ABORIGINAL WRITING IN MEXICO, ETC. 53 



the proper sense of the term, that is, rej)resenting elementary sounds of the 

 language hj written characters. It appears more likely that the figures he gives 

 represent compound sounds, syllabic or partly so, and that they arc but frag- 

 ments of a large repertory of phonetic signs, never reduced to the elements of 

 sound, used by the Mayas of that age. He evidently very positively considered 

 them phonetic and not ideographic, and he could not have been mistaken on 

 such a point, I should suppose. In his endeavor to arrange them according to 

 the analogy of the Latin alphabet, he obscured their real purport, and I think 

 we should reject the whole of his theory of their use in this manner." It 

 afforded me great satisfaction thus to be informed of Dr. Brinton's matured 

 view on the subject — a A'iew which corresponds in its bearing with my own. 

 This communication is published with the writer's consent. 



The attempts to interpret Central American glyphs and manuscripts by 

 means of Landa's alphabet have, as stated, thus far chiefly been made by French 

 scholars, more especially by Brasseur de Bourbourg, H. de Charencey and Leon 

 de Rosny. Before speaking of their efforts in that direction, I will briefly refer 

 to the few still existing manuscripts to which a Maya origin is ascribed. The 

 most important among them is the Dresden Codex, called a Mexican manuscript 

 by Humboldt, and also reproduced as such in Lord Kingsborough's large work: 

 an error easily detected by a comparison of this codex Avith the much ruder 

 Aztec pictographs, which, moreover, generally pi-esent a dififerent aspect. The 

 Dresden Codex, which was evidently executed by a firm and skillful hand, bears 

 what I might call a Palenquean character, which points to a Central American 

 origin. The analogy can be traced in the outlines of the human and other 

 figures as well as in the accompanying characters, which undoubtedly exhibit a 

 general resemblance to the glyphs seen on the walls of Palenque and of some of 

 the ruined cities of Yucatan. The figures in this codex are generally repre- 

 sented by black outlines ; but red, yellow, blue, green and brown colors have 

 also been employed, frequently for producing a back-ground to bring out the 

 figures more distinctly. Nothing is known of the history of the codex, except- 

 ing that it was bought in 1739 at Vienna for the Royal Library at Dresden. It 

 has been reproduced on twenty-seven sheets in the third volume of Kings- 

 borough's work; but the original drawing is made on both sides of apiece of 

 maguey paper, twelve feet six inches in length and eight in width, which is folded 

 like a screen, thus resembling an octavo volume eight inches high and three and 

 a half inches wide. The paper is covered on both sides with a thick layer of a 

 whitish substance and carefully polished, on the whole not unlike parchment.* 



* Klemm: Allgemeine Cultur-Geschiohte der Mensohheit; Leipzig, 1847, Bd. v (Die Staaten von Anahuac 

 und das alto Aegyten), S. 133.—" Their boolis were written on a large sheet, which was folded up and then 

 enclosed between two ornamented boards. They wrote on both sides in columns, following the arrangement of the 

 folds. As for the paper, they made it from the roots of a tree and covered it with a white varnish, upon which one 

 could write very well."— ianrfa.- Relation etc., p. 44.— A similar description is given by Peter Martyr. Such 

 books were called analtes. 



