ABORIGINAL WRITING IN MEXICO, ETC. 55 



pretation. The document, lie thinks, combines phonetic, monosyllabic and alpha- 

 betic elements, mixed with figurative and symbolic characters,* and relates 

 to geological events, such as submergence and rising of land, convulsions, 

 volcanic eruptions, and similar phenomena, which, in remote ages, modified the 

 shape of the American continent. The improbability of this explanation is so 

 glaring that Brasseur was, perhaps, the only person that believed in it. " This 

 writer," says Bancroft, "after a profound study of the subject, devotes one 

 hundred and thirty-six quarto pages to a consideration of the Maya characters 

 and their variations, and fifty-seven pages to the translation of a part of the 

 Manuscript Troano. The translation must be pronounced a failure, especially 

 after the confession of the author in a subsequent work that he had beo-un his 

 reading at the wrong end of the document, — a trifling error perhaps in the 

 opinion of the enthusiastic Abbe, but a somewhat serious one as it appears to 

 scientific men."-j- 



There can be little doubt that the characters in the Codex Troano bear analogy 

 to those given by Landa ; but they evidently belong to an earlier period than the 

 latter, which had become modified in the course of time. A very short exami- 

 nation of the Troano manuscript enabled me to identify the so-called letter C (q?), 

 the syllable CA (?), and the signs for the days MxlNIK, AHAU, EZANAB, 

 BEN and YMIX (see page 60). Elementary signs, or at least what appear to 

 be such, occur frequently in this codex, but also combinations of them, the 

 unraveling of which, if possible, would require a long-continued careful study. 



The Count Hyacinthe de Charencey has also made the Codex Troano the 

 subject of his inquiry, and has published in a pamphlet his opinion in relation 

 to it. He totally rejects Brasseur's interpretation, admitting only that the Abbe 

 is right in his explanation of the signs representing numbers. A dot stands for 

 a unit ; a bar expresses the number five ; two bars are equivalent to the number 

 ten ; a bar with two dots to seven, etc. But even this idea, he says, did not origi- 

 nate with Brasseur, who thus failed in his attempted translation " to enrich 

 our knowledge of ancient America with a single new discovery."! M. de 

 Charencey points out a certain order in the succession of the signs of the days in 

 the Troano manuscript, and hence considers it as a document of cabalistical or 

 astrological purport. "These registers," he observes, "have no reference to the 

 ante-diluvian or pre-glacial history of the new world, as the Abbe Brasseur sup- 

 posed, but they are simply combinations of numbers and computations, either 



I * " Ce document est phonetique, monosyllabique et alphabetique a la fois. II est mele de caracteres figura- 

 lifs et symboliques." — Brasseur de Bourbourg : Manuscrii Troano, totn. I, p. 41. 



t I'.ancroft : Native Eaces etc., vol. ii, p. 780. — This caustic remarlc on the p.irt of Mr. Bancroft, it should be 

 said, is followed by words conveying his high appreciation of the Abbe's zeal in the cause of American archeology. 

 "It will be long," he says, "ere another shall undertake with equal devotion and ability the well-nigh hopeless 

 task," 



1 De Charencey: Eecherches sur le Codex Troano: Paris, 1876, p. 6. 



