of the people of the said President."

Cano Advises Return. "Seeing also that the rains were beginning with
great fury, and that our people were becoming sick because of the
change of weather, to which was added our finding ourselves in such
want of supplies that we scarcely had what was needed to return to
Mopan; for these reasons I advised the Captain that we should return to
Mopan, and that there we should await news of the said President, and
that when we had received this news we should see what ought to be
done. This plan we carried out, taking in our company the Ahiza Indian
called Quixan, treating him kindly and carefully."

Explanations of their Withdrawal Sent to Guatemala. At this juncture an
unfortunate controversy sprang up. Cano says that he and his companions
wrote to Guatemala, explaining why they had withdrawn. Their
explanations were not accepted, however, because a false report had
gained credence to the effect that Don Jacinto Barrios had reached Lake
Peten. The authorities in Guatemala persisted in believing the latter
report, and they charged the Padres with trying to discredit the
President. The General Assembly then issued a decree in which they
ordered Captain Velasco at once to return to the lake and fortify
himself there on pain of losing all his property like a traitor.

The Decree of the General Assembly. "This was the substance of the
decree which was despatched to us, with many other circumstances in a
line with the ends and false bases on which the whole was founded.

"We received this decree in Mopan, with many other letters of the same
tenor, so that beside the ordinary troubles (common to all), I had this
one in addition to lay before our Lord.... Other letters [arrived] from
the said President, D. Jacintho, written from a place of the
Lacandones, which we called Nuestra Senora de las Dolores, where he had
joined the people who had entered the country with the Padres de la
Merced. In these letters he replied to those which we had written when
we entered Mopan, and he gave orders in these that the men should
retire, leaving thirty men as an escort in that place, since the rainy
season was beginning, and because he was doing the same thing on his
part; by this we knew that the second basis of the decree did not
exist, since the President found himself in Lacandon, which is so far
away from the Lake of Ahiza...."

Quarrels among the Soldiers and the Officials. The entrada fro