"In his second voyage, Columbus heard vague rumors of a mainland westward from Jamaica and Cuba, at a distance of ten days' journey in a canoe. ... During his fourth voyage (1503-4), when he was exploring the Gulf southwest from Cuba, he picked up a canoe laden with cotton clothing variously dyed. The natives in it gave him to understand that they were merchants, and came from a land called Maia. This is the first mention in history of the territory now called Yucatan, and of the race of the Mayas; for although a province of similar name was found in the western extremity of the island of Cuba, the similarity was accidental, as the evidence is conclusive that no colony of the Mayas was found on the Antilles. ... Maya was the patrial name of the natives of Yucatan. It was the proper name of the northern portion of the peninsula. No single province bore it at the date of the Conquest, and probably it had been handed down as a generic term from the period, about a century before, when this whole district was united under one government. ... Whatever the primitive meaning and first application of the name Maya, it is now used to signify specifically the aborigines of Yucatan. In a more extended sense, in the expression 'the Maya family,' it is understood to embrace all tribes, wherever found, who speak related dialects presumably derived from the same ancient stock as the Maya proper. ... The total number of Indians of pure blood speaking the Maya proper may be estimated as nearly or quite 200,000, most of them in the political limits of the department of Yucatan; to these should be added nearly 100,000 of mixed blood, or of European descent, who use the tongue in daily life. For it forms one of the rare examples of American languages possessing vitality enough not only to maintain its ground, but actually to force itself on European settlers and supplant their native speech. ... The Mayas did not claim to be autochthones. Their legends referred to their arrival by the sea from the East, in remote times, under the leadership of Itzamna, their hero-god, and also to a less numerous immigration from the West, which was connected with the history of another hero-god, Kukul Càn. The first of these appears to be wholly mythical. ... The second tradition deserves more attention from the historian. ... It cannot be denied that the Mayas, the Kiches [or Quiches] and the Cakchiquels, in their most venerable traditions, claimed to have migrated from the north or west from some part of the present country of Mexico. These traditions receive additional importance from the presence on the shores of the Mexican Gulf, on the waters of the river Panuco, north of Vera Cruz, of a prominent branch of the Maya family, the Huastecs. The idea suggests itself that these were the rear-guard of a great