Page:Here and there in Yucatan - miscellanies (IA herethereinyucat00lepl 0).djvu/97

 the Indians to Christianity. They were accompanied by some natives of Yucatan who did all in their power to dissuade the fathers from their purpose, leading them through the roughest places they could find. On their arrival the chiefs and people received them kindly, treating them with great hospitality; only when it was suggested that they should change their religion, they said the time for that had not yet come. The fathers were allowed to go where they pleased and examine everything. They found various large temples that would each accommodate about a thousand people, and in one of them was the image of Cortez's horse, now become the most sacred of all their venerated images. It was placed in the very middle of the temple, resting upon its haunches, the fore part of the body reared so that the front limbs were straight, the hoofs touching the floor.

They called it the "thunder god," and told the priests all about it. Then Friar Juan de Orbita, the most excitable of the two fathers, mounted on the back of the horse, and, using a stone as a hammer, broke it into small pieces, scattering them over the floor of the temple, at which the Indians were so exasperated that they raised a great outcry: "Kill them! kill the white men! they have destroyed our