At the rear of the last building, buried in the woods, so that we should never have found it but for our patron, is another memorial, perhaps equal in interest to any now existing on the island of Cozumel. It is the ruins of a Spanish church, sixty or seventy feet front and two hundred deep. The front wall has almost wholly fallen, but the side walls are standing to the height of about twenty feet. The plastering remains, and along the base is a line of painted ornaments. The interior is encumbered with the ruins of the fallen roof, overgrown with bushes; a tree is growing out of the great altar, and the whole is a scene of irrecoverable destruction. The history of this church is as obscure as that of the ruined temples whose worship it supplanted. When it was built or why it was abandoned, and, indeed, its very existence, are utterly unknown to the inhabitants of New Spain. There is no record or tradition in regard to it, and, doubtless, any attempt at this day to investigate its history would be fruitless. In the obscurity that now envelops it we read a lesson upon the vanity of human expectations, showing the ignorance of the conquerors in regard to the value of the newly-discovered countries in America. Benito Perez, a priest who accompanied the expedition of Grijalva, solicited from the king the bishopric of this island. At the same time, a more distinguished ecclesiastic was asking for that of the island of Cuba. The king advanced the latter to the higher honour of the bishopric of Cozumel, and put off Benito Perez with what was considered the comparatively insignificant see of Culhua. Cozumel is now a desert, and Culhua, or Mexico, is the richest bishopric in New Spain. But I have a particular reason for presenting to the reader this ruined church. It is a notion, or, rather, a principle, pervading all the old Spanish writers, that at some early day Christianity had been preached to the Indians, and connected with this is the belief that the cross was found by the first conquerors in the province of Yucatan as a symbol of Christian worship. Prophecies are recorded supposed to show a traditionary knowledge of its former existence, and foretelling that from the rising of the sun should come a bearded people and white, who should carry aloft the sign of the cross, which their gods could not reach, and from which they should fly away. The same vague idea exists to this day; and, in general, when the padres pay any attention to the antiquities of the country, they are always quick in discovering some real or imaginary resemblance to the cross. A strong support of this belief is advanced in the "Cozumel Cross" at Merida, found on the island of Cozumel, and in the time of Cogolludo, as at this day, supposed to have been an object of reverence among the Indians before their conversion to Christianity.