ason
and even in dry times. He alone may walk there, who should wish to
expiate thoroughly his sins, but for any other purpose only a desperate
man would do so, since such woods as those are of the kind which they
call _tocolchees_,--that is a labyrinth or confusion or hodge-podge of
all weeds or thorny plants, so that I do not know how we brought our
clothes and legs out from amongst them. All these sorrows and
sufferings were signs of the pleasure which we were to receive on that
day. In all the said three leagues there is found at each step a stream
of moderate volume, though there is no passage, except, when following
its banks, one can meet with the Chakan Ytzaes, as we did, about three
o'clock in the afternoon of the evening before the day of the name of
Jesus, which my holy religion celebrates on the 13th of January...."

The Chakan Itzas. "To cross to the other side of the river, which is
called Caclemacal, and to reach the first settlement of the Chacan
Ytzaes was one and the same thing; at which, putting behind us and
forgetting all our preceding difficulties, our hearts considered
themselves satisfied and well repaid with the delight and spiritual
consolation which we received at seeing ourselves at the entrance of
the mine where we were to meet with the precious or polished stone,
which was to be either the glorious ornament of our crown, if we were
worthy of dying for the faith which, with the help of God, we were
going to plant, or the fruitful result of those laborious steps which,
with the said aid of heaven, we intended to bring about...."

Treatment of the Natives. "We entered then this first settlement
situated on the opposite side of the river of Caclemacal about four
quarters of a league away. In the middle of which we met an Indian
woman, wife of the brother of the cacique Ahcan, a near relative of the
petty King of Peten Ytza, who, with two of her small children, was
coming to the said river for water; but when they saw us at a
distance,--three priests clothed with our priestly garments, which had
never been seen by them, and the four Indian singers who were traveling
with us, with the garb of the cloaks or _ayates_ which they wore, very
different from their own garments and from those of the three Cehaches
Indians, whom we took along as guides, they ran away excitedly,--mother
and children,--as if we might kill them, so that it was no little work
that we had to pacify them with gentle words