Page:The Katunes of Maya History.djvu/46

38 As the author treats of the affairs of the Tutnl Xia or the so-called Itza race, and attributes to them the discovery and colonization of Yucatan, it is highly probable that he made use of the annals of the Itzaes, and that they were arranged in periods of just 20 years. If we should be right in this assumption the 20-year period- must be regarded as the most ancient ever used in Yucatan.

Wc cannot fully agree with Señor Perez and his countrymen that the author intended to designate the peninsula of Yucatan when he speaks of the Island of Chacnouitan. This name appears for the first and only time in this manuscript. It is generally acknowledged that the name had never previously been heard of. We should state that the words of the text are always nay ti petene Chacnouitan. If in Maya peten meant only a peninsula, we should take no exceptions. But the fundamental meaning of peten is an island, and as the demonstrative pronoun nay means as well "of this place" as "of that place," the translation could as well stand for "that distant island." Whether the island was situated in the ocean or in any of the many inland lakes, the probabilities seem to lie with the latter supposition, for they came by land. Had they come by sea, tradition would have dwelt with some characteristic remark upon such an exceptional case. From the following paragraph it will become still more evident that the Chacnouitan discovered by the Itzaes was neither the whole nor the northern part of