A LIVING CITY. 195 



entreat that they would come and make him acquainted 

 with what was contained in the songs of the Indian 

 merchants. A single Dominican friar returned with the 

 ambassador, and the cacique, having been made to 

 comprehend the mysteries of the new faith, burned his 

 idols and preached Christianity to his own subjects. 

 Las Casas and another associate followed, and, like the 

 apostles of old, without scrip or staff, effected what 

 Spanish arms could not, bringing a portion of the Land 

 of War to the Christian faith. The rest of the Tierra 

 de Guerra never was conquered ; and at this day the 

 northeastern section, bounded by the range of the Cor- 

 dilleras and the State of Chiapas, is occupied by Can- 

 dones or unbaptized Indians, who live as their fathers 

 did, acknowledging no submission to the Spaniards, and 

 the government of Central America does not pretend 

 to exercise any control over them. But the thing that 

 roused us was the assertion by the padre that, four days 

 on the road to Mexico, on the other side of the great 

 sierra, was a living city, large and populous, occupied 

 by Indians, precisely in the same state as before the 

 discovery of America. He had heard of it many years 

 before at the village of Chajul, and was told by the vil- 

 lagers that from the topmost ridge of the sierra this city 

 was distinctly visible. He was then young, and with 

 much labour climbed to the naked summit of the sierra, 

 from which, at a height of ten or twelve thousand feet, he 

 looked over an immense plain extending to Yucatan and 

 the Gulf of Mexico, and saw at a great distance a large 

 city spread over a great space, and with turrets white 

 and glittering in the sun. The traditionary account of 

 the Indians of Chajul is, that no white man has ever 

 reached this city ; that the inhabitants speak the Maya 

 language, are aware that a race of strangers has con- 



