three elder brothers. He then proceeded to subjugate all the local peoples and strengthened his hold on the kingdom by marrying all four of his sisters! His final act of conquest was to found a number of cities within the kingdom, including the seat of his empire, Cuzco. According to the legend, this city later became the capital of the Inca empire.
Although this story is frustratingly devoid of any more details about the tunnel from which the four brothers and sisters emerged, there are suggestions that they were all fair-skinned people, of above average height, who claimed to be members of the ruling family of an underground world. Some over-zealous proponents of the Agharti legend have claimed they were children of the ‘King of the World’ and had been sent by him to found a great empire in his image. This is a claim that is difficult to substantiate, beyond the fact that we know the Incas were a gentle, peace-loving nation to whom crime and war were unknown until the arrival of the Spaniards.* Against this, of course, is the undeniable fact that the Incas indulged in the most bloody human sacrifices, a practice said to be foreign to anything known in Agharti or Shamballah.
More definite information about underground tunnels in South America is to be found in the records of the Spanish invasion of Peru. In 1526, a party of Spanish Conquistadors, under the leadership of Francisco Pizarro (c. 1475–1541), landed on the northwest coast of South America and proceeded to explore and plunder the land and harass the people. In the years which followed, Pizarro and his band of 180 followers began the almost literal destruction of the Inca civilization as they sought after the amazing artifacts into which the country’s enormous supply of gold had been turned by their craftsmen. Although accurate figures are impossible to come by, it has been suggested that there were more than ten million Incas when the Spaniards arrived, and by 1571, just forty years later, t
he population had been reduced to a little over one million. (In his book, This Hollow Earth, Eric Norman notes a bizarre suggestion that many of these Incas did not die but simply disappeared underground! He writes: ‘Those who believe in the hollow earth theory declare that the Incas took a large number of their people, and most of their treasure, into a gigantic tunnel that led down into the inner-earth.’)
The story of the murderous activities of Pizarro and his men need not be repeated here, save for those details which bear on our theme. In hindsight it is possible to see that the rapacious nature of the Spaniards ultimately worked against them, for had they shown the same friendship towards the Incas that the natives offered to them, they might well have been given the vast hoards of gold they tried to take by force. For the Incas placed only a relatively small value on a commodity which was so plentiful. Instead, of course, when the Incas realized the Spaniards’ true purpose, they hid much of their great treasure – and hidden it has remained to this day.
The culminating act of violence during this invasion was the seizure of the leader of the Incas, Atahualpa, and the ransom demand by Pizarro that his subjects should fill an entire treasure room with gold to secure his release. (According to contemporary Spanish chroniclers who saw the treasure room, such a treasure would have consisted of between 600 to 650 tons of gold, worth 384 million gold pesos de oro, and probably beyond calculation today!) Anxious to save her husband’s life, the Inca Queen complied with the demand, but the greedy Pizarro was so amazed at the sight of all the gold stacked in the room that he refused to release his prisoner, saying instead that he would ‘murder him [Atahualpa] unless you tell me whence all these treasures come’. It appears that Pizarro had in the meantime heard that the Incas possessed a secret and inexhaustible depository which lay in a ‘vast subterranean tunnel, or road, running many miles underground beneath the kingdom’. The unfortunate Queen begged for a delay in complying with this new demand and went to consult her soothsayer. The grim-faced oracle looked in his magic black mirror and told the lady that whatever she did would be to no avail, for the Spaniards intended to kill Atahualpa in any event.
The horrified Queen then gave orders for the Inca treasure to be distributed in hiding places throughout the empire so that none of it would ever fall into the hands of the treacherous invaders. After this task was secretly and safely accomplished, the heartbroken lady took her own life. According to Harold Wilkins, this treasure still lies buried today beneath jungle clearings and in lonely mountain tarns as well as in:
sealed caves to which mystic hieroglyphs, whose key is possessed only by one descendant of the Inca, at a time, in each generation, give the open sesame; and in strange ‘subterraneans’, thousands of years old, which must have been made by a mysterious and highly civilised vanished race of South America in a day when the ancient Peruvians, themselves, were a mere wandering tribe of barbarians, if not savages, roaming the Cordilleras and the high passes, or still living, perhaps, in some long-disrupted Pacific continent, from which they came in ships.
Since that day, the hope of discovering the priceless hoards of Inca treasure has attracted fortune hunters from all over the world to the wilds of South America. Yet all have been denied because of Pizarro’s simple act of treachery, for as the Spanish soldier-priest Pedro Cieza de Leon wrote a few years after the event:
If, when the Spaniards entered Cuzco they had not committed other tricks, and had not so soon executed their cruelty in putting Atahualpa to death, I know not how many great ships would have been required to bring such treasures to old Spain, as is now lost in the bowels of the earth and will remain so because those who buried it are now dead.
It was to be over one hundred years before the subject of underground tunnels appeared again in a South American commentary. The location this time was Guatemala, and there was no immediate suggestion that it might be connected in any way – literally or figuratively – with that which had been reported running beneath Cuzco. That was to come later. The chronicler of this new tunnel was another Spaniard, a missionary priest with the impressive-sounding name of Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzman. He served for a number of years in the country and about 1689 wrote a history of Guatemala, which has remained in manuscript to this day.
In the course of his dialogue, Fuentes – as the priest is more familiarly known – describes a number of ruined settlements in Guatemala which he believed to have been inhabited by a race of Indians long since vanished. They might even have been the same degenerate Lancandones mentioned earlier. Beneath these settlements run underground tunnels, and one in particular caught his interest. Fuentes writes:
The marvellous structure of the tunnels (subterranea) of the pueblo of Puchuta, being of the most firm and solid cement, runs and continues through the interior of the land for the prolonged distance of nine leagues to the pueblo of Tecpan, Guatemala. It is a proof of the power of these ancient kings and their vassals.
It is a puzzling statement, but still remarkable when you realize that the tunnel’s length of ‘nine leagues’ is the equivalent of thirty miles! Unfortunately, Fuentes tells us little else about the tunnels of Guatemala, as clearly such things did not greatly interest him. Perhaps this indifference accounts for the fact that it is another one hundred and fifty years before anyone again mentions the tunnels of Guatemala, or South America for that matter. However, the next commentator, an American named John Lloyd Stephens, was to furnish a book of reports and illustrations of major importance.
Stephens was a successful lawyer and globetrotter who had already undertaken extensive tours in Europe and the Near East before he was attracted to Central America. He was particularly interested in Mayan cities and relics. To this end he arranged to lead a diplomatic mission to the country, and also took along his close friend, Frederick Catherwood, a skilful English artist who had already produced some remarkable illustrations of Egyptian antiquities while travelling about that country in native dress! From their journey together came a remarkable book, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan (1838–9), to which Stephens contributed eye-witness reports and Catherwood marvellously detailed engravings. As copies of the work are now of considerable rarity it is a pleasure to be including examples of both their talents in this volume.
In the first part of the book, Stephens describes his leisurely progress across Central America, collecting information on the people and compiling dossiers on the ruins. Then in Santa Cruz del Quiche, a pueblo in Western Guatemala, he was introduced to an old Spanish priest who suddenly fired his enthusiasm with tales of a mysterious lost city. But this was no unsupported legend, the priest said: he had seen the place with his own eyes. Stephens writes in his book:
The thing that really roused us was the assertion by the padre that, four days on the road to Mexico, on the other side of the great sierra was a living city, large and populous, occupied by Indians, precisely in the same state as before the discovery of America. He had heard of it many years before at the village of Chajul, and was told by the villagers that from the topmost ridge of the sierra this city was distinctly visible. He was then young, and with much labour, climbed to the naked summit of the sierra, from which, at a height of ten or twelve thousand feet, he looked over an immense plain extending to Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico, and saw at a great distance a large city spread over a great space, and with turrets white and glittering in the sun. The traditional account of the Indians of Chajul is, that no white man has ever reached this city; that the inhabitants speak the Maya language, are aware that a race of strangers has conquered the whole area around, and murder any white man who attempts to enter their territory. They have no coin or other calculating medium; no horses, cattle, mules or other domestic animals except fowls and the cocks they keep underground to prevent their crowing being heard.
Although Stephens was evidently torn by the desire to try and see the mysterious city – ‘one look at it would be worth ten years of an everyday life’, he wrote
– he concluded that it would be too dangerous and difficult for such a mission as his. ‘No man,’ he says in his book, ‘even if willing to peril his life, could undertake the enterprise with any hope of success, without hovering for one or two years on the borders of the country, studying the language and character of the adjoining Indians, and making acquaintance with some of the natives.’
Nonetheless, during the remainder of his time in Central America, Stephens continued to search for information about the mysterious city. This brought to light some further fascinating details which he revealed at a press conference in New York when his book was published.
Stephens was asked how it was possible for the natives of such a place to have remained undiscovered for so many years. ‘They moved underground,’ he replied. ‘They had to, to save themselves from the Spanish invaders.’
But how was this possible, another journalist asked. Surely they would be unable to survive without sunlight?
‘Not according to what an Indian guide told me,’ Stephens said. ‘These people have a great light which shines in their underworld, the secret of which was apparently given to them many ages ago by the gods from beneath the earth.’
The hard-bitten New York journalists may well have felt that such a tale smacked of the fantastic, for the line of questioning was not pursued, beyond a further inquiry as to whether Stephens himself had ever seen one of the underground tunnels he mentioned. He had, he replied, beneath the ruins of Santa Cruz del Quiche. He directed his listeners to a passage in his book which referred to the incident:
Under one of the buildings was an opening which the Indians called a cave, and by which they said one could reach Mexico in an hour. I crawled under, and found a pointed-arch roof formed by stones lapping over each other, but was prevented exploring it by want of light, and the padre’s crying to me that it was the season of earthquakes. How far it reached and what was its ultimate destination I could not then even begin to conject. It was clearly another of the profound mysteries of the Americas.
The Lost World of Agharti- the Mystery of Vril Power Page 13
