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250 when wandering through the forest from the neighbourhood of Tipu to Chuntuchí, but not one word has reached us from Spanish sources about the existence of a large and important centre of population and culture where the ruins of Tikál now stand.

In the concluding chapters of Villagutierre's 'History,' which was published two years after the fall of Tayasal, a good deal of information is given about the Itzács and the villages on the borders of the lake, but nothing whatever is said relating to Tikál or even to the existence of the ruins. It is, of course, possible that the existence of the ruins may have been known and passed over as not worthy of record, as the Spaniards were so frequently meeting with similar remains in Yucatan, but that the existence within a day's march of a living town or great religious centre could under the circumstances have been either overlooked or ignored is absolutely impossible.

To return to the march of Cortés from Tayasal to Honduras. It was not until he arrived at the mouth of the Rio Dulce that he got into touch with the Spaniards of whom he had come in search. The first of his countrymen whom he met with were forty men and twenty women belonging to the party under the command of Gil Gonzales de Avila. These unfortunate people were even in a more pitiable condition than his own half-starved followers. Expeditions had at once to be despatched into the surrounding country in search of food, but they proved singularly unsuccessful until Cortés himself took the matter in hand. In a "brigantine" and boats belonging to Gonzales's men he set out with a party of forty Spaniards and fifty Indians, ascended the Rio Dulce, and landed on the south side of the great lake, probably somewhere to the east of the site of Yzabal. Leaving his boats in charge of a guard, Cortés and his followers pushed on during the next few days across the spurs of the Sierra de las Minas and crossed the innumerable streams which score the mountain sides, finding, as he says, the path so rough and steep that they had to make use of both hands and feet in climbing. Some villages were met with on the way, but at the approach of the Spaniards the natives fled to the forest, and the Spaniards found no stores of food—indeed, they barely obtained enough to supply their immediate wants.

In his letter to the King, Cortés writes:—"Having asked some of the Indian prisoners whether they knew of any other village in the vicinity where dry maize could be obtained they answered me that they knew of one called Chacujál, a very populous and ancient one, where all manner of provisions might be found in abundance."

The Spaniards reached the neighbourhood of this village at sunset, and