[Note 22:  Diego Landa, in his Cosas de Yucatan, and Cogolludo (Hist. de Yucatan), treat this subject.  Peter Martyr likewise elaborates it in his letters to Pomponius Laetus and the Cardinal de Santa Croce. Opus Epistolarum, ep. 177 and 180.]

Another story, most illustrious Prince, is still more quaint.  There is a cavern called Jouanaboina, situated in the territory of a cacique called Machinnech, which is venerated with as great respect by the majority of the islanders as were formerly the caves of Corinth, of Cyrrha, and Nissa amongst the Greeks.[23] The walls of this cavern are decorated with different paintings; two sculptured zemes, called Binthiatelles and Marohos, stand at the entrance.

[Note 23:  The caverns of Hayti have been visited and described by Decourtilz, Voyage d’un Naturaliste.  Some of them contain carvings representing serpents, frogs, deformed human figures in distorted postures, etc.]

When asked why this cavern is reverenced, the natives gravely reply that it is because the sun and moon issued forth from it to illuminate the universe.  They go on pilgrimages to that cavern just as we go to Rome, or to the Vatican, Compostela, or the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.

Another kind of superstition is as follows.  They believe the dead walk by night and feed upon guarina, a fruit resembling the quince, but unknown in Europe.  These ghosts love to mix with the living and deceive women.  They take on the form of a man, and seem to wish to enjoy a woman’s favour, but when about to accomplish their purpose they vanish into thin air.  If any one thinks, upon feeling something strange upon his bed, that there is a spectre lying beside him, he only needs to assure himself by touching his belly, for, according to their idea, the dead may borrow every human member except the navel.  If therefore the navel is absent, they know that it is a ghost, and it is sufficient to touch it to make it immediately disappear.  These ghosts frequently appear by night to the living, and very often on the public highways; but if the traveller is not frightened, the spectre vanishes.  If, on the contrary, he allows himself to be frightened, the terror inspired by the apparition is such that many of the islanders completely lose their heads and self-possession.  When the Spaniards asked who ever had infected them with this mass of ridiculous beliefs, the natives replied that they received them from their ancestors, and that they have been preserved from time immemorial in poems which only the sons of chiefs are allowed to learn.  These poems are learnt by heart, for they have no writing; and on feast days the sons of chiefs sing them to the people, in the form of sacred chants.[24] Their only musical instrument is a concave sonorous piece of wood which is beaten like a drum.

[Note 24:  Commonly called in the native tongue arreytos.  Some specimens exist.  Brasseur de Bourbourg in his Grammaire Quiche gives the Rabinal Achi.]