1898-99. | DECIPHERING HIEROGLYPHIC INSCRIPTIONS OF CENTRAL AMERICA. IOl 
DECIPHERMENT OF THE HIEROGLYPHIC INSCRIPTIONS 
OF CENTRAL “AMERICA: 
BY -OHN CAMPBELL, LL. De FYR.S:.C: 
Professor in the Presbyterian College, Montreal. 
(Read March 18th, 1899). 
CHAPTER I. 
PALENQUE AND ITS RUINS. 
Near the point where the three republics of Mexico, Yucatan and 
Guatemala touch, lie the ruins of the ancient city of Palenque. These 
are really on Mexican ground, being situated in the northern part of 
Chiapas, the most southerly province of Mexico. The region in which 
they lie, and the adjoining parts of Yucatan and Guatemala, are covered 
with a dense tropical forest, extending over an area of between forty and 
fifty thousand square miles. Apart from the monument to be considered, 
there is no testimony as to the time when a great native civilization in 
this wide region came to an end, and its deserted cities and fertile fields 
were converted into jungles and the home of wild beasts. The aboriginal 
chronicles and the records of the Spanish conquerors, so full of the 
history of Mexico, and not altogether deficient regarding northern 
Yucatan and western Guatemala, have little or nothing to say concerning 
the southern Atlantic coast of Central America. Yet the birthplace of 
American continental civilization seems to have been there. According 
to Lizana and other writers, the first colonists of Yucatan came thither 
from Haiti by way of Cuba, but no conjecture is made as to the point 
whence their ancestors set out to reach the former island.’ 
It is probable that the bloodthirsty and avaricious Alvarado traversed 
this site of ancient civilization in 1524, and turned it into a waste howling 
wilderness by his barbarities. | For two hundred and twenty-two years 
subsequent, no human beings visited the ruins, save wandering natives, 
who, amid the relics of their former greatness, cursed the Spanish name 
aud swore undying hatred to those who bore it. In 1746, however, a 
body of Spaniards traversed the country of northern Chiapas, and 
stumbled upon the ruins of Palenque; but it was not till 1787 that 
