he direction to the Northwest, so as to
reach the deserted town of Chanchanha, and to cross the head streams of
the great rivers and _aguadas_ which surround it, since in this
direction it was not possible for us to fail in finding it. We went
three days in this direction, and from thinking that, if we missed the
convent of Chanchanha, in this direction, there was afterwards no place
to have recourse to, on account of the great distance that we were from
a town on all sides, a great sadness came over my companion Padres, so
that they told me that we should change our direction, since, if we did
not, it was certain that we should perish in these forests, and that
the best thing was to try to strike the road which was being opened
from this Province to that of Guatemala, which runs from North to
South. To please them I yielded the opinion which I had determined on.
From there we took the direction to the West, although the distance in
leagues and forests which we intended to traverse was more than sixty
or seventy. This distance was a great one, for us to be able, breaking
through such bad thickets and suffering from hunger for thirteen days,
to come through alive, without exaggeration."

Hard Travel in the Wilderness for Fifteen Days. "In those fifteen days
that we traveled in a northwesterly direction, we met with many
_akalchees_, or swamps, which consist of very bad passages through
water and low and thorny shrubs with a kind of square grass, which, if
it caught our clothes, held us by the multitude of thorns, which grow
on the four corners from top to bottom; and if it caught our face,
hands or legs, it cut them like a small saw; so that as most of the
woods are _akalchees_, which consist of this grass, except on the high
places, we were always walking with our feet, hands or faces wounded,
so that we did not know what to do. Thus wounded, we went through some
very long _akalchees_, when we directed one of the Indians whom we
brought, to climb a tree so as to look out and see where we could make
a short cut through the said _akalche_, for we were not able to suffer
any longer on account of the many sores which the said grass caused us.
This said Indian climbed the tree, and gave us the news that he had
discovered a great meadow or plain towards the northwest. Some instinct
made me believe it, but to see whether imagination and the wish we had
to find it, had this effect, we took that direction, so that in a
little