of them consisting of very low woods or underbrush, since the whole is mixed up, so that neither are they Akalchees nor do they cease being so. These are great overflowed tracts, impossible to be walked on in the rainy season 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
