HISTORY OF THE SPANISH CONQUEST OF YUCATAN AND OF THE ITZAS

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hills, with other rivers, although they were dry, though the hollows in
them were a proof of their being very full in the rainy season. The
signs were not deceptive, for at a little distance we fell in with a
great _cibal_ or pond full of those grasses with broad and cutting
leaves, of which I spoke before. This was, according to its distance
which was lost to sight, more than two leagues long and half a league
broad. Into this discharged the currents of the rivers of which I
spoke, and it cost us much trouble to go around it, so as to pass it,
changing our course in this, as in the other cases, which I have spoken
of, always to the North. In all this time we had nothing to eat, except
the little honey that I spoke of, so that the animated mass of bones,
owing to the continued troubles of traveling every day and not eating,
now kept growing weaker and weaker. In such a great extremity of a
man's dying without sickness or infirmity, being in his perfect senses,
one can well understand what cries he would utter to God and to his
most holy mother, and to all the saints of his prayers, not only
intended for his bodily comfort, but in order that he should not die