Page:History of the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas.pdf/124

Rh however, because a false report had gained credence to the effect that Don Jacinto Barrios had reached Lake Peten. The authorities in Guatemala persisted in believing the latter report, and they charged the Padres with trying to discredit the President. The General Assembly then issued a decree in which they ordered Captain Velasco at once to return to the lake and fortify himself there on pain of losing all his property like a traitor.

The Decree of the General Assembly. "This was the substance of the decree which was despatched to us, with many other circumstances in a line with the ends and false bases on which the whole was founded.

"We received this decree in Mopan, with many other letters of the same tenor, so that beside the ordinary troubles (common to all), I had this one in addition to lay before our Lord....Other letters [arrived] from the said President, D. Jacintho, written from a place of the Lacandones, which we called Nuestra Señora de las Dolores, where he had joined the people who had entered the country with the Padres de la Merced. In these letters he replied to those which we had written when we entered Mopan, and he gave orders in these that the men should retire, leaving thirty men as an escort in that place, since the rainy season was beginning, and because he was doing the same thing on his part; by this we knew that the second basis of the decree did not exist, since the President found himself in Lacandon, which is so far away from the Lake of Ahiza...."

Quarrels among the Soldiers and the Officials. The entrada from Guatemala came to a close to the accompaniment of incessant and petty wrangling on the part of the soldiery and of the officials.

The Writers of the Decree Punished. It is good to know, however, that the writers of the decree were punished by a sound reprimand. Cano was reinstated in the respect of all. He tells the plans for future work in these words: "...He [President Barrios] intended going again the following year by the Province of Vera Paz....For this purpose I proposed to the said President that it was necessary that those roads