very high and rocky, and that it would be less fatiguing to go by sea. I replied that he could see for himself that, on account of the numerous people and baggage and horses I had, there would not be sufficient boats, and therefore I was compelled to go by land; I asked him, however, to give me the means of crossing that lake, to which he replied that, about three leagues from the place where we were, the lake became shallow, and, by skirting it, I could reach the road opposite his village; but he begged me that, as my people were coming round the lake, I would accompany him in his canoe to visit his town and house where he wished to burn the idols and have a cross made for him. To please him, although it was against the will of my people, I embarked, with about twenty of my men, most of them archers, in his canoe and went to his town with him, where I spent the rest of the day in festivity. At nightfall, I took leave of him, and he gave me a guide with whom I entered the canoe and returned to sleep on land, where I met many of my people who had come round the lake to a place where we passed the night. In this town, or rather at the plantations, I left a horse which got a splinter in his foot and was unable to go on; the chief promised to cure it but I do not know what he will do with him.[1]
The next day, collecting my people, I set out,
- ↑ The fate of this animal was indeed a strange one. Villagutierra (in his Hist, de la Conquista del Itza) relates that some Franciscan monks who visited Peten-Itza in 1697, with Don Martin Ursua, landed with the intention of building a church on the island, and found there a large temple in which stood the image of a horse very well carved in stone. They discovered that Cortes's lame horse became an object of great veneration to the natives who fed him on flowers, birds, and similar delicacies with the natural result that the poor animal starved to death, after which he was ranked amongst the native deities and worshipped under the title of Tziminchak, god of thunder and lightning. It would appear from this that the Christian doctrines had not been so clearly understood by the chief and his people as Cortes imagined.
