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50 us asked, "Where is the Spaniard?" When Aguilar heard this he squatted on his haunches after the Indian fashion and said, "I am he." Cortes at once gave him a shirt, coat, drawers and shoes from our stores, and asked him to tell how he got to this country. Still in broken Spanish the man told his name—Jeronimo de Aguilar—and how, eight years before, when he and fifteen men and two women were passing from Darien to the island of Santo Domingo, their ship had struck a rock and he and his companions had got into the ship's boat, hoping to make the island of Cuba or Jamaica. But sea currents had carried them to this island. Here the Indians had sacrificed many of his companions, others had died of grief, and the two women, worn out with the labor of grinding corn, of overwork. Aguilar himself the Indians had doomed to sacrifice, but he escaped one night and fled to the cacique from whom we had ransomed him.

This island of Cozumel was, it seemed, a place to which Indians from various parts of Yucatan made pilgrimages for the purpose of sacrificing before some hideous idols which stood in a temple there. The court about this temple we saw one morning crowded with Indians, men and women, burning a resin like our incense. After a while an old Indian, a papa or priest, wearing a long cloak, mounted the steps of