when they might possibly have effected their escape,
were entitled to their personal freedom, within the limits of the city,
and might eventually, under voluntary but indispensable obligations,
become eligible to all the privileges of citizenship, within the same
limits. In the mean time, they were to be maintained as pensioners of
state, on condition that they made no use of their dangerous weapons,
nor exhibited them to terrify the people. With this decision, Huertis
and his companions were perfectly satisfied, for the latter had
undiminished confidence in his ability and determination to achieve
their escape, as soon as he should have accomplished the scientific
objects of his expedition. On leaving the hall of justice, they observed
the elder military chief, of whom a slight mention has been made,
brought in with two others of inferior rank; and it was afterwards
currently reported that they had been sentenced to close imprisonment.
It was, also, ascertained by Velasquez, that the four companies of
rangers, already noticed, composing a regiment of two hundred men,
constituted the whole military force of this timid and peaceful people.

From this point, our abstract of the narrative must be chiefly a brief
catalogue of the most important of the concluding events. The place of
residence assigned to our travellers, was the vacant wing of a spacious
and sumptuous structure, at the western extremity of the city, which had
been appropriated, from time immemorial, to the surviving remnant of an
ancient and singular order of priesthood called Kaanas, which, it was
distinctly asserted in their annals and traditions, had accompanied the
first migration of this people from the Assyrian plains. Their peculiar
and strongly distinctive lineaments, it is now perfectly well
ascertained are to be traced in many of the sculptured monuments of the
central American ruins, and were found still more abundantly on those of
Iximaya. Forbidden, by inviolably sacred laws, from intermarrying with
any persons but those of their own caste, they had here dwindled down,
in the course of many centuries, to a few insignificant individuals,
diminutive in stature, and imbecile in intellect. They were,
nevertheless, held in high veneration and affection by the whole
Iximayan community, probably as living specimens of an antique race so
nearly extinct. Their position, as an order of priesthood, it is now
known, had not been higher, for many ages, if ev