d
carried with us only the Daguerreotype apparatus, hammocks, one large
box containing our tin table service, a candlestick, bread, chocolate,
coffee, and sugar, and a few changes of clothing in pestaquillas.
Besides Albino and Bernaldo we had a puny lad of about fifteen, named
Barnaby, a much smaller pattern than either of the others, and all
three together were hardly equal in bulk to one fairly developed man.

We were all provided with good horses for the road. Mr. Catherwood had
one on which he could make a sketch without dismounting; Dr. Cabot
could shoot from the back of his. Mine could, on an emergency, be
pushed into a hard day's journey for a preliminary visit. Albino rode a
hard-mouthed, wilful beast, which shook him constantly like a fit of
the fever and ague, and which we distinguished by the name of the
trotter. Bernaldo asked for a horse, because Albino had one, but,
instead of riding, he had to put a strap across his forehead and carry
his own luggage on his back.

We were about entering a region little or not at all frequented by
white men, and occupied entirely by Indians. Our road lay through the
ruins of Kabah, a league beyond which we reached the rancho of Chack.
This was a large habitation of Indians, under the jurisdiction of the
village of Nohcacab. There was not a white man in the place, and as we
rode through, the women snatched up their children, and ran from us
like startled deer. I rode up to a hut into which I saw a woman enter,
and, stopping at the fence, merely from curiosity, took out a cigar,
and, making use of some of the few Maya words we had picked up, asked
for a light, but the door remained shut. I dismounted, and before I had
tied my horse the women rushed out and disappeared among the bushes. In
one part of the rancho was a casa real, being a long thatched hut with
a large square before it, protected by an arbour of leaves, and on one
side was a magnificent seybo tree, throwing its shade to a great
distance round.

On leaving this rancho we saw at a distance on the left a high ruined
building standing alone amid a great intervening growth of woods, and
apparently inaccessible. Beyond, and at the distance of four leagues
from Nohcacab, we reached the rancho of Schawill, which was our first
stopping-place, on account of the ruins of Zayi in its immediate
neighbourhood. This place also was inhabited exclusively by Indians,
rancho being the name given to a settlement not of suffici