HISTORY OF THE SPANISH CONQUEST OF YUCATAN AND OF THE ITZAS

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as they came up to the novel sight, some necklaces and other trinkets
and trifles for their wives and daughters, and for the men some knives,
for the desire to possess which all came again, thus obliging me to
give them presents a second time, all which I did with pleasure, one
reason being the abundance of what our benefactors in their kind zeal
had given me, and the other in order to draw them to our Catholic
faith, which comes to them more through the eye than through the
hearing, since they are covetous in the extreme. They approached me to
get what I had remaining in some hampers, in which I carried for the
petty King an entire suit of clothes, in the fashion of the Indians of
this Province, which the Governor gave me, and other things which I was
carrying for the chiefs of Peten Ytza, in order the better to gain
their good will, besides other things necessary for our ministry and
support. And they made a request of me to let them see these things,
carried away by their gross inquisitiveness as much as by their
excessive covetousness. And scarcely did I yield and show them what I
had in the said hampers, when, with an insatiable desire they began to