My thoughts were cut short as we reached the village and I glanced about at the inhabitants. Some scurried out of sight at our approach, others stared curiously at us, still others wore hostile expressions, while some smiled friendly greetings; but one and all were totally different from any Indians we had seen. I seemed to have stepped back five hundred years, to have dropped into a Mayan village of the time of the conquest. Living duplicates of Mayan sculptures were on every side. Here were the artificially distorted skulls, the heavy noses, the elaborately ornate costumes of the Mayan bas-reliefs. Not that every individual was of that type. The features of many were typically Indian, but in every case the costumes were those of the old Mayas. There was not a coat, a shirt, a pair of trousers or a hat in the entire village. Fray José had left much untold--perhaps he had wanted to give me a surprise; perhaps it was so familiar to him that he had forgotten to mention the details. Whatever the reason--with such people before me, with the great temple on its lofty Kus now rising above my head, it seemed perfectly natural that in this spot the old priest-cult of the Mayas should still survive and hold its power. And it spoke volumes for Fray José’s sympathy with the natives, for the Indians’ confidence and faith in the jolly Padre, that he had been allowed to visit this village, had become friendly with the priest, and that I also had been allowed to reach the place without molestation. We had now passed through the village, had skirted the base of the temple-mound and had approached a low, ancient stone building with a sculptured frieze of jaguar heads and entwined serpents.