[Footnote 3: Yax, first; coc, which means literally deaf, and hence to listen attentively (whence the name Cocomes, for the ancient royal family of Chichen Itza, an appellation correctly translated "escuchadores") and ah-mut, master of the news, mut meaning news, good or bad.]

This was adopted as the title of the ruler of Itzamal, as we learn from the Chronicle of Chichen Itza"Ho ahau paxci u cah yahau ah Itzmal Kinich Kakmo""In the fifth Age the town (of Chichen Itza) was destroyed by King Kinich Kakmo, of Itzamal."

To bring Kukulcan into closer relations with other American hero-gods we must turn to the locality where he was especially worshiped, to the traditions of the ancient and opulent city of Chichen Itza, whose ruins still rank among the most imposing on the peninsula.

After he had completed his work in Chichen Itza, he founded and named the great city of Mayapan, destined to be the capital of the confederacy of the Mayas.

In it was built a temple in his honor, and named for him, as there was one in Chichen Itza.

In gratifying confirmation of the legend, travelers do actually find in Mayapan and Chichen Itza, and nowhere else in Yucatan, the ruins of two circular temples with doors opening toward the cardinal points.

A statue of a sleeping god holding a vase was disinterred by Dr. Le Plongeon at Chichen Itza, and it is too entirely similar to others found at Tlaxcala and near the city of Mexico, for us to doubt but that they represented the same divinity, and that the god of rains, fertility and the harvests.

The celebration itself was called the Festival of the Founder, with reference, I suppose, to the alleged founding of the cities of Mayapan and Chichen Itza by this hero-god.

[Footnote 1: Juan de Villagutierre Sotomayor, Historia de la Provincia de el Itza, passim (Madrid, 1701).

It is a head and throat, sculptured in the round, of Cay Canchi, the high priest and elder brother of the warrior Chaacmol, whose statue we exhumed from 8 meters below the soil in Chichen Itza, during the year 1876; which statue was afterward robbed from us by the Mexican government, and is now in the museum at Mexico city.

Dark star of Itza; the story of a pagan princess.

Princess of Chichen-Itza, the sacred city of the Mayas.

Temples in Yucatan: a camera chronicle of Chichen Itza.

Dark star of Itza; the story of a pagan princess.

Princess of Chichen-Itza, the sacred city of the Mayas.

Temples in Yucatan: a camera chronicle of Chichen Itza.