The Padres Please Other Indians by Means of Little Gifts. "I gave them, as they came up to the novel sight, some necklaces and other trinkets and trifles for their wives and daughters, and for the men some knives, for the desire to possess which all came again, thus obliging me to give them presents a second time, all which I did with pleasure, one reason being the abundance of what our benefactors in their kind zeal had given me, and the other in order to draw them to our Catholic faith, which comes to them more through the eye than through the hearing, since they are covetous in the extreme. They approached me to get what I had remaining in some hampers, in which I carried for the petty King an entire suit of clothes, in the fashion of the Indians of this Province, which the Governor gave me, and other things which I was carrying for the chiefs of Peten Ytza, in order the better to gain their good will, besides other things necessary for our ministry and support. And they made a request of me to let them see these things, carried away by their gross inquisitiveness as much as by their excessive covetousness. And scarcely did I yield and show them what I had in the said hampers, when, with an insatiable desire they began to covet all, the act of touching and the desire to take everything becoming uppermost with them, rather than the modest civility of asking for it...." The Padres Renew their March. "With great demonstrations of love they loaded themselves with all our goods and supplies (except the sacred robes, since we did not bring them till we knew that the outcome was safe) without giving an opportunity to any of the singers whom we had brought with us to carry anything. With this accompanying we set out on the road which leads in the direction of the East, for Peten Ytza, which is about five leagues off, all the Indians who lived round Cha Kan Ytza accompanying us with their wives and children, giving shouts of joy in order to excite the rest to accompany us." Nich. "We went on in this manner to the landing place of the lake where one enters the said Peten Ytza, on the shore of which is found a little town called Nich, which consists of about ten houses. In one of them I saw an Indian, the oldest one I had seen up to that time in the nation of the Cehaches, nor up to the present time in that of the Ytzaes, since they have the custom of beheading them when they pass fifty years, so that they shall not learn to be wizards and to kill; except the priests of their idols, for whom they have great respect. And this man must have been one without doubt.