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CHAPTER XXIV.

TIKÁL AND MENCHÉ.

closing the notes on my wanderings a few words must be said about two other ruins, Tikál, which I visited both in 1881 and 1882, and Menché, which I visited in the latter year only. On both occasions I started from Coban and travelled northward for ten days through the then almost uninhabited forest to the Paso Real on the Rio de la Pasion, where the Government maintains a ferryman and serviceable canoes for the passage of the river, and thence to Sacluc, a village standing in the savannah land about fifteen miles north of the river.

Sacluc, which had risen into notice as the headquarters of the mahogany-cutters, had only recently become the residence of the Jefe Político of the department of Peten, and had been euphemistically renamed "La Libertad," possibly to hide the fact that a condition not very far removed from slavery was more noticeable there than in other parts of the Republic. All labourers' wages are paid in advance, and as the woodcutters are a thriftless folk, any