e highlands,
the more numerous did we find the families in their hamlets, without
the form of towns. We told all these people that the object of our
journey was to search for them so that they should come together in
towns in such a way that we should be able to come and live with them
in order to teach them the law of God and to administer the holy
Sacraments to them, and that we also wished that all the people of
their tribe and of all the other tribes in those highlands should know
God, and should come together in towns. Thus we went, passing from some
farms to others in prosecution of our journey to the Lake, and we left
all the Indians peaceful and satisfied with the promise which they made
us to gather together in towns. In this we were obtaining plenty of
good results, since we taught them the Christian doctrine of which most
of the baptized Indians were totally ignorant. The children whom their
fathers brought to us were baptized, and the grown people confessed
themselves, many who had relapsed were consecrated anew, and the Holy
Sacraments were administered to some Christian Indians who were found
dying in their houses.

"After passing through the Province of Chol, which stretches from
Cahabon forty-five or fifty leagues, we came upon another tribe which
is called the Mopanes, among whom Spaniards or ministers of the holy
gospel had never entered, and, although the difference in language was
of some embarrassment, God willed that we should find some Mopan
Indians who understood the Chol language and by means of these we
declared to them the purpose of our journey. This had good results at
that time in the case of some adults, who, being dangerously ill, asked
for holy baptism, and in the case of some sick children whom their
fathers brought and who went to Heaven as the first-fruits among this
tribe. Their principal cacique, Taximchan, fled from us, and although
we made various endeavors to draw him to us, he always deceived us with
false promises. But we made friends with four other caciques of this
tribe of the Mopanes Indians, called, in their paganism, the Cacique
Zac, the Cacique Tuzben, the Cacique Yahcab, and the Cacique Tezecum.
They came to see us with a part of their families, and every day there
came many Mopanes Indians to buy knives and many other little trifles
which the soldiers sold in exchange for blankets. We presented them
with salt, and for this they came to see us and to sell us their fruit