These people were most numerous in Western Guatemala, and at the time of the Conquest the most powerful inhabitants of Central America. The sacred book of the Quiches, known as the _Popol Vuh_, embodies a mythological cosmogony, in which is a Creation story and an account of a Flood, after the manner of that of the Old Testament. (The Quiches are not to be confounded with the Quechuas of Peru.) Their capital was Utatlan, near where stands the modern Santa Cruz Quiche, and the place was cleverly fortified. Their system of government was an elaborate one, as was their religion. Indeed, the student remarks with surprise how far these early peoples had gone in the development of social polity and economic order. The Quiches, like the Aztecs, kept historical records in picture-writing. The Incas, we may remark in passing, of Peru, kept their histories by means of the _quipos_, a mnemonic system of knotted and coloured cords. The Sun God was the chief deity, but there were many lesser objects of adoration. But the religion was of a high order in some respects, although the Spanish priests, after the Conquest, strove to hide the fact, and, indeed, there was wholesale destruction throughout Spanish America of native records and objects, whether it were of the beautiful picture-writings and scrolls of Mexico and Central America, whether the pillars of stone by which the early Peruvian priests skilfully determined the solstices. The jealous priestcraft of the Roman Catholic religion could not tolerate anything that showed ingenuity or knowledge by their pagan predecessors, and all these things they considered, or affected to consider, "things of the devil," and destroyed them wherever possible. The marvel is that so much has remained, for the benefit of the archæologist to-day. The religion of the Quiches, like that of the Mexicans, contained horrible practices involving human sacrifices. This was probably absent in Peru. Repulsive as it was, we may question whether it was as cruel as the dreadful tortures of the Inquisition, such as rendered Mexico and Lima and other places in the New World centres of horror, until the time of Independence, when the infuriated populace destroyed the Inquisitional centres. We have previously remarked that Columbus sailed along the Atlantic coast of Central America, that of Honduras and Costa Rica, and it was here that, seeing the ornaments of gold on the swarthy bodies of the natives, the voyagers' imagination was freshly aroused to the possibilities of conquest. But the natives of this region were not necessarily as docile as those of Hispaniola and the Antilles. They mustered on the shore, leaping from the dark forests as the strange sails of the Spaniards hove in sight, communicating rapidly with each tribe by those peculiar methods they employed, and made the air resound with the beatings and blasts of their war-drums and bugle-shells, brandishing their clubs and swords of palm-wood.