silver they possessed, even to the royal insignia; and to emphasize his demand he snatched from the wretched kings their earrings, so that they shed tears at the physical pain. "If within five days all your gold is not here, woe be unto you! I know well my heart!" The kings, advised by a native priest, decided to leave the city with their wives and children, and they resolutely refused to return when Alvarado sent friendly messages and promises to them. Then the Spaniards began a war of extermination and slavery against the Cakchiquels, and the Quichés and Tzutohiles now took the side of the invaders against their hereditary enemies. All this destruction and misery had come upon Guatemala in one year, 1524. When the tribes were conquered, one by one, their sufferings only commenced; for so terrible was the slavery to which the Indian population of Guatemala was reduced that death was welcomed by the sufferers, and the Quiché nobles refused to rear children to serve their conquerors.

I do not care to follow the history of Guatemala under Spanish rule; it would be no pleasure excursion through the sloughs of deceit and over mountains of tyranny. Priests and soldiers vied with each other in iniquity; and the Indios, then as now, seem to have been the most moral part of the population.

In closing this long chapter on the early people of the kingdom, I would call the attention of my readers to the present Indians of Guatemala and their relationship, according to Dr. Otto Stoll. This learned ethnologist classifies the Indios mainly by language rather than by physical data, and I am myself scep

tical of the value of linguistic distinctions. I know Bengalis who speak English most perfectly, and I can well imagine their losing their mother-tongue from disuse or disassociation with their brethren; but the Bengali does not thus become an Anglo-Saxon. I believe very little stress should be put on lingual relationships; and also do I protest against any system of classification founded on the cranium alone: the whole body, outer integuments as well as osseous frame, must be called in witness; and one day perhaps the study of human proportions and physical peculiarities will result in a classification in which language plays no part, or at least a very subsidiary one. In the mean time let us take the chart of the Swiss professor as the best thing we have at present. The nineteen tribes or families Dr. Stoll names as follows, and their location is indicated by the numbers on the chart:

Of the Aztec stem, only the Pipiles (12) are found in Guatemala. They are probably the descendants of the Tultecs, who were subdued by the Olmecs. Of the Mije stem are the small tribe of Pupulucas (14). The Caribbean stem is represented on the coast by the Caribs (19); and of these so many differing accounts have been given that I am tempted to give a fuller description.

When the West Indies were discovered, they were peopled by several races; but among them none were so formidable as the inhabitants of the southern islands of that

clawed the poor Indio. All things being ready for his execution, he turned to the king and all the others, crying, "Wait a bit, until you hear what I wish to say to you. Know that the time is at hand when you will despair at the calamities which are to come upon you, and that mama-caixon must die; and know that some men clothed not naked like you from head to foot, and armed, men terrible and cruel, sons of Teja, will come, perhaps to-morrow, perhaps the next day, and will destroy all these palaces, and will make them dwellings for the owls and wildcats, and all the grandeur of this court shall pass away." When he had spoken they sacrificed him, and paid little attention to his prophecy. Warring here and there, suffering defeat seldom, but troubled with diseases and epidemics, a plague came at last which nearly depopulated the city of Tecpan, and was especially fatal among the nobility, both kings dying. So great was the mortality that there was not time to bury the dead, and they were often left to the vultures.

When this scourge had passed, Achi-Balam and BelehéQat were called to the throne, and during their reign came the news of the terrible work of the Spaniards in Mexico. These young kings decided to send an embassy to the mighty chief of the invaders, begging his protection and aid against their enemies. We have to-day the letter of Cortez to Charles V., dated in Mexico, Oct. 15, 1524, describing this embassy of Guatemalans to surrender their country and countrymen to the foreign devils who had destroyed their neighbors beyond the forests of the North. One almost feels that these wretched Cakchiquels deserved the miseries they brought upon them