There are also other circumstances connected with this legend which appear, to some extent, to remove it from a mythical character and to place it within the limits of legitimate inquiry and investigation. The Indians who described the events spoke of them in a manner which was not vague, but was clear and decided, and as being within the personal knowledge of their ancestors. They also always gave a description of the monuments of the strangers or of their chief. Thus, in Yucatan, the leader was said to have left that region for the coast of Mexico. At Cholula, it was the tradition that Quetzalcoatl, with several of his companions, went away to the sea shore near Goascoalco, in the direction of Yucatan and never returned. In the regions of the interior of Chiapas and Guatemala, it was stated that in several of the native manuscripts accounts were given of a great leader or chief named Votan who was believed to have arrived in that country with nineteen companions or other chiefs. Votan was supposed to have landed in America near the Laguna de Terminos and to have established his first settlement near Palenque.[112] The most singular circumstance relating to the worship of Quetzalcoatl is the fact that a cross should have been the chief emblem in the temple especially dedicated to him at Palenque. The fact of this symbol being worshipped by the Indians in the New World may perhaps not be deemed particularly strange, but it has to be taken into consideration that there is no record of any figure in the shape of a cross having been an object of devotion in any part of America, except in the regions that had been occupied by the Toltecs. When the Spaniards arrived in Yucatan they reported that they saw in the court of a temple at Cozumel a cross made of lime and stone which was worshipped by the natives. There were some doubts about the precise meaning assigned to this image, possibly owing to the difficulties of understanding the Maya language, but it was afterwards ascertained that it represented the god of rain. The cross on the altar at Palenque is of an entirely different character, and evidently forms the principal part of the emblem representing Quetzalcoatl. How did it come to pass that this exceptional figure of a cross should have been sculptured upon the tablet representing the emblems of the white stranger who, according to the Indian traditions, landed upon their shores, coming from the east in a sacerdotal dress, wearing sandals upon his feet and having red crosses embroidered upon his cape?[113]