Your Majesty of what has happened in these expeditions, making up for the delay of this report by the simple truth and clearness of the information which up to the present time could not be given without a great deal of confusion on account of the strange character of the events.
The Route Followed by Cano. “The President [Barrios]...finally determined to enter by way of Chiapas, and that I should go by way of Vera Paz with Captain Juan Diaz de Velasco and seventy men as an escort to the priests. Accordingly, in the month of March, of the said year '95, we started from the town of Cahabon, which is the last town of Vera Paz; seven priests of my order, and we entered by very rough paths into the highlands of the Chol, where we found many Indians, some baptized, others heathen, and the more we penetrated those highlands, the more numerous did we find the families in their hamlets, without the form of towns. We told all these people that the object of our journey was to search for them so that they should come together in towns in such a way that we should be able to come and live with them in order to teach them the law of God and to administer the holy Sacraments to them, and that we also wished that all the people of their tribe and of all the other tribes in those highlands should know God, and should come together in towns. Thus we went, passing from some farms to others in prosecution of our journey to the Lake, and we left all the Indians peaceful and satisfied with the promise which they made us to gather together in towns. In this we were obtaining plenty of good results, since we taught them the Christian doctrine of which most of the baptized Indians were totally ignorant. The children whom their fathers brought to us were baptized, and the grown people confessed themselves, many who had relapsed were consecrated anew, and the Holy Sacraments were administered to some Christian Indians who were found dying in their houses.
“After passing through the Province of Chol, which stretches from Cahabon forty-five or fifty leagues, we came upon another tribe which is called the Mopanes, among whom Spaniards or ministers of the holy gospel had never entered, and, although the difference in language was of some embarrassment, God
