EEPORT OF EXPLORATIONS IN CENTRAL AMERICA. 425 



natural kindness and hospitality of tlic people. During- a month which I remained 

 on the island, I made some excursions on the lake and to the mainland, collect- 

 ing s]!ecimens and examining some points of special interest to archseology. 

 The difficulty of movements from this place, however, decided me to choose another 

 centre for m}^ further explorations, and I changed to the village Sacluk, about 

 20 miles to the southv.est of Flores, situated in the savanna region, half way 

 lictween tlie lake and the Passion river. The prairie lands, bordered at the north 

 by the forest hills surrounding the Chaltuna lake, and to the south and west by 

 the woods along the Passion river and its tributaries, are of a peculiar formation. 

 An alluvium of red clay,* covered with a stratum of humus form three to eight 

 inches thick, on which graminese of great variety and only a few species of suiall 

 trees grow, is intersected by numerous groups and chains of low conical hills 

 i'rom 30 to 120 feet high, formed by large calcareous rocks (some with caves) and 

 1 )onlders. In the northern part these hills are covered with wood and forest trees ; 

 in the southern ]5art they are, like the plain, covered only with grass and small 

 prairie herbs. The country, divided into numberless smaller and larger valleys, 

 many of them adorned with lakes, around which the cattle feed, forms a beauti- 

 fully varied and picturesque landscape. From this point I m.ade numerous excur- 

 sions in all directions ; I surveyed part of the Rio de la Pasion and a numlier of 

 its tributary rivers and lagoons, all of them located erroneously and with false 

 names in the existing maps, thus collecting the material for the completion of a 

 map of southeastern Mexico, which has occupied my' leisure hours dining a num- 

 lier of years. Among the Pcten Indians and the Lacandones of the Passion 

 river, who both speak dialects of the ilaya language, I found favoral>lc oppor- 

 tunity to continue my ethnological and linguistical studies, and was enabled also, 

 by occasional meetings with Indians from Cahabon and Caban, to add the Quecchi 

 to my collection of vocabularies of languages belonging to the region between 

 the isthmus of Tehuantepec and the other of Honduras. 



Of all the Indians of this part of Central America none are of so great interest 

 as the Lacandones. Once a numerous and powerful nation, which, united with 

 the Mauches and Acalanes, (both now extinct,) gave so much trouble to the con- 

 querors, and, in fact, have never been fully subjugated, they are reduced to-day 

 to a very insignificant number, living on and near the Passion river and its tribu- 

 taries. Some old authors distinguish the eastern from the western Lacandones, 

 and it seems that they were, in fact, as well as those of the west, of different 

 tribes, living on the borders of the Mexican state of Chiapas, speaking a differ- 

 ent language, called Piitiim or Cliol., which belongs to the family of languages 

 connected with the Maya. To these western Lacandones are referred the stories 

 of a large inaccessil)le city mentioned by Stephens. They live far from the set- 

 tlements of the whites and do not trade with them, nor do they entertain any 

 relations with the eastern Lacandones, who fear and avoid them. The eastern 

 lacandones are a harmless tribe, who live in small palm huts, consisting of lit- 

 tle more than a roof, and grouped into little hamlets of a few families, often 

 changing their locality. They cultivate the field, plant fruit-trees, sugar-cane, 

 and Sisal hemp ; search the woods for wild cocoa, beeswax, honey, and other 

 products of the forest ; hunt with bows and stone-headed arrows, and navigate, 

 by means of their small canoes, the lagoons and rivers from v.hich they obtain 

 plenty of fish and turtles. Although occasionally baptized by Catholic mission- 

 iiries and fond of saying their prayers, they still adhere to their old heathen wor- 

 ship, and indulge in polygamy, keeping as many wives as they are able to pur- 

 chase or to steal. They visit the villages of the whites and settled Indians to 

 sell their produce. Having adopted a little orphan boy of this tribe, and speak- 

 iaig their language, I soon won their friendship. They have, in my excursions 

 on the water and in the woods, been of the greatest utility to me, as also to the 



* On occasion of the excavation of a well in Sacluk I saw the clay reaching a depth of 

 50 feet, intersected at about oU fcot from the surface by a small layer of pebbles. 



