430 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



peachy, forty Leagues from Silan, which was looked 

 upon as very dangerous, because the Country was 

 very populous ; but the Lord of Silan and others 

 bearing them Company, they arrived in Safety, and 

 the Cheles returned to their own Homes." Cogol- 

 ludo, too, traces the routed Spaniards to Silan, but 

 thence, with more probabihty, he carries them by 

 sea to Campeachy ; for, as he well suggests, the lords 

 of Silan would not have been able to give them safe 

 escort through forty leagues of territory inhabited 

 by different tribes, all hostile to the Spaniards, and 

 some of them hostile to the Cheles themselves. This 

 difference, however, is unimportant; both accounts 

 prove that there was a large town of aboriginal in- 

 habitants in this vicinity, and, as at Ticul and Noh- 

 cacab, we must either suppose that these great 

 mounds are the remains of the aboriginal town, or 

 we must believe that another town of the same name 

 existed in this immediate neighbourhood, of which 

 no trace whatever now remains. 



The reader may remember that we left the port 

 before daylight. As I stood on the top of the mound, 

 all that I needed to fill up the measure of my satis- 

 faction was the certainty of a breakfast. The pa- 

 dre seemed to divine my thoughts ; he relieved me 

 from all uneasiness, and enabled me to contemplate 

 with a tranquil mind the sublimity of these remains 

 of a fallen people. When Doctor Cabot arrived he 

 found a table that surprised him. 



Silan was known to us as the scene of a modern 



