m
Guatemala came to a close to the accompaniment of incessant and petty
wrangling on the part of the soldiery and of the officials.

The Writers of the Decree Punished. It is good to know, however, that
the writers of the decree were punished by a sound reprimand. Cano was
reinstated in the respect of all. He tells the plans for future work in
these words: "... He [President Barrios] intended going again the
following year by the Province of Vera Paz.... For this purpose I
proposed to the said President that it was necessary that those roads
should be constructed in such a way that the supplies could be carried
in mule packs and not on the shoulders of Indians; and that the tools
should be provided for building canoes and boats,--also officers and
seamen who should know how to manage them, since in no other way was it
possible to enter the Island or _Peten_ of Ahiza. All this was ordered
to be provided and carried out; but it was not carried out fully on
account of the protracted and distressing illness of the said
President, which grew worse and worse every day. So that God permitted
that from this storm should result one calm death, and that, through
antagonistic means, there should be added new delays to this
conversion.

"Meanwhile there were not wanting priests of good courage who wished to
take part in the conversion of these souls, and Fray Diego Palomino
having died in the highlands of Chol from illness which attacked him
there, God moved the Reverend Reader, Fray Christobal de Prada, with
such powerful inclinations, that while he was giving a course in
philosophy in this convent of Guatemala with great credit and esteem,
and without being detained by the love of his scholars or the arguments
of his friends, he gave up his chair and went to the wilderness, where
he devoted himself with so much fervor and zeal to the education of
those heathen that in a short time he perfected himself in the language
of Chol, of which he had already learned the rudiments; and he went
ahead of every one in the Mopan or Ahiza languages, without a master or
grammar of the said language, but only with what help he was able to
get from the Mopan and Chol Indians, of whom he brought together many
who had fled before he went into the wilderness."

The outcome of the events described in this chapter resulted in the
subjection of the Itzas, but not, however, through the agency of the
people of Guatemala. We shall learn from the accou