Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/204

176 the day called "Muluc" immediately follows the day Lamat; the ensuing year 2 Muluc commences with the day 2 Muluc, in the same manner as the year 1 Khan commences with the day 1 Khan. It is the same with the other years; so that the first day of every year has the same name and numerical character as the year itself.

"Don J. P. Perez acknowledges that amongst the few mutilated remains of Indian manuscripts or paintings, he has not been able to discover any trace of an intercalation, either of one day every four years, or of thirteen days at the end of the cycle, though he presumes that they had indubitably either the one or the other.

"The Yucatan cycle of fifty-two years, differed in no other respect from that of the Mexicans. The combination of the two series of twenty and thirteen days is used in the same manner in both calendars for the purpose of distinguishing the days of the year.

"The Yucatecs differed materially from the Mexicans with regard to the time of the solar year, when their year began. Don J. P. Perez informs us, that the first day of the Yucatan year corresponded with the sixteenth day of July; and that this was the day of the transit of the sun by the zenith of a place which he does not mention. But he adds that, for want of proper instruments, the Indians had made a mistake of forty-eight hours. In point of fact, it is in the latitude of about twenty-one degrees and a half that the transit of the sun by the zenith occurs on the 16th of July; and Yucatan lies between the latitudes of about eighteen degrees and a half and twenty-one degrees and a half. To commence the year on the day of the transit of the sun by the zenith, is attended with the great inconvenience, that this commencement must vary from place to place, according to their respective latitudes. As Don J. Pio Perez counts every year as having 365 days, and without regard to the omitted bissextile days, it is clear that the day in the Yucatan calendar, on which the transit of the sun by the zenith of any one place occurs, would vary twenty days, or a whole Indian month, in the course of eighty years. This would create such confusion that, if it be a well ascertained fact, that the Yucatan year began on the zenith day, this renders it highly probable that the calendar was, like that of the Mexicans, corrected by an intercalation of thirteen days at the end of the cycle.

"The names of the eighteen months of the Yucatecos, together with such interpretations as Don Pio Perez has given us, their order and their correspondence with our year, new style, appear in the following table: