66 APPENDIX. 



months every year exi^osed to the deluge of tropical rains, and with trees 

 growing through the doorways of buildings and on the tops, it seems impossible 

 that, after a lapse of two or three thousand years, a single edifice could now be 

 standing."* 



He further quotes in support of his view the statements of the veracious 

 Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who shared in the three successive expeditions to 

 Yucatan under Hernandez de Cordova, Grrijalva and Cortes, in the course of 

 which he saw many occupied buildings of lime and stone (temples, etc.), corre- 

 si^onding in character with the ruins now met with in the same districts. 

 Speaking of a small temple on the Island of Cozumel, he thinks there is no 

 violence in the supposition that it is identical with the one in which the Indians 

 performed their rites under the eyes of Cortes and his followers, a practice at 

 once checked by the fanatical conquistador, who gave orders to break and eject 

 the idols, and to convert the heathenish sanctuary into a Christian chapel.f Mr. 

 Stephens also derives much assistance in upholding his opinion from the diary 

 of Grijalva's chaplain, Juan Diaz, who describes the temples and inhabited towns 

 seen in the course of the expedition on the Island of Cozumel and on various 

 points of the coast of Yucatan.J 



While Mr. Stephens was in Merida, the capital of Yucatan, Don Simon 

 Peon, a prominent citizen of that place, and projDrietor of the district in which 

 the ruins of Uxmal are situated, showed him the first title papers to that estate. 

 One of the documents bears as date the 12th of May, 1673, and is a royal instru- 

 ment by which four leagues of land from the buildings of Uxmal to the south, 

 one to the east, another to the west, and another to the north are transferred to 

 the regidor Don Lorenzo de Evia, in recognition of important services rendered 

 to the crown. In the preamble some of the regidor's grounds for soliciting the 

 royal favor are_set forth, among them the following: — He wished to stock the 

 said places and meadows with horned cattle, by which proceeding no injuiy 

 could result to any third person, but, " on the contrary, very great service to 

 God our Lord., because with that estahUshment it would frevient the Indians in 

 those places from worshiping the devil in the ancient buildings which are there, 

 having in them their idols, to which they burn copal, and from performing other 

 detestable sacrifices, as they are doing every day notoriously and publicly ^ 



The regidor, however, was importuned by an Indian, named Juan Can, who 

 claimed the lands on account of his being a descendant of the Indians to whom 

 they formerly belonged, and he produced papers and maps in support of his 

 request. In order to avoid trouble, Don Lorenzo de Evia paid to the Indian the 



* Stephens : Central America, etc.; vol. ii, p. 443. 



■j- Stephens : Yucatan ; vol. ii, p. 374. — The incident is related by Bernal Diaz in his " Historia Verdadera de 

 la Conqvista de la Nueva-Espaiia;" Madrid, 1G32, cap. xxvii, fol. 19. 

 J I shall refer to this diary on a succeeding page. 



