Page:The Katunes of Maya History.djvu/23

15 of its contents, and accompanied the whole with an introdnctory explanation of the system of ancient Maya chronology.

In the midst of these labors he was surprised by the arrival of the celebrated American traveller and archaeologist, John Lloyd Stephens, and was induced to entrust to him a copy of the MSS. and interpretations to be embodied in his work on Yucatan, in order to bring them more fully before the world. His wishes were scrupulously complied with, and the Spanish translation has been rendered into literal English by Mr. Stephens in "Incidents of Travel in Yucatan," vol. I., Appendix, pages 434–459, and vol. II., Appendix, pages 465–469.

Mr. Albert Gallatin, who, of all American students, has made himself most thoroughly acquainted with what remains of the historical elements of the Nahuatl and Maya people, has brought together the results of his investigations in a lecture published in the " Transactions of the American Ethnological Society," New York, 1858, vol.1., pages 104–114. The information therein contained attests an entire familiarity with the method pursued by Seiior Ferez in his commentary, without, indeed, undertaking any severe criticism of it. In our opinion Mr. John L. Stephens and Mr. Gallatin are the only Americans who have recognized Senor Perez's merits in an unequivocal manner, and have brought them to the knowledge of the world.

This is all we could learn about the Manuscript, nor have we been able to form a supposition, much less to discover in the text itself any clue to the source from which the unknown Maya author could have drawn his data. At the end of the Manuscript Señor Perez gives his opinion that the whole was written from memory, because it must have been done long after the the conquest, and after Bishop Landa had publicly destroyed much of the historical picture-writing of the Mayas by an auto-da-fé and because the whole narration is so concise and condensed that it appears more like an index than a circumstantial description of events.