Page:History of the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas.pdf/159

136 son of the very wise God. In their language they call him Ahcocabmut....

At the Temple. "We came to the said temple which had more space than the hall of the petty King, although it is the same in its structure. Here we dimly saw a box suspended, in which we saw indistinctly (although hastily) a bone of the leg or thigh, very large in size, which appeared to be that of a horse; and I confess that though we had much to do that afternoon, which was the time that we stayed in that temple, we acted a little unwisely, since we neither asked what that bone was, nor did we remember in the rest of the days to go and look at it more deliberately. This thought occurred to us when we had left Peten, when our error was irremediable (which was a cause of greater grief) because we remembered then that that bone was by chance from the horse which Cortes left in their care, which they had kept as a relic or to hold him in memory, since they rendered worship (as I said before) to his statue.

The Padres Read the Letters. "At last I brought out the letters of the message and it cost no little trouble to make them sit down and keep quiet, so that they might hear it. I called before us all the priests, who are the Masters of the law, and all the caciques, captains and chiefs of all the districts of that island or Peten.... I began to read to them the message which the Governor sent in writing in the name of the King our Lord; and in the few moments that I had read to them, seeing their manner and the little attention which they showed, I perceived that they did not understand what I was reading to them, and having asked them about this, they replied in the words, ' manucan a can twot kanil caxicin,' which means, 'we do not understand what you say.' Then, leaving off reading the letter,... I explained the said message to them in the ancient idiom, and inserting a spiritual sermon... and all this was explained to them with some eagerness, mixing in some words of their prophecies, which were at that time to the point. They heard it gladly, because they understood it all.... They answered in these words, ' cato vale,' which is