should be constructed in such a way that the supplies could be carried in mule packs and not on the shoulders of Indians; and that the tools should be provided for building canoes and boats,—also officers and seamen who should know how to manage them, since in no other way was it possible to enter the Island or Peten of Ahiza. All this was ordered to be provided and carried out; but it was not carried out fully on account of the protracted and distressing illness of the said President, which grew worse and worse every day. So that God permitted that from this storm should result one calm death, and that, through antagonistic means, there should be added new delays to this conversion.
"Meanwhile there were not wanting priests of good courage who wished to take part in the conversion of these souls, and Fray Diego Palomino having died in the highlands of Chol from illness which attacked him there, God moved the Reverend Reader, Fray Christobal de Prada, with such powerful inclinations, that while he was giving a course in philosophy in this convent of Guatemala with great credit and esteem, and without being detained by the love of his scholars or the arguments of his friends, he gave up his chair and went to the wilderness, where he devoted himself with so much fervor and zeal to the education of those heathen that in a short time he perfected himself in the language of Chol, of which he had already learned the rudiments; and he went ahead of every one in the Mopan or Ahiza languages, without a master or grammar of the said language, but only with what help he was able to get from the Mopan and Chol Indians, of whom he brought together many who had fled before he went into the wildemess."
The outcome of the events described in this chapter resulted in the subjection of the Itzas, but not, however, through the agency of the people of Guatemala. We shall learn from the account of Fray Andrés de Avendaño y Loyola all that occurred in the year 1695-1696.
