moment to the
reader. It now belongs to the government of Guatimala, and is under the
ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of Yucatan. Formerly it was
the principal place of the province of Itza, which province, for one
hundred and fifty years after the subjugation of Yucatan, maintained
its fierce and native independence. In the year 1608, sixty-six years
after the conquest, two Franciscan monks, alone, without arms, and in
the spirit of peace, set out to conquer this province by converting the
natives to Christianity. The limits of these pages will not permit me
to accompany them in their toilsome and dangerous journey, but,
according to the account of one of them as given by Cogolludo, at ten
o'clock at night they landed on the island, were provided with a house
by the king, and the next day preached to the Indians; but the latter
told them that the time had not yet come for them to become Christians,
and advised the monks to go away and return at some other day.
Nevertheless, they carried them round to see the town, and in the
middle of one of the temples they saw a great idol of the figure of a
horse, made of lime and stone, seated on the ground on his haunches,
with his hind legs bent, and raised on his fore feet, being intended as
an image of the horse which Cortez left at that place on his great
journey from Mexico to Honduras. On that occasion the Indians had seen
the Spaniards fire their muskets from the backs of the horses, and
supposing that the fire and noise were caused by the animals, they
called this image Tzimin Chac, and adored it as the god of thunder and
lightning. As the monks saw it, one of them, says the author of the
account, seemed as if the Spirit of the Lord had descended upon him;
and, carried away by zealous fervour, seized the foot of the horse with
his hand, mounted upon the statue, and broke it in pieces. The Indians
immediately cried out to kill them; but the king saved them, though
they were obliged to leave the island.

In the beginning of October, 1619, the same two monks, undaunted by
their previous ill success, again appeared on the island; but the
people rose up against them. One of the padres remonstrated; an Indian
seized him by the hair, twisted his neck, and hurled him to the ground,
tearing out his hair by the roots, and throwing it away. He was picked
up senseless, and, with his companion and the accompanying Indians, put
on board a bad canoe, without anything to eat, a