The Casa-real being occupied by muleteers, I got permission of the polite owner of a store near by to deposite our trappings, and to make my toilet in one corner of his establishment. For this purpose a heap of corn was removed, which so facilitated my preparations, that I was soon in a condition to pay my respects to the town. After I had made some examination of it, however, I concluded that, my time had been wasted. It was, like all the others, as dull and inanimate as the rocks upon which it stood. As I had always discovered, if there were any thing of interest in these places, it radiated from the curate, I bent my steps, in the evening, towards his house. He was a fatherly-looking old gentleman, received me very kindly, ordered the best room in the convent to be made ready for my reception, and a good supper to be prepared. He talked much of his curacy, and seemed to be devoted to the people, as they evidently were to him. Good order was observable about his house, which is rarely to be met with in the like places. He showed me his library, which was composed of about twenty volumes of Latin and Spanish books. After passing a very pleasant evening with this good old man, I bade him adieu and retired to my room, which was decorated, or furnished rather, on all sides, with the symbols of the church, such as crosses, sculls, images, &c.; but which did not, so far as I could discover, materially affect my repose during the night. Early in the morning, after taking chocolate, which my kind host had provided, we were mounted and on our way to Ticul. We passed through a number of small towns, one of which was Mani, about three leagues from Teabo, and formerly the capital of the province. The only fact connected with the history of this place, of interest to the traveller, is one of a character kindred to that which has given an infamous immortality to the Calif Omar, and, in later days, to Cardinal Ximenes; a man who lived in an age, and professed a religion, which should have taught him better. This was the place, as I learned while at Merida, where the ancient history of the Maya people was destroyed, by order of a Franciscan monk named Landa. These books were thought by the inquisitor to contain some heretical matters; and, with a bigotry and stupidity which we can now hardly allude to in terms sufficiently moderate to be printed, he directed those books to be taken out and burnt in the public square. This history was written in hieroglyphical characters, and its destruction has doubtless deprived posterity of the key to the whole history of the Maya nation.