[CAMPBELL] THE ANCIENT LITERATURE OF AMERICA 55 



rounded by the Indians, worshipping them with tears and groans ; and 

 many Spaniards lifted their caps as they passed, because they were the 

 bodies of kings, which was so grateful to the Indians that they could 

 not sufficiently express ihe'ir thanks." I suppose GarciJasso was himself 

 grateful for this homage, which was after the fashion of the Jews, who 

 built the sepulchres of the prophets their fathers slew. Yet the rough 

 Spanish soldier saluting the corpses of the Incas of old is a study to 

 arrest attention and suspend hasty judgment. After all, there was some 

 good in these Spaniards, spite of their gold-lust and cruelty ; there was 

 an apprehension of "noblesse oblige" in the heart of their ridiculous 

 Castillan pride and cowardly domination over the simple American 

 native. I question if Tommy Atkins came to the present or even to the 

 shoulder when the mummy of the great Rameses was carried to the 

 Gizeh palace near Cairo. Not that Tommy would not do it if he had 

 only been taught, although kinship would help him to it, as in the case of 

 Napoleon's remains : 



" A king is standing there, 

 And, with uncovered head, 

 Receives him in the name of France, 

 Receiveth v^hom ? The dead ! " 



I have said that three manuscripts in the Maya writing of Yucatan 

 have been published. Some three or four more are known to be in 

 existence. Other literary languages belonging to the same family as the 

 Maya are the Quiche and the Cachiquel of Guatemala. The principal 

 literary record of Yucatan is that called the Books of Chilan Balam, or 

 of the interpreting priest. Balam means both a priest and a tiger in 

 Maya, which is almost as unflattering a coincidence as the Japanese name 

 for England, Yei-Jwku, which also means the kingdom of drunkenness. 

 Balaam, the son of Beor, who was reproved by the speaking ass, must 

 surely have been an ancient Maya priest, possessed with something of 

 the tiger's greed. 



The books consist of prophecies, astrological lore, medical recipes 

 and historical material. They were in existence, necessarily in hiero- 

 glyphic form, before the conquest, as they are alluded to by the earliest 

 writers on the affairs of Yucatan. Dr. Brinton has published what is 

 historical in them, under the title of The Maya Chronicles. There is a 

 quaintness in the sad simplicity of their meagre narrative. " The eighth 

 ahau : Chakanputun was abandoned. For thirteen score years Chakan- 

 putun was ruled by the men of Itza. Then they came in search of their 

 homes a second time ; and they lost the road to Chakanputun. In this 

 katun those of Itza were under the trees, under the boughs, under the 

 branches, to their sorrow." 



For those who had lived in large cities and in spacious communal 

 houses built of stone, this enforced life in the open air, beneath the forest 



