Moreover, and this thought quite drove any lingering foolish fears from my mind, the fact that everything so far agreed with the codex and with Katchilcan’s words, pointed towards my ultimate success, towards the actual existence of the hidden city of Mictolan, though I very much doubted if the ancient secret city would still be inhabited. More probably, I thought, it would be in ruins, for in the two thousand years and more that had passed since the Book of Kukulcan was made, there was every chance that the people--always provided there had been any--would have died out, migrated to other localities, been decimated by wars or would have reverted to a semi-savage nomadic life. Cut off from the rest of their race, no longer under the rule of the ancient empire, and outside the influence of the culture and civilization of their fellows, there was scarcely a chance that the colony had survived as an entity, or at least as a civilized community, for twenty centuries and more. The whole known history of the Mayas was against it. The empire had fallen and vanished through the jealousies and feuds of various leaders and the political wars. States and cities had been split up, divided into factions, and I felt sure that the same causes and the same racial traits that had caused the abandonment of such cities as Copan, Chichen Itza, Lubaantum and other great Mayan centres would also have resulted in the abandonment of Mictalon, if that city had existed. We decided to camp at the desert’s edge, as I have said, but, there was no water at the spot, and Maliche slipped away and returned within an hour with two large gourds or calabashes filled with water from a stream we had passed several miles back. Even though the bare area was so small, I felt that it would be wise to carry a supply of water with us. In the tropical jungles, where there is always a superfluity rather than a scarcity of water, no one ever dreams of carrying a canteen, but the calabashes would serve excellently for the purpose. The night passed uneventfully, and before the sun had risen, we were up and tramping across the barren waste towards the dim shapes of the volcanoes, whose summits emitted a soft red glow against the rapidly-paling sky.