educating them and instructing them as I ought; and if by chance they should find a town, they would notify me, so that I could come to catechize them. I accepted this proposal for the future, carrying out his orders at the present time, and having known that the said captains had passed forwards from the said village of Chunpich, I got ready to go alone with four Indian singers to the said town, and by inspecting or cutting down all their thickets, to see if I could meet with the Cehaches Indians who made war on the Spaniards, in order to draw them to the bosom of our Holy Mother Church. I went through the said forests to a great distance, and in all directions and I did not meet any one. At this time I received information (although it was confused) that, after the said town of Chunpich was passed, on the road to the South which we were following in a Southeast direction, an indistinct foot path had been discovered. As I knew that on the said route lay the nation of the Ytzaes, for meeting whom I have been preparing for some years, by having learned their language, it was necessary to set about following the path which the Spaniards were taking, in order to verify my suspicions; but it verified nothing but constant misfortunes; since on the path I met four Indian musketeers of the town of Sahcabchen, whom their captain was sending as slaves to the quiet of his house. They brought me a letter from the Captain, Don Joseph de Estenos, in which he told me that he had found three other towns without inhabitants, though with some little rotten corn; and that the third leader, Don Pedro de Suviaur by name, had gone with his men to another town which they supposed belonged to the Ytzaes. This letter reached me a league and a half from Chunpich, at a very large aguada which there is there, and at three long leagues from there is another large abandoned town called Ixbam.
Zuviaur Goes to the Itzas; the Padres Return. “I returned unhappy when I thought of the little result which had come in the said town of Chunpich, and I took pleasure in its suburbs to divert my sorrow, since this place is very pleasant. A lake lies towards the West, so large that it stretches out of sight. The water is very good, the two other towns of which I spoke above being around the said lake. The Spaniards found these
