and plucked, but there was no pot big enough in which to cook him. Cooked he must be that night, so he was set up on end in the largest pot we possessed and one end of him was cooked first, then he was turned over and we cooked the other end. After that he was cut up and grilled over the embers, and very excellent he proved to be.
As soon as we had settled clown in our headquarters we began to make diligent enquiry about the existence and position of ruined Indian buildings. All sorts of answers had been given to our questions. Some said that there were ruins five leagues distant, others that they were just over the hill, and others that they were to be found in all directions; and the latter were probably right. However, it was settled to look first of all for those said to be close by, so my husband and Gorgonio left me alone at the convento and started off one morning along the spur of the hill which runs out into the valley to the west. They walked about a mile and a half without seeing any trace of mounds and were nearly giving up the search in that direction, as the end of the ridge appeared to be so near, when they noticed that the shrubs in front of them covered an artificial mound, and that there was a dip in the ground between them and it. This dip proved to be a ditch, which may originally have been twenty feet deep, cut across the narrow neck of the ridge, and a long steep-sided mound barred the passage on the other side. Beyond this mound the top of the hill broadened out again into an extent of ground nearly the same as that of the site of Ututlan, and almost the whole of it was covered with foundation mounds. There was a small plaza with a temple mound at the east side of it, and an altar mound in front of the temple. In some cases the foundations retained part of their casing of well-dressed stone and cement facing. In position and arrangement the ruins differed little from those at Iximché and Ututlan, and the town, surrounded as it is by deep valleys with precipitous sides, must have been almost impregnable.
On another day, accompanied by Gorgonio and a Ladino guide, we went to look at some other ruins to the north-east of the village. It was a most charming ride through a well-watered park-like grass valley, the hills on either side covered with well-grown oaks and pines, and bounded to the north by the high forest-clad sierra. We passed out of this valley through a gap in the sierra in a northerly direction and rode through pretty little valleys cleared for cultivation. The timber improved the higher we mounted, until the ocote pine gave way to white pines and cypresses and the forest on the hills around us was a close growth of magnificent trees. A ride of about an hour and a half brought us to the valley where the ruins stood. The soil was covered with tuft grass sometimes shoulder high, and it was not easy to make out the plan of the foundations, but as usual we found a well-defined plaza.
