s, since the Indians at first
regarded the horse as endowed with divine attributes. Cortez in his
expedition from the city of Mexico to Honduras in 1524, passed through
the State of Chiapas near the ruins called Palenque,--of which ancient
city, however, no mention is made in the accounts of that
expedition,--and rested at an Indian town situated upon an island in
Lake Peten in Guatemala. This island was then the property of an
emigrant tribe of Maya Indians; and Bernal Diaz, the historian of the
expedition, says, that "its houses and lofty teocallis glistened in the
sun, so that it might be seen for a distance of two leagues." According
to Prescott, "Cortez on his departure left among this friendly people
one of his horses, which had been disabled by an injury in the foot. The
Indians felt a reverence for the animal, as in some way connected with
the mysterious power of the white men. When their visitors had gone they
offered flowers to the horse, and as it is said, prepared for him many
savory messes of poultry, such as they would have administered to their
own sick. Under this extraordinary diet the poor animal pined away and
died. The affrighted Indians raised his effigy in stone, and placing it
upon one of their teocallis, did homage to it as to a deity."[25-*] At
the hacienda of Don Manuel Casares called Xuyum, fifteen miles
north-east from Merida, a number of cerros, or mounds, and the ruins of
several small stone structures built on artificial elevations, were
pointed out to the writer; and his attention was called to two
sculptured heads of horses which lay upon the ground in the neighborhood
of some ruined buildings. They were of the size of life, and
represented, cut from solid limestone, the heads and necks of horses
with the mane clipped, so that it stood up from the ridge of their necks
like the mane of the zebra. The workmanship of the figures was artistic,
and the inference made at the time was, that these figures had served as
bas reliefs on ruins in that vicinity. On mentioning the fact of the
existence of these figures to Dr. Carl Hermann Berendt, who was about to
revisit Yucatan, in 1869, he manifested much interest in regard to them,
and expressed his intention to visit this plantation when he should be
in Merida. But later inquiries have failed to discover any further trace
of these figures. Dr. Berendt had never seen any representation of
horses upon ruins in Central America, and considered the exis