HISTORY OF THE SPANISH CONQUEST OF YUCATAN AND OF THE ITZAS

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Hard Travel in the Wilderness for Fifteen Days. "In those fifteen days
that we traveled in a northwesterly direction, we met with many
_akalchees_, or swamps, which consist of very bad passages through
water and low and thorny shrubs with a kind of square grass, which, if
it caught our clothes, held us by the multitude of thorns, which grow
on the four corners from top to bottom; and if it caught our face,
hands or legs, it cut them like a small saw; so that as most of the
woods are _akalchees_, which consist of this grass, except on the high
places, we were always walking with our feet, hands or faces wounded,
so that we did not know what to do. Thus wounded, we went through some
very long _akalchees_, when we directed one of the Indians whom we
brought, to climb a tree so as to look out and see where we could make
a short cut through the said _akalche_, for we were not able to suffer
any longer on account of the many sores which the said grass caused us.
This said Indian climbed the tree, and gave us the news that he had
discovered a great meadow or plain towards the northwest. Some instinct
made me believe it, but to see whether imagination and the wish we had