COGOLLUDO'S HISTORY OF YUCATAN. 79 



since a straggling canoe at the island of Guanaja 

 first gave intelligence of the existence of such a 

 country as Yucatan, and sixteen since Don Fran- 

 cisco Montejo received the royal authority to con- 

 quer and people it. During that time Cortez had 

 driven Montezuma from the throne of Mexico, and 

 Pizarro had seized the sceptre of the Peruvian In- 

 cas. In the glory of these conquests Yucatan was 

 unnoticed, and has been to this day. The ancient 

 historians refer to it briefly and but seldom. The 

 only separate account of it is that of Cogolludo, a 

 native historian. 



The w^ork of this author was pubhshed in the year 

 1658. It is voluminous, confused, and ill-digested, 

 and might almost be called a history of the Francis- 

 can Friars, to which order he belonged. It is from 

 this work principally that, with no small labour, I 

 have gathered the events subsequent to the grant 

 made by the king to Don Francisco Montejo ; it is 

 the only work that purports to give an account of 

 those events, and as it has never been translated, and 

 is scarcely known out of Yucatan, and even in that 

 country is almost out of print, it must at least be new 

 to the reader. 



