Chapter III: Mexico and Central America (3)

There is no part of Spanish America richer in architectural remains than the northern section of Yucatan, and Bancroft (iv. ch. 5) has occasion to enumerate and to describe with more or less fullness between fifty and sixty independent groups of ruins.[1033] Stephens explored forty-four of these abandoned towns, and such was the native ignorance that of only a few of them could anything be learned in Merida. And yet that this country was the land of a peculiar architecture was known to the earliest explorers. Francisco Hernandez de Cordova in 1517, Juan de Grijalva in 1518, Cortés himself in 1519, and Francisco de Montejo in 1527 observed the ruins in Cozumel, an island off the northwest coast of the peninsula, and at other points of the shore.[1034] It is only, however, within the present century that we have had any critical notices. Rio heard reports of them merely. Lorenzo de Zavala saw only Uxmal, as his account given in Dupaix shows. The earliest detailed descriptions were those of Waldeck in his _Voyage pittoresque et achéologique dans la province d’Yucatan_ (Paris, 1838, folio, with steel plates and lithographs), but he also saw little more than the ruins of Uxmal, in the expedition in which he had received pecuniary support from Lord Kingsborough.[1035] It is to John L. Stephens and his accompanying draughtsman, Frederic Catherwood, that we owe by far the most essential part of our knowledge of the Yucatan remains. He had begun a survey of Uxmal in 1840, but had made little progress when the illness of his artist broke up his plans. Accordingly he gave the world but partial results in his _Incidents of Travel in Central America_. Not satisfied with his imperfect examination, he returned to Yucatan in 1841, and in 1843 published at New York the book which has become the main source of information for all compilers ever since, his _Incidents of Travel in Yucatan_ (N. Y., 1842; London, 1843; again, N. Y., 1856, 1858). It was in the early days of the Daguerrean process, and Catherwood took with him a camera, from which his excellent drawings derive some of their fidelity. They appeared in his own _Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America_ (N. Y., 1844), on a larger scale than in Stephens’s smaller pages.

After an etching published in the _Annuaire de la Soc. Amer. de France_. Cf. _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, October, 1875.]

Stephens’s earlier book had had an almost immediate success. The reviewers were unanimous in commendation, as they might well be.[1036] It has been asserted that it was in order to avail of this new interest that a resident of New Orleans, Mr. B. M. Norman, hastened to Yucatan, while Stephens was there a second time, and during the winter of 1841-42 made the trip among the ruins, which is recorded in his _Rambles in Yucatan, or Notes of Travel through the peninsula, including a Visit to the Remarkable Ruins of Chi-chen, Kabah Zayi, and Uxmal_ (New York, 1843).[1037]

The Daguerrean camera was also used by the Baron von Friederichsthal in his studies at Uxmal and Chichen-Itza, and his exploration seems to have taken place between the two visits of Stephens, as Bancroft determines from a letter (April 21, 1841) written after the baron had started on his return voyage to Europe.[1038] In Paris, in October, 1841, under the introduction of Humboldt, Friederichsthal addressed the Academy, and his paper was printed in the _Nouvelles Annales des Voyages_ (xcii. 297) as “Les Monuments de l’Yucatan.”[1039] The camera was not, however, brought to the aid of the student with the most satisfactory results till Charnay, in 1858, visited Izamal, Chichen-Itza, and Uxmal. He gave a foretaste of his results in the _Bulletin de la Soc. de Géog_. (1861, vol. ii. 364), and in 1863 gave not very extended descriptions, relying mostly on his _Atlas_ of photographs in his _Cités et Ruines Américaines_, a part of which volume consists of the architectural speculations of Viollet le Duc. Beside the farther studies of Charnay in his _Anciens Villes du Nouveau Monde_ (Paris, 1885), there have been recent explorations in Yucatan by Dr. Augustus Le Plongeon and his wife, mainly at Chichen-Itza, in which for a while he had the aid and countenance of Mr. Stephen Salisbury, Jr.,[1040] of Worcester, Mass. Le Plongeon’s results are decidedly novel and helpful, but they were expressed with more license of explication than satisfied the committee of that society, when his papers were referred to them for publication, and than has proved acceptable to other examiners.[1041] Nearly all other descriptions of the Yucatan ruins have been derived substantially from these chief authorities.[1042]

Reproduced from an engraving in the London edition, 1887, of the English translation of his _Ancient Cities of the New World_.]

The principal ruins of Yucatan are those of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza, and references to the literature of each will suffice. Those at Uxmal are in some respects distinct in character from the remains of Honduras and of Chiapas. There are no idols as at Copan. There are no extensive stucco-work and no tablets as at Palenqué. The general type is Cyclopean masonry, faced with dressed stones. The Casa de Monjas, or nunnery (so called), is often considered the most remarkable ruin in Central America; and no architectural feature of any of them has been the subject of more inquiry than the protuberant ornaments in the cornices, which are usually called elephants’ trunks.[1043] It has been contended that the place was inhabited in the days of Cortes.[1044]

Also in the _Bull. Soc. de Géog. de Paris_, 1882 (p. 542). The best large (36 × 28 in.) topographical and historical map of Yucatan, showing the site of ruins, is that of Huebbe and Azuar, 1878. The _Plano de Yucatan_, of Santiago Nigra de San Martin, also showing the ruins, 1848, is reduced in Stephen Salisbury’s _Mayas_ (Worcester, 1877), or in the _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, April, 1876, and April, 1877. V. A. Malte-Brun’s map, likewise marking the ruins, is in Brasseur de Bourbourg’s _Palenqué_ (1866). There are maps in C. G. Fancourt’s _Hist. Yucatan_ (London, 1854); Dupaix’s _Antiquités Méxicaines_; Waldeck’s _Voyage dans la Yucatan_ (his MS. map was used by Malte-Brun). Cf. the map of Yucatan and Chiapas, in Brasseur and Waldeck’s _Monuments Anciens du Méxique_ (1866). Perhaps the most convenient map to use in the study of Maya antiquities is that in Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_, iv. Cf. Crescentio Carrillo’s “Geografía Maya” in the _Anales del Museo nacional de México_, ii. 435.

The map in Stephens’s _Yucatan_, vol. i., shows his route among the ruins, but does not pretend to be accurate for regions off his course.

The _Journal of the Royal Geog. Soc._, vol. xi., has a map showing the ruins in Central America.

The best map to show at a glance the location of the ruins in the larger field of Spanish America is in Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_, iv.]

The earliest printed account of Uxmal is in Cogolludo’s _Yucathan_ (Madrid, 1688), pp. 176, 193, 197; but it was well into this century before others were written. Lorenzo de Zavala gave but an outline account in his _Notice_, printed in Dupaix in 1834. Waldeck (_Voyage Pitt._ 67, 93) spent eight days there in May, 1835, and Stephens gives him the credit of being the earliest describer to attract attention. Stephens’s first visit in 1840 was hasty (_Cent. Amer._, ii. 413), but on his second visit (1842) he took with him Waldeck’s _Voyage_, and his description and the drawings of Catherwood were made with the advantage of having these earlier drawings to compare. Stephens (_Yucatan_, i. 297) says that their plans and drawings differ materially from Waldeck’s; but Bancroft, who compares the two, says that Stephens exaggerated the differences, which are not material, except in a few plates (Stephens’s _Yucatan_, i. 163; ii. 264—ch. 24, 25). About the same time Norman and Friederichsthal made their visits. Bancroft (iv. 150) refers to the lesser narratives of Carillo (1845), and another, recorded in the _Registro Yucateco_ (i. 273, 361), with Carl Bartholomæus Heller (April, 1847) in his _Reisen in Mexico_ (Leipzig, 1853). Charnay’s _Ruines_ (p. 362), and his _Anciens Villes_ (ch. 19, 20), record visits in 1858 and later. Brasseur reported upon Uxmal in 1865 in the _Archives de la Com. Scientifique du Méxique_ (ii. 234, 254), and he had already made mention of them in his _Hist. Nations Civ._, ii. ch. 1.[1045]

After a cut in Ruge’s _Gesch. des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 357.]

The ruins of Chichen-Itza make part of the eastern group of the Yucatan remains. As was not the case with some of the other principal ruins, the city in its prime has a record in Maya tradition; it was known in the days of the Conquest, and has not been lost sight of since,[1046] though its ruins were not visited by explorers till well within the present century, the first of whom, according to Stephens, was John Burke, in 1838. Stephens had heard of them and mentioned them to Friederichsthal, who was there in 1840 (_Nouv. Annales des Voyages_, xcii. 300-306). Norman was there in February, 1842 (_Rambles_, 104), and did not seem aware that any one had been there before him; and Stephens himself, during the next month (_Yucatan_, ii. 282), made the best record which we have. Charnay made his observations in 1858 (_Ruines_, 339,—cf. _Anciens Villes_, ch. 18), and gives us nine good photographs. The latest discoverer is Le Plongeon, whose investigations were signalized by the finding (1876) of the statue of Chackmool, and by other notable researches (_Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, April, 1877; October, 1878).[1047]

After a cut in Squier’s _Serpent Symbol_. There are two of these rings in the walls of one of the buildings twenty or thirty feet from the ground. They are four feet in diameter. Cf. Stephens’s _Yucatan_, ii. 304; Bancroft, iv. 230.]

A bas-relief, one of the best preserved at Chichen-Itza, after a sketch in Charnay and Viollet-le-Duc’s _Cités et Ruines Américaines_ (Paris, 1863), p. 53, of which Viollet-le-Duc says: “Le profil du guerrier se rapproche sensiblement les types du Nord de l’Europe.”]

It seems hardly to admit of doubt that the cities—if that be their proper designation—of Yucatan were the work of the Maya people, whose descendants were found by the Spaniards in possession of the peninsula, and that in some cases, like those of Uxmal and Toloom, their sacred edifices did not cease to be used till some time after the Spaniards had possessed the country. Such were the conclusions of Stephens,[1048] the sanest mind that has spent its action upon these remains; and he tells us that a deed of the region where Uxmal is situated, which passed in 1673, mentions the daily religious rites which the natives were then celebrating there, and speaks of the swinging doors and cisterns then in use. The abandonment of one of the buildings, at least, is brought down to within about two centuries, and comparisons of Catherwood’s drawings with the descriptions of more recent explorers, by showing a very marked deterioration within a comparatively few years, enable us easily to understand how the piercing roots of a rapidly growing vegetation can make a greater havoc in a century than will occur in temperate climates. The preservation of paint on the walls, and of wooden lintels in some places, also induce a belief that no great time, such as would imply an extinct race of builders, is necessary to account for the present condition of the ruins, and we must always remember how the Spaniards used them as quarries for building their neighboring towns. How long these habitations and shrines stood in their perfection is a question about which archæologists have had many and diverse estimates, ranging from hundreds to thousands of years. There is nothing in the ruins themselves to settle the question, beyond a study of their construction. So far as the traditionary history of the Mayas can determine, some of them may have been built between the third and the tenth century.[1049]

* * * * *

We come now to Chiapas. The age of the ruins of Palenqué[1050] can only be conjectured, and very indefinitely, though perhaps there is not much risk in saying that they represent some of the oldest architectural structures known in the New World, and were very likely abandoned three or four centuries before the coming of the Spaniards. Still, any confident statement is unwise. Perhaps there may be some fitness in Brasseur’s belief that the stucco additions and roofs were the work of a later people than those who laid the foundations.[1051] Bancroft (iv. 289) has given the fullest account of the literature describing these ruins. They seem to have been first found in 1750, or a few years before. The report reaching Ramon de Ordoñez, then a boy, was not forgotten by him, and prompted him to send his brother in 1773 to explore them. Among the manuscripts in the Brasseur Collection (_Bib. Mex.-Guat._, p. 113; Pinart, no. 695) are a _Memoria relativa à las ruinas... de Palenqué_, and _Notas de Chiapas y Palenqué_, which are supposed to be the record of this exploration written by Ramon, as copied from the original in the Museo Nacional, and which, in part at least, constituted the report which Ramon made in 1784 to the president of the Audiencia Real. Ramon’s view was that he had hit upon the land of Ophir, and the country visited by the Phœnicians. This same president now directed José Antonio Calderon to visit the ruins, and we have his “Informe” translated in Brasseur’s _Palenqué_ (introd. p. 5). From February to June of 1785, Antonio Benasconi, the royal architect of Guatemala, inspected the ruins under similar orders. His report, as well as the preceding one, with the accompanying drawings, were dispatched to Spain, where J. B. Muñoz made a summary of them for the king. I do not find any of them have been printed. The result of the royal interest in the matter was, that Antonio del Rio was next commissioned to make a more thorough survey, which he accomplished (May-June, 1787) with the aid of a band of natives to fell the trees and fire the rubbish. He broke through the walls in a reckless way, that added greatly to the devastation of years. Rio’s report, dated at Palenqué June 24, 1787, was published first in 1855, in the _Diccionario Univ. de Geog._, viii. 528.[1052] Meanwhile, beside the copy of the manuscript sent to Spain, other manuscripts were kept in Guatemala and Mexico; and one of these falling into the hands of a Dr. M’Quy, was taken to England and translated under the title _Description of the Ruins of an Ancient City discovered near Palenque in Guatemala, Spanish America, translated from the Original MS. Report of Capt. Don A. Del Rio; followed by Teatro Critico Americano, or a Critical Investigation and Research into the History of the Americans, by Doctor Felix Cabrera_ (London, 1822).[1053]

From _Histoire de l’Habitation Humaine, par Viollet-le-Duc_ (Paris, 1875). There is a restoration of the Palenqué palace—so called—in Armin’s _Das heutige Mexico_ (copied in Short, 342, and Bancroft, iv. 323).]

The results of the explorations of Dupaix, made early in the present century by order of Carlos IV. of Spain, long remained unpublished. His report and the drawings of Castañeda lay uncared for in the Mexican archives during the period of the Revolution. Latour Allard, of Paris, obtained copies of some of the drawings, and from these Kingsborough got copies, which he engraved for his _Mexican Antiquities_, in which Dupaix’s report was also printed in Spanish and English (vols. iv., v., vi.). It is not quite certain whether the originals or copies were delivered (1828) by the Mexican authorities to Baradère, who a few years later secured their publication with additional matter as _Antiquités méxicaines_. _Relation des trois expéditions du capitaine Dupaix, ordonnées en 1805, 1806 et 1807, pour la recherche des antiquités du pays, notamment celles de Mitla et de Palenque; accompagnée des dessins de Castañeda, et d’une carte du pays exploré; suivie d’un parallèle de ces monuments avec ceux de l’Égypte, de l’Indostan, et du reste de l’ancien monde par Alexandre Lenoir; d’une dissertation sur l’origine de l’ancienne population des deux Amériques par [D. B.] Warden; avec un discours préliminaire par. M. Charles Farcy, et des notes explicatives, et autres documents par MM. Baradère, de St. Priest [etc.]._ (Paris 1834, texte et atlas.)[1054] The plates of this edition are superior to those in Kingsborough and in Rio; and are indeed improved in the engraving over Castañeda’s drawings. The book as a whole is one of the most important on Palenqué which we have. The investigations were made on his third expedition (1807-8). A tablet taken from the ruins by him is in the Museo Nacional, and a cast of it is figured in the _Numis. and Antiq. Soc. of Philad. Proc._, Dec. 4, 1884.

During the twenty-five years next following Dupaix, we find two correspondents of the French and English Geographical Societies supplying their publications with occasional accounts of their observations among the ruins. One of them, Dr. F. Corroy,[1055] was then living at Tabasco; the other, Col. Juan Gallindo,[1056] was resident in the country as an administrative officer.

These slabs, six feet high, were taken from Palenqué, and when Stephens saw them they were in private hands at San Domingo, near by, but later they were placed in the church front in the same town, and here Charnay took impressions of them, from which they were engraved in _The Ancient Cities_, etc., p. 217, and copied thence in the above cuts. This same type of head is considered by Rosny the Aztec head of Palenqué (_Doc. écrits de la Antiq. Amer._, 73), and as belonging to the superior classes. In order to secure the convex curve of the nose and forehead an ornament was sometimes added, as shown in a head of the second tablet at Palenqué, and in the photograph of a bas-relief, preserved in the Museo Archeologico at Madrid, given by Rosny (vol. 3), and hypothetically called by him a statue of Cuculkan. This ornament is not infrequently seen in other images of this region.

Bandelier (_Peabody Mus. Repts._, ii. 126), speaking of the tablet of the Cross of Palenqué, says: “These tablets and figures show in dress such a striking analogy of what we know of the military accoutrements of the Mexicans, that it is a strong approach to identity.”]

Fréderic de Waldeck, the artist who some years before had familiarized himself with the character of the ruins in the preparation of the engravings for Rio’s work, was employed in 1832-34. He was now considerably over sixty years of age, and under the pay of a committee, which had raised a subscription, in which the Mexican government shared. He made the most thorough examination of Palenqué which has yet been made. Waldeck was a skilful artist, and his drawings are exquisite; but he was not free from a tendency to improve or restore, where the conditions gave a hint, and so as we have them in the final publication they have not been accepted as wholly trustworthy. He made more than 200 drawings, and either the originals or copies—Stephens says “copies,” the originals being confiscated—were taken to Europe. Waldeck announced his book in Paris, and the public had already had a taste of his not very sober views in some communications which he had sent in Aug. and Nov., 1832, to the Société de Géographie de Paris. Long years of delay followed, and Waldeck had lived to be over ninety, when the French government bought his collection[1057] (in 1860), and made preparations for its publication. Out of the 188 drawings thus secured, 56 were selected and were admirably engraved, and only that portion of Waldeck’s text was preserved which was purely descriptive, and not all of that. Selection was made of Brasseur de Bourbourg, who at that time had never visited the ruins,[1058] to furnish some introductory matter. This he prepared in an _Avant-propos_, recapitulating the progress of such studies; and this was followed by an _Introduction aux Ruines de Palenqué_, narrating the course of explorations up to that time; a section also published separately as _Recherches sur les Ruines de Palenqué et sur les origines de la civilisation du Méxique_ (Paris, 1886), and finally Waldeck’s own _Description des Ruines_, followed by the plates, most of which relate to Palenqué. Thus composed, a large volume was published under the general title of _Monuments anciens du Méxique_. _Palenqué et autres ruines de l’ancienne civilisation du Méxique. Collection de vues [etc.], cartes et plans dessinés d’après nature et relevés par M. de Waldeck. Texte rédigé par M. Brasseur de Bourbourg._ (Paris, 1864-1866.)[1059] While Waldeck’s results were still unpublished the ruins of Palenqué were brought most effectively to the attention of the English reader in the _Travels in Central America_ (vol. ii. ch. 17) of Stephens, which was illustrated by the drawings of Catherwood,[1060] since famous. These better cover the field, and are more exact than those of Dupaix.

From _The Stone Sculptures of Copán and Quiriguá_ (N. Y., 1883) of Meye and Schmidt.]

Bancroft refers to an anonymous account in the _Registro Yucateco_ (i. 318). One of the most intelligent of the later travellers is Arthur Morelet, who privately printed his _Voyage dans l’Amérique Central, Cuba et le Yucatan_, which includes an account of a fortnight’s stay at Palenqué. His results would be difficult of access except that Mrs. M. F. Squier, with an introduction by E. G. Squier, published a translation of that part of it relating to the main land as _Travels in Central America, including accounts of regions unexplored since the Conquest_ (N. Y., 1871).[1061]

Désiré Charnay was the first to bring photography to the aid of the student when he visited Palenqué in 1858, and his plates forming the folio atlas accompanying his _Cités et Ruines Américaines_ (1863), pp. 72, 411, are, as Bancroft (iv. 293) points out, of interest to enable us to test the drawings of preceding delineators, and to show how time had acted on the ruins since the visit of Stephens. His later results are recorded in his _Les anciennes villes du Nouveau Monde_ (Paris, 1885).[1062]

Given by Rosny, _Doc. Écrits de la Antiq. Amér._, p. 73, as types of the short-headed race which preceded the Aztec occupation. They are from sculptures at Copan. Cf. Stephens’s _Cent. America_, i. 139; Bancroft, iv. 101.]

From Meye and Schmidt’s _Stone Sculptures of Copán and Quiriguá_ (N. Y., 1883).]

There have been only two statues found at Palenqué, in connection with the T emple of the Cross,[1063] but the considerable number of carved figures discovered at Copan,[1064] as well as the general impression that these latter ruins are the oldest on the American continent,[1065] have made in some respects these most celebrated of the Honduras remains more interesting than those of Chiapas. It is now generally agreed that the ruins of Copan[1066] do not represent the town called Copan, assaulted and captured by Hernando de Choves in 1530, though the identity of names has induced some writers to claim that these ruins were inhabited when the Spaniards came.[1067] The earliest account of them which we have is that in Palacio’s letter to Felipe II., written (1576) hardly more than a generation after the Conquest, and showing that the ruins then were much in the same condition as later described.[1068] The next account is that of Fuentes y Guzman’s _Historia de Guatemala_ (1689), now accessible in the Madrid edition of 1882; but for a long time only known in the citation in Juarros’ _Guatemala_ (p. 56), and through those who had copied from Juarros.[1069] His account is brief, speaks of Castilian costumes, and is otherwise so enigmatical that Brasseur calls it mendacious. Colonel Galindo, in visiting the ruins in 1836, confounded them with the Copan of the Conquest.[1070] The ruins also came Under the scrutiny of Stephens in 1839, and they were described by him, and drawn by Catherwood, for the first time with any fullness and care, in their respective works.[1071]

* * * * *

Always associated with Copan, and perhaps even older, if the lower relief of the carvings can bear that interpretation, are the ruins near the village of Quiriguá, in Guatemala, and known by that name. Catherwood first brought them into notice;[1072] but the visit of Karl Scherzer in 1854 produced the most extensive account of them which we have, in his _Ein Besuch bei den Ruinen von Quiriguá_ (Wien, 1855).[1073]

* * * * *

The principal explorers of Nicaragua have been Ephraim George Squier, in his _Nicaragua_,[1074] and Frederick Boyle, in his _Ride across a Continent_ (Lond. 1868),[1075] and their results, as well as the scattered data of others,[1076] are best epitomized in Bancroft (iv. ch. 2), who gives other references to second-hand descriptions (p. 29). Since Bancroft’s survey there have been a few important contributions.[1077]

III. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE PICTURE-WRITING OF THE NAHUAS AND MAYAS.

IN considering the methods of record and communication used by these peoples, we must keep in mind the two distinct systems of the Aztecs and the Mayas;[1078] and further, particularly as regards the former, we must not forget that some of these writings were made after the Conquest, and were influenced in some degree by Spanish associations. Of this last class were land titles and catechisms, for the native system obtained for some time as a useful method with the conquerors for recording the transmission of lands and helping the instruction by the priests.[1079]

After a fac-simile in the _Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France, nouv. ser._, ii. 34. (Cf. pl. xix. of Rosny’s _Essai sur le déchiffrement_, etc.) It is a copy, not the original, of Landa’s text, but a nearly contemporary one (made thirty years after Landa’s death), and the only one known.]

It is usual in tracing the development of a hieroglyphic system to advance from a purely figurative one—in which pictures of objects are used—through a symbolic phase; in which such pictures are interpreted conventionally instead of realistically. It was to this last stage that the Aztecs had advanced; but they mingled the two methods, and apparently varied in the order of reading, whether by lines or columns, forwards, upwards, or backwards. The difficulty of understanding them is further increased by the same object holding different meanings in different connections, and still more by the personal element, or writer’s style, as we should call it, which was impressed on his choice of objects and emblems.[1080] This rendered interpretation by no means easy to the aborigines themselves, and we have statements that when native documents were referred to them it required sometimes long consultations to reach a common understanding.[1081] The additional step by which objects stand for sounds, the Aztecs seem not to have taken, except in the names of persons and places, in which they understood the modern child’s art of the rebus, where such symbol more or less clearly stands for a syllable, and the representation was usually of conventionalized forms, somewhat like the art of the European herald. Thus the Aztec system was what Daniel Wilson[1082] calls “the pictorial suggestion of associated ideas.”[1083] The phonetic scale, if not comprehended in the Aztec system, made an essential part of the Maya hieroglyphics, and this was the great distinctive feature of the latter, as we learn from the early descriptions,[1084] and from the alphabet which Landa has preserved for us. It is not only in the codices or books of the Mayas that their writing is preserved to us, but in the inscriptions of their carved architectural remains.[1085]

NOTE—This representation of Yucatan hieroglyphics is a reduction of pl. i. in Léon de Rosny’s _Essai sur le déchiffrement de l’écriture hiératique de l’Amérique Centrale_, Paris, 1876. Cf. Bancroft, iv. 92; Short, 405.]

When the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg found, in 1863, in the library of the Royal Academy of History at Madrid, the MS. of Landa’s _Relacion_, and discovered in it what purported to be a key to the Maya alphabet, there were hopes that the interpretation of the Maya books and inscriptions was not far off. Twenty-five years, however, has not seen the progress that was wished for; and if we may believe Valentini, the alphabet of Landa is a pure fabrication of the bishop himself;[1086] and even some of those who account it genuine, like Le Plongeon, hold that it is inadequate in dealing with the older Maya inscriptions.[1087] Cyrus Thomas speaks of this alphabet as simply an attempt of the bishop to pick out of compound characters their simple elements on the supposition that something like phonetic representations would be the result.[1088] Landa’s own description[1089] of the alphabet accompanying his graphic key[1090] is very unsatisfactory, not to say incomprehensible. Brasseur has tried to render it in French, and Bancroft in English; but it remains a difficult problem to interpret it intelligibly.

Brasseur very soon set himself the task of interpreting the Troano manuscript by the aid of this key, and he soon had the opportunity of giving his interpretation to the public when the Emperor Napoleon III. ordered that codex to be printed in the sumptuous manner of the imperial press.[1091] The efforts of Brasseur met with hardly a sign of approval. Léon de Rosny criticised him,[1092] and Dr. Brinton found in his results nothing to commend.[1093]

No one has approached the question of interpreting these Maya writings with more careful scrutiny than Léon de Rosny, who first attracted attention with his comparative study, _Les écritures figuratives et hiéroglyphiques des différens peuples anciens et moderns_ (Paris, 1860; again, 1870, augmentée). From 1869 to 1871 he published at Paris four parts of _Archives paléographiques de l’Orient et de l’Amérique, publiées avec des notices historiques et philologiques_, in which he included several studies of the native writings, and gave a bibliography (pp. 101-115) of American paleography up to that time. His _L’interprétation des anciens textes Mayas_ made part of the first volume of the _Archives de la Soc. Américaine de France_ (new series). His chief work, making the second volume of the same, is his _Essai sur le déchiffrement de l’écriture hiératique de l’Amérique Central_ (Paris, 1876), and it is the most thorough examination of the problem yet made.[1094] The last part (4th) was published in 1878, and a Spanish translation appeared in 1881.

After a cut in Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_, ii. p. 63. It is also given in Bancroft (iv. 355), and others. It is from the Tablet of the Cross.]

Wm. Bollaert, who had paid some attention to the paleography of America,[1095] was one of the earliest in England to examine Brasseur’s work on Landa, which he did in a memoir read before the Anthropological Society,[1096] and later in an “Examination of the Central American hieroglyphs by the recently discovered Maya alphabet.”[1097] Brinton[1098] calls his conclusions fanciful, and Le Plongeon claims that the inscription in Stephens, which Bollaert worked upon, is inaccurately given, and that Bollaert’s results were nonsense.[1099] Hyacinthe de Charency’s efforts have hardly been more successful, though he attempted the use of Landa’s alphabet with something like scientific care. He examined a small part of the inscription of the Palenqué tablet of the Cross in his _Essai de déchiffrement d’un fragment d’inscription palenquéene_.[1100]

Dr. Brinton translated Charency’s results, and, adding Landa’s alphabet, published his _Ancient phonetic alphabet of Yucatan_ (N. Y., 1870), a small tract.[1101] His continued studies were manifest in the introduction on “The graphic system and the ancient records of the Mayas” to Cyrus Thomas’s _Manuscript Troano_.[1102] In this paper Dr. Brinton traces the history of the attempts which have thus far been made in solving this perplexing problem.[1103] The latest application of the scientific spirit is that of the astronomer E. S. Holden, who sought to eliminate the probabilities of recurrent signs by the usual mathematical methods of resolving systems of modern cipher.[1104]

* * * * *

There are few examples of the aboriginal ideographic writings left to us. Their fewness is usually charged to the destruction which was publicly made of them under the domination of the Church in the years following the Conquest.[1105] The alleged agents in this demolition were Bishop Landa, in 1562, at Mani, in Yucatan,[1106] and Bishop Zumárraga at Tlatelalco, or, as some say, at Tezcuco, in Mexico.[1107] Peter Martyr[1108] has told us something of the records as he saw them, and we know also from him, and from their subsequent discovery in European collections, that some examples of them were early taken to the Old World. We have further knowledge of them from Las Casas and from Landa himself.[1109] There have been efforts made of late years by Icazbalceta and Canon Carrillo to mitigate the severity of judgment, particularly as respects Zumárraga.[1110] The first, and indeed the only attempt that has been made to bring together for mutual illustration all that was known of these manuscripts which escaped the fire,[1111] was in the great work of the Viscount Kingsborough (b. 1795, d. 1837). It was while, as Edward King, he was a student at Oxford that this nobleman’s passion for Mexican antiquities was first roused by seeing an original Aztec pictograph, described by Purchas (_Pilgrimes_, vol. iii.), and preserved in the Bodleian. In the studies to which this led he was assisted by some special scholars, including Obadiah Rich, who searched for him in Spain in 1830 and 1832, and who after Kingsborough’s death obtained a large part of the manuscript collections which that nobleman had amassed (_Catalogue of the Sale_, Dublin, 1842). Many of the Kingsborough manuscripts passed into the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps (_Catalogue_, no. 404), but the correspondence pertaining to Kingsborough’s life-work seems to have disappeared. Phillipps had been one of the main encouragers of Kingsborough in his undertaking.[1112] Kingsborough, who had spent £30,000 on his undertaking, had a business dispute with the merchants who furnished the printing-paper, and he was by them thrown into jail as a debtor, and died in confinement.[1113]

After a photogravure in _Les Documents écrits de l’antiquité Américaine_ (Paris, 1882). Cf. cut in _Mém. de la Soc. d’Ethnographie_ (1887), xiii. p. 71.]

Kingsborough’s great work, the most sumptuous yet bestowed upon Mexican archæology, was published between 1830 and 1848, there being an interval of seventeen years between the seventh and eighth volumes. The original intention seems to have embraced ten volumes, for the final section of the ninth volume is signatured as for a tenth.[1114] The work is called: _Antiquities of Mexico; comprising facsimiles of Ancient Mexican Paintings and Hieroglyphics, preserved in the Royal Libraries of Paris, Berlin, and Dresden; in the Imperial Library of Vienna; in the Vatican Library; in the Borgian Museum at Rome; in the Library of the Institute of Bologna; and in the Bodleian Library at Oxford; together with the Monuments of New Spain, by M. Dupaix; illustrated by many valuable inedited MSS_. With the theory maintained by Kingsborough throughout the work, that the Jews were the first colonizers of the country, we have nothing to do here; but as the earliest and as yet the largest repository of hieroglyphic material, the book needs to be examined. The compiler states where he found his MSS., but he gives nothing of their history, though something more is now known of their descent. Peter Martyr speaks of the number of Mexican MSS. which had in his day been taken to Spain, and Prescott remarks it as strange that not a single one given by Kingsborough was found in that country. There are, however, some to be seen there now.[1115] Comparisons which have been made of Kingsborough’s plates show that they are not inexact; but they almost necessarily lack the validity that the modern photographic processes give to facsimiles.

From Cyrus Thomas’s _Manuscript Troano_.]

Kingsborough’s first volume opens with a fac-simile of what is usually called the _Codex Mendoza_, preserved in the Bodleian. It is, however, a contemporary copy on European paper of an original now lost, which was sent by the Viceroy Mendoza to Charles V. Another copy made part of the Boturini collection, and from this Lorenzana[1116] engraved that portion of it which consists of tribute-rolls. The story told of the fate of the original is, that on its passage to Europe it was captured by a French cruiser and taken to Paris, where it was bought by the chaplain of the English embassy, the antiquary Purchas, who has engraved it.[1117] It was then lost sight of, and if Prescott’s inference is correct it was not the original, but the Bodleian copy, which came into Purchas’ hands.[1118]

Beside the tribute-rolls,[1119] which make one part of it, the MS. covers the civil history of the Mexicans, with a third part on the discipline and economy of the people, which renders it of so much importance in an archæological sense.[1120] The second reproduction in Kingsborough’s first volume is what he calls the _Codex Telleriano-Remensis_, preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, and formerly owned by M. Le Tellier.[1121] The rest of this initial volume is made up of facsimiles of Mexican hieroglyphics and paintings, from the Boturini and Selden collections, which last is in the Bodleian.

The second Kingsborough volume opens with a reproduction of the _Codex Vaticanus_ (the explanation[1122] is in volume vi.), which is in the library of the Vatican, and it is known to have been copied in Mexico by Pedro de los Rios in 1566. It is partly historical and partly mythological.[1123] The rest of this volume is made up of facsimiles of other manuscripts,—one given to the Bodleian by Archbishop Laud, others at Bologna,[1124] Vienna,[1125] and Berlin.

The third volume reproduces one belonging to the Borgian Museum at Rome, written on skin, and thought to be a ritual and astrological almanac. This is accompanied by a commentary by Frabega.[1126] Kingsborough gives but a single Maya MS., and this is in his third volume, and stands with him as an Aztec production. This is the _Dresden Codex_, not very exactly rendered, which is preserved in the royal library in that city, for which it was bought by Götz,[1127] at Vienna, in 1739. Prescott (i. 107) seemed to recognize its difference from the Aztec MSS., without knowing precisely how to class it.[1128] Brasseur de Bourbourg calls it a religious and astrological ritual. It is in two sections, and it is not certain that they belong together. In 1880 it was reproduced at Dresden by polychromatic photography (Chromo-Lichtdruck), as the process is called, under the editing of Dr. E. Förstemann, who in an introduction describes it as composed of thirty-nine oblong sheets folded together like a fan. They are made of the bark of a tree, and covered with varnish. Thirty-five have drawings and hieroglyphics on both sides; the other four on one side only. It is now preserved between glass to prevent handling, and both sides can be examined. Some progress has been made, it is professed, in deciphering its meaning, and it is supposed to contain “records of a mythic, historic, and ritualistic character.”[1129]

Another script in Kingsborough, perhaps a Tezcucan MS., though having some Maya affinities, is the _Fejérvary Codex_, then preserved in Hungary, and lately owned by Mayer, of Liverpool.[1130]

Three other Maya manuscripts have been brought to light since Kingsborough’s day, to say nothing of three others said to be in private hands, and not described.[1131] Of these, the _Codex Troano_ has been the subject of much study. It is the property of a Madrid gentleman, Don Juan Tro y Ortolano, and the title given to the manuscript has been somewhat fantastically formed from his name by the Abbé Etienne Charles Brasseur de Bourbourg, who was instrumental in its recognition about 1865 or 1866, and who edited a sumptuous two-volume folio edition with chromo-lithographic plates.[1132]

From a fac-simile in the _Archives de la Société Américaine de France, nouv. ser._, ii. 30.]

One of the leaves of a MS. No. 2, in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, following the fac-simile (pl. 124) in Léon de Rosny’s _Archives paléographiques_ (Paris, 1869).]

While Léon de Rosny was preparing his _Essai sur le déchiffrement de l’Ecriture hiératique_ (1876), a Maya manuscript was offered to the Bibliothèque Impériale in Paris and declined, because the price demanded was too high. Photographic copies of two of its leaves had been submitted, and one of these is given by Rosny in the _Essai_ (pl. xi.). The Spanish government finally bought the MS., which, because it was supposed to have once belonged to Cortes, is now known as the _Codex Cortesianus_. Rosny afterwards saw it and studied it in the Museo Archeológico at Madrid, as he makes known in his _Doc. Ecrits de la Antiq. Amér._, p. 79, where he points out the complementary character of one of its leaves with another of the MS. Troano, showing them to belong together, and gives photographs of the two (pl. v. vi.), as well as of other leaves (pl. 8 and 9). The part of this codex of a calendar character (Tableau des Bacab) is reproduced from Rosny’s plate by Cyrus Thomas[1133] in an essay in the _Third Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, together with an attempted restoration of the plate, which is obscure in parts. Finally a small edition (85 copies) of the entire MS. was published at Paris in 1883.[1134]

The last of the Maya MSS. recently brought to light is sometimes cited as the _Codex Perezianus_, because the paper in which it was wrapped, when recognized in 1859 by Rosny,[1135] bore the name “Perez”; and sometimes designated as Codex Mexicanus, or Manuscrit Yucatèque No. 2, of the National Library at Paris. It was a few years later published as _Manuscrit dit Méxicain No. 2 de la Bibliothèque Impériale, photographié par ordre de S. E. M. Duruy, ministre de l’instruction publique_ (Paris, 1864, in folio, 50 copies). The original is a fragment of eleven leaves, and Brasseur[1136] speaks of it as the most beautiful of all the MSS. in execution, but the one which has suffered the most from time and usage.[1137]

NOTE.—This Yucatan bas-relief follows a photograph by Rosny (1880), reproduced in the _Mém. de la Soc. d’Ethnographie_, no. 3 (Paris, 1882).]