CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE MAYAS. 661 



CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE MAYAS. 



By Mks. a. D. LE PLONGEON. 



FROM ancient Maya books and inscriptions we learn that the 

 Mayas at one time formed a great nation, occupying the ter- 

 ritory between Tehuantepec and Darien. To-day those Indians, as 

 they are called, live in the peninsula of Yucatan, famous for its 

 ruins ; in Guatemala, in Peten, in the Lancandon country, on the 

 banks of the Uzumacinta River, and in the valleys between those 

 mountains where the mysterious " land of war " is supposed to be* 

 Among all people, civilized and uncivilized, superstition ex- 

 ists, though the former are more careful to conceal their peculiar 

 notions. The Mayas are more superstitious now than they were 



Indians blasting Kocks to liovel a Road. 



five hundred years ago, for, added to their own queer notions, 

 they have a vast store of strange fancies imported by the Spanish 

 conquerors. Many of the native ideas are of great antiquity, 

 such as the belief in metempsychosis and metamorphosis. Those 

 people hesitate before killing the most venomous reptile, if found 

 in or near the old palaces and temples left by their ancestors, and 

 now gradually crumbling beneath the dense foliage of tropical 

 forests. Urge them to destroy a viper within or near those de- 

 serted halls, and they say : " Ah, no ! it belongs to the Xlah-pak 

 yum" (lord of the old walls), "whose spirit roams here." Under 

 such circumstances they recoil from inflicting death, much as 



