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206 the names of the personages who played the principal parts in the events which followed. Chac-Xib-Chac was the "Governor" of Chichen Itza, and it would appear that he conspired against the ruler of Mayapan, Hunac Ceel, who drove him out, according to the, no doubt, partisan account of the Xiu house, by "treachery." This treachery probably implies the employment of the foreign mercenaries mentioned above, since Hunac Ceel's agents are called the "seven men of Mayapan," and their names, which are recorded, are Nahua rather than Maya. Ulil, the ruler of Itzamal, also appears to have been implicated in the conspiracy against the ruling house. But whatever was the exact course of events, the net result was that Chichen Itza was depopulated about the year 1187; meanwhile the Nahua mercenaries had influenced the ethnography of the country by the introduction of the bow as a weapon. But the end was not yet, the people of Chichen Itza nursed their revenge, and about a century later instigated a general rising which resulted in the sack of Mayapan and the slaughter of the ruler and all his sons except one, who was at the time absent in the Uloa valley. The survivor on his return collected the remnants of the Cocomes and settled at Sotuta, the Xiu faction retiring to Mani. The Mexican mercenaries, who no doubt formed too formidable a section to be attacked directly, were allowed to form a settlement at Ahcanul, north-east of Campeche. Itzamal however survived; a noble of high rank, Ahchel, who had married the daughter of a high-priest of Mayapan, took up his residence at Tikoch near the coast, with his numerous sons. The family increased in numbers and importance, and later constituted a ruling house, known as the Chel, with its capital at Itzamal. Subsequent history relates various struggles between the Xiu, Cocomes and Chel, the Cocomes preventing the Chel from obtaining game and cereals from the interior, and the