From Pokboc it was some three leagues (all distances in Yucatan are measured by the league, which is not the well-conducted league of Europe, but, like the French verbs, irregular to the verge of impropriety) to Calotmul on a road which seemed redder and hotter than ever. Calotmul is a town run to seed, a ruinous unwieldy place with a plaza of mangy grass as big as Trafalgar Square, a long stuccoed, arcaded building in one corner of which served as the Jefetura where loitered some of Contrario's brothers-in-arms. Big as these decayed Spanish-Indian villages are, there is never any attempt at an inn, the very rare travellers by the roads being local Yucatecans who are sure of having one or more kinsmen in each village. So knowing no one and having been sated with Yucatecan interiors at vile Valladolid, we pushed on through the town, preferring the freedom of our woodland hotel. Our obstinacy much alarmed Contrario. He knew that Tizimin, the town to which we were steering and which was to serve as the base for serious exploration, was fourteen miles further on, and he thought we intended to try and reach it that night. But he became easier in his mind when we unhooked from the saddle our tripod boiler, which had throughout the journey served as a pail for fetching drinking-water, and sent him back to the well. By the time he had overtaken us we had selected a camping-ground about half a mile from the village, the horses were feeding quietly by the roadside, the baggage had been carried into the woods and our hammocks slung.