[CAMPBELL] THE ANCIENT LITERATURE OF AMERICA 49 



In the Mexican state of Chiapas, in Yucatan, and on the borders of 

 Honduras are stone tablets elaborately engraved with groups of hiero- 

 glyphics in rounded squares, quite different from the Mexican, and not 

 unlike those of Easter Island, in the South Pacific, which attracted the 

 attention of Captain Beechey, Lady Brassey and other travellers. Of 

 the Central American tablets the best known are those of Palenque, in 

 Chiapas, of Chichen Itza, in Yucatan, and of Copan, near Honduras. 

 The subjoined pair of groups is in the centre of the ninth line of charac- 

 ters on the left side of the Palenque Tablet of the Cross. 



They are ideographic, not syllabic, and are to be interpreted by the 

 Maya language of Yucatan, which is entirely distinct and widely different 

 from the Aztec of Mexico. The balls or dots are units, and the staves 

 or short lines ai'e fives. In the first group these amount to thirteen, in 

 Maya oxlahun. The following cartouche contains a T or cross, which is 

 the symbol of building, in Maya pak, but in corresponding groups it is 

 replaced by the head of a dog, pek. To the left of the second group is a 

 ball, representing the number one, hun. Below it is a conventional repre- 

 sentation of a collar, ahau, representing a king, a ruler, or a period of 

 time. The larger and more elaborate ahau on the right stands upon 

 three balls, which in this position do not read as three, but as plurality, 

 ob. The reading of the two groups, therefore, is : 



Oxlahun Pek, hun ahau ahauob. 

 Thirteen Dogs, one King of Kings. 



This may seem very absurd, but a reference to the Annals of the Cachi- 

 quels explains it fully. Thirteen Dogs was the name of a Cachiquel chief, 

 who, originally a vassal of the Quiche kings of Guatemala, shook off their 

 yoke, and, some fifty years before the arrival of the Spaniards, brought 

 all Central America under his sway, from Oaxaca, an independent king- 

 dom, to the isthmus. Thus it was that Oxlahun Pek became "one King 

 of Kings," 



As my third proof, I am fortunate in being able to present the char- 

 acters of the Inscribed Eock of Yarmouth, in JSTova Scotia, which, having 

 been known for nearly a century, cannot be ranked by the dogmatists in 

 their favourite category of frauds. Its rude forms are similar to those 

 found in burial mounds in Iowa, Ohio and West Virginia on compara- 

 tively small plates of stone, which are as genuine as the Yarmouth Eock, 



Sec. II., 1896. 4. 



