discovery up to its present state, so that Your Majesties will know the country as it really is, the people who possess it, and the manner of their life, and the rites and ceremonies, the sect or law they obey, and the profit which Your Royal Highnesses may derive from it; and may also know who have here rendered services to Your Majesties, in order that Your Royal Highnesses may act as best suits your service. The most faithful and exact account is as follows:
It may be two years, a little more or less, Most Enlightened Princes, that, in the City of Santiago,[1] which is in the Island of Fernandina, of whose towns
Francisco
Fernan-
dez de
Cordoba
we have been citizens, three inhabitants of the said Island united, and the one was called Francisco Fernandez de Cordoba,[2] another Lope Ochoa de Caicedo, and the third Cristobal Mor-
- ↑ Santiago was the seat of the governor, and the cathedral city of the first bishop.
- ↑ This expedition was organised by the men who had originally come from Spain with Pedro Arias de Avila, commonly called Pedrarias de Avila, when he was sent in command of an admirably equipped fleet to supersede Balboa as governor of Darien. Among these men was Bernal Diaz del Castillo, whose copious narrative of the events
drifted onto the coast, and the men were sacrificed, and eaten, all save two, who escaped as will be explained later. The coast was first really discovered by Francisco Fernandez de Cordoba, as is here related, and the name of Yucatan was the word tectetan, meaning "I don't understand," caught by the Spaniards from the natives, and which they took to be the name of the country (Motolinia, trat iii., cap. viii.). The Indian name was Ulumil Cuz, and Etel Ceh, meaning the land of birds and game; they also called it Peten, an island, though they well knew that it was not one. According to Ordoñez, not only the coast province, but the entire country, was also called Maya (a waterless land). The language of all the country was known as the Maya tongue. The subjoined references will be useful to students of the history of this most interesting country and its stupendous antiquities: Cogolludo, Hist. de Yucatan; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des Nations civilisées du Mexique; Diego de Landa, Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan (French translation by Brasseur de Bourbourg); Stephens, Incidents of Travels in Yucatan; Bancroft, Native Races; and Carrillo, Compendio de la Hist. Yucatan.
