Page:History of the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas.pdf/161

138 cato vale.' 'We will answer soon.' And the King, speaking aside with me, asked what it was I wished to hear; to which I replied, 'to know if you wish to receive the law of God and the friendship of the Spaniards which I offered you yesterday, and if you wish to undertake to be Christians, as has been prophesied to you by your prophets, since you are not ignorant of them. The time has come.' To which the King, together with the two other priests who were with him, replied to me that they were willing to become Christians, but that they did not know how that kind of baptism which I had explained to them was to be carried out. Then I, taking as a text that verse of Ezekiel, 'I will sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean; from all your iniquities and your idols will I cleanse you,' explained the said text to them, item by item.... They replied to this in these words,- ' ba valac a toca vale,' which means 'so it will be when tomorrow dawns and we shall see it.' With this we all went to the temple, where we stopped and where they were present all night. Before God brought the dawn, they had already caused to be brought some cups of warm posole, which they are accustomed to drink, so that with this and the rest of the supplies which they use, such as..., beans, cooked squashes, flesh of wild pigs, prawns and other kinds of fish, with whatever each man found in his house, and all this with many tortillas of maize bread, and they did not stop bringing these till night; there being an excess of everything, so that when we saw that these same people did not depart from here, we gave it back again to them to eat, which they did, the King beginning first.

A Baptism Performed. "Having breakfasted this first day on warm posole, we began for the third time to speak about the spiritual lecture of the day before,... and having heard for the third time this lecture, anxious to receive the said baptism, although suspicious of what it was, since they thought that there was some shedding of blood or circumcision or cutting of some part of their body, they said that they wished to see in one case how that was done, and at this time the King, taking hold of one child of the many of his family which he had concealed behind the temple for the said purpose, said to me, -