to ensure some sleep for myself, I had to take him into my bed. By this time he was in a towering rage, and instead of going to sleep where I placed him under the blanket, he dashed out and danced a sort of war-dance on my chest, gesticulating fiercely. Then, after the manner of nurses, I had finally to give him a good spanking, which only made him angrier than ever; but he knew that he was beaten, he gave up his war-dance and went to the bottom of the cot, covering his head with the rug; then, like a naughty child, every few minutes he would raise his head to boo-o at me, and then hide it again under the rug, until at last, tired out, he fell asleep. It was a moonlight night, and for some time longer I lay awake listening to the sound of the alligators clashing their teeth—which sounds like a traveller's tale, but it is not fiction. The river literally swarmed with these hideous creatures, and they have a queer habit of a night of opening their mouths wide and bringing their teeth together with a snapping sound which can be heard for a long distance.
The journey from Yaxché to Benque Viejo took us from the 5th to the 11th of April, and was of no particular interest. We passed two ruins on the way the first, near Salísipuede, was of the Ixkun type, but without sculptured stelæ; the second, near Takinsakún, was probably of late date, as parts of some of the stone-roofed houses were still standing, and the plaster covering the walls was in good condition. These houses are of remarkable size—one measured 118 feet in length, and contained two long parallel chambers running the whole length of the house, each 9 feet wide and 16 feet 9 inches high.
Takinsakún is a name with a good Indian sound about it, but I have sometimes seen it written in the Colonial Reports as "Take in Second." With regard to Salísipuede (get out if you can), there is a local tradition that the name marks the site of a "Monteria," which had to be abandoned on account of the difficulty met with in floating the mahogany logs down a small streamlet to the Mopan River. But the most puzzling of all these frontier names is one within British territory the German map gives it as Arinchuak (Ar-in-chu-ak), which sounds like a good enough Indian name, although I have not the slightest idea whether it would have any meaning in an Indian dialect. On the other hand, it is precisely the pronunciation given by the Creole negroes to "Orange Walk," a village on the Belize River, and it is possibly a repetition of that name; but whether the negro has Anglicized an Indian name or the learned German has made a good-sounding Indian name out of the negro pronunciation of Orange Walk, must be left to a philologist to decide. Benque Viejo (Old Bank: this name again is a mixture, as Banco and not Benque is the Spanish for Bank) is the frontier village on the
