By Evan J. Albright

Edward H. Thompson, not long after his arrival in Yucatan, doing his best impersonation of the "great white hunter." His early naivete was soon replaced with an encyclopedic knowledge and grateful appreciation of the Maya, their history and their culture.

Every year more than a million visitors tear themselves away from the sand and surf of Cancun and other resorts along the shore of the Yucatan region of Mexico to visit Chichen Itza, the restored city of the ancient Maya. Tourists from all over the world come to admire "El Castillo," the giant limestone pyramid; "The Great Ball Court," the largest sports facility of its type in the Mayan world; and the mysterious freshwater pool, the "Sacred Cenote." The lure of Chichen Itza as a tourist attraction is owed, in great part, to a Cape Cod man, Edward Herbert Thompson.

"I am an enthusiast by nature and so completely did I give myself to my work in the Yucatan that some of my contemporaries spoke of me as impractical," he wrote in his 1932 memoir, People of the Serpent. "I have squandered my substance in riotous explorations and I am altogether satisfied.".

Thompson was born in 1857, and grew up in Worcester. He spent his summers on Cape Cod in Falmouth, Mass., where, as local legend has it, his father, Josiah, built one of the first vacation cottages. Josiah was in the brick trade and later moved the family s summer residence to West Falmouth, lured by the rich clay deposits he found there. He built a brick kiln and a lofty house.

During one of his summers on the Cape, Thompson fell in love with a ship captain s daughter, Henrietta T. Hamblin. The couple married in 1883 and settled in Falmouth, but that was soon to change.

In 1885, Stephen Salisbury Jr., a Worcester resident and son of one of the richest men in the United States, asked Thompson to join him for dinner. Salisbury had read a magazine article by Thompson in which he theorized that the Mayan ruins were the remains of the civilization that sprang from the lost continent of Atlantis. After the meal, Salisbury made Thompson a startling offer: Would the West Falmouth man be willing to move to the Yucatan to seek out ancient Mayan sites and artifacts and conduct archaeological digs on his behalf? Senator George Frisbie Hoar, who was also at the dinner, promised Thompson a job as American Consul to the Yucatan. A few weeks later, Thompson, Henrietta, and their newborn daughter boarded a ship for the Yucatan, beginning what would become a 40-year adventure, one that would take him to the magical city known as Chichen Itza.

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For reasons unknown today, the Maya abandoned Chichen Itza around 1250, and the city fell into ruin. Four hundred thirty-nine years later the new American Consul, Edward Thompson, visited Chichen Itza. His biographer, T.A. Willard, described how the explorer reached the ruined city in the middle of the night, "in the saddle, dozing over the head of a somnambulant horse." Thompson s Mayan guide woke him and pointed ahead. "I raised my eyes and became electrically, tinglingly awake," Thompson supposedly told Willard, the prose becoming even more purple. "There, high-up, wraith-like, in the waning moonlight, loomed what seemed a Grecian temple of colossal proportions atop a great steep hill." This was Thompson s first look at the dominant architectural feature of Chichen Itza, the massive pyramid of Kukulcan.

Willard s book, The City of the Sacred Well, was written in 1926, long after that first visit. Thompson claimed that Willard had greatly embellished his tale. The book helped to make Chichen Itza a household name, and Thompson famous. "Oh Lordy, what he makes me say and do," the explorer wrote a colleague shortly after the book came out. ,"May heaven help me." Thompson s instincts proved correct, for Willard s exaggerations would eventually drive him from Mexico. CONCLUDED HERE»