The small river which has been our guiding mark is barely 3 feet deep, but its banks are so high and steep that our mules will only venture in after much coaxing, but once in the stream they feel so nice and cool that they are persuaded with great difficulty to leave it. As for the Mariposa entrusted with my wardrobe, notes, and plates, she laid down and completely disappeared all but the head. I thought it was all over with my documents, and was not able to refrain from a cry of horror; it was a false alarm, which, however, obliged us to spend the best part of the night round the fires to dry both clothes and photographs. In the evening we reached the spot where we had left some of our supplies; everything was exactly as it had been left, but we could hear nothing of the wretched horse which had been abandoned.
Next day we took the Peten road, and arrived four days later at Sacluc, now Libertad, the chief town of Peten, and the last inhabited place in Guatemala. It is but a wretched village, like all we have seen in these warm regions; it lacks everything, and we should literally have starved, but for some clerks, who gave up to us an azotea (flat roof) and part of their supplies.
Our road led east-south-east up to this point; but now its direction is north as far as Flores, some thirty miles beyond, which stands on an islet of the lake of Peten. This road is not far from the Sacpui lagoon mentioned by Bernal Diaz in his account of Cortez’ expedition to Honduras, when the Spaniards “passed a village surrounded by a great lake of fresh water. Near it was a river emptying in the lake, which was used by the Indians to go to the Sacpui lagoon (Chaltuna) and Tayasal, capital of Peten-Itza.
“The place,” says the veteran soldier, “has white houses and temples which glitter in the sun and can be seen six miles distant.”[170] It is clear that Cortez was on the left bank of the only important river discharging itself in the lake, for he dispatched five Spaniards and two Indians in a canoe to require the cacique of Tayasal to furnish him with boats to cross the river. It proves also that the march was much further south than Palenque, and that Izancanac was not Palenque and still less Lorillard, as advanced by Maler in the “Bulletin de la Société Géographique, 2e trimestre 1884,” page 275. His assertion is all the more extraordinary that Diaz’ account shows plainly that Cortez must have gone up the S. Pedro valley to come upon this place, the only one which corresponds to Diaz’ map and itinerary.
It is too absurd to suppose that Cortez, who was provided with a mariner’s compass, whose route lay by Tayasal, should have abandoned the broad level and eastern direction to turn south and encounter the stupendous difficulties of crossing the abrupt range which divides S. Pedro from upper Usumacinta—a détour of more than ninety miles. In that case he would have approached the Sacpui lagoon on the southern and not on the western side, and there would have been no river to cross. We will give Diaz’ own words:
“The villages towards which we steered were on an islet, near a fresh-water lake, which could only be reached by canoes. We walked round two miles and discovered a ford where the water was up to our waist. Here we got some guides, and when Cortez, through Doña Marina, asked them to take us to the towns inhabited by bearded men, they answered that they were quite ready to do so. Five accompanied us; and the road, broad at first, became very narrow, owing to a great river which discharges itself in an estuary not far distant. Here the Indians entered their boats to go to the town we were bound for, called Tayasal.”[171]
The cacique himself came forward and conducted Cortez to his island, who left his wounded horse Marzillo to the care of the Indians. They, after the general’s departure, offered him divine honours and the offerings of their idols, but the invalided animal got worse under such fare and at last died. The affrighted Iztaes raised him a temple and placed in it his sculptured image, worshipping him under the name of Izimin Chac (“thunder and lightning”), because, having witnessed some of the cavaliers shooting deer, they imagined that the flash of their guns proceeded from the animal.[172] The name Izimin Chac recalls the pyramid at Izamal called Papp-hol-Chac, “house of heads and lightning.”
Flores, our next stage, is a lovely place built on the site of ancient Tayasal, beautifully situated on a great lake surrounded by a lofty range of hills. The Spaniards found the Iztaes, who had come from Yucatan, established here. All marks of sculpture and architecture have disappeared; nevertheless, we are able to reconstruct its history and show that the monuments were not ancient.
When Cortez passed here, the town still numbered among its inhabitants men who had come with the emigrant column from Yucatan, and this tradition was current two centuries later. They had preserved the ancient civilisation of the Toltecs, and used the same characters to record their history, which were handed down on manuscripts called “Analtes,” exemplified in the Yucatec and Mexican manuscripts.[173] “Their idols,” says P. Fuensalida, “were like those of the peninsula.”
Such writers as Villa Gutierre Soto Mayor, Cogolludo, and Remesal[174] mention various expeditions sent to subdue this gallant little people, which was the last to surrender to Spanish arms.