The villages we passed were monotonously alike: squares of palm-leaf-thatched huts round a plot of wiry grass centred by the village well with gibbet-like uprights and cross-piece of wood over which hung the bucket. At all hours of the day there clustered here knots of Indian women and girls, the _cantaros_ (earthenware water-jars) balanced on their left hips as they pattered to and fro to their whitewashed huts with the precious liquid. We generally called our midday halt between these settlements, as we found that our arrival was hailed with the same popular excitement as that which welcomes a circus in an English village; and it is a trifle disconcerting, even if your menu is not very varied, to eat one's lunch in the centre of a serried circle of bright-eyed children and women, and grinning, wondering men. But the fourth day at the little village of Pokboc we were so much tempted by the wonderful shade of a large ceibo-tree which stood by the huge ruined church, inside the gaunt staring walls of which a whitewashed Indian hut now did duty for such infrequent services as were held, that we broke our rule. Though we were now deep in Yucatan's cool season, the heat had been blistering all the morning, and, steering as we had been due north on a fairly straight road, the sun on our backs had made us feel quite sick. Thus the deep shade offered by the giant tree, the leafiest of all trees found in the country, was an irresistible temptation. The horses, too, had suffered, and stood as meek as lambs to be unsaddled. But before we had got far in our preparations for a meal half the village was round us, to make way in a second for two men, one about sixty, with a long tufted beard of grey, growing from the extreme limit of his chin, the other some twenty years younger. They cordially introduced themselves as the village Jefe and his son; the latter insisting upon calling himself "el secretario." They kept the store and public-house of the village, and, in the absence of customers, had filled up their time by serving themselves so liberally that they were quite merry. They insisted that we should come to their shop and take some of their "_agua ardiente_" (fire-water: and it lives up to its name too); but we explained that we were teetotalers.