116 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. VI. 
The figure of the cross in general is so simple that it is as old as the 
art of writing, of drawing, even of making a mark more complicated 
than a straight line. It is found in all lands and in all ages, sometimes 
with religious significance, but oftener without. It is an old symbol in 
Egypt and in Assyria, in India and in China, in Asia Minor and in 
Etruria, as well as throughout America. The simplest mode of 
construction is an upright pole fixed in the ground, and the next to 
that is across piece from which articles ofany kind may depend. That 
so much attention has been paid to the Palenque cross is not to be 
wondered at, but, as Mr. Baldwin has said, the attention is more a sign 
of ignorance and credulity than of scientific curiosity. The fantastic 
bird idol is the true object of interest. In it, perhaps, may be recog- 
nized the Voc of the Quiches, mentioned in their sacred book, the Popol 
Vuh. Among the Cachiquels this bird god was called Vaku, and Dr. 
Brinton thinks that Savacon of the Caribs, which they represent as a 
huge bird that makes the winds, and as the companion of Iroucan, is 
this same Voc, inasmuch as the Quiches call it the messenger of the god 
Hurakan.*’ The Voc is a bird described by Coto “as having green 
plumage, and a very large and curved bill, apparently a kind of parrot.” 
It is a well-known fact that all the Maya-Quiche peoples were in the 
habit of immolating captives taken in war to their gods, and that, in 
default of these, they did not scruple, in cases of supposed necessity, to 
sacrifice their slaves, their children or their poor. The high priest was 
always a member of the royal family... The object presented to the 
idol is not necessarily an infant. It is a trait of almost all ancient 
representations of human figures, such, for instance, as the Egyptian 
and Assyrian, to give prominence to kings and other distinguished 
personages by magnifying their portraits inordinately, at the expense of 
their victims, opponents, or inferiors. 
The chief merit of the pictorial part of the tablet is that it furnishes 
what is doubtless a faithful representation of two distinct, though allied, 
types of feature and dress, illustrating the period to which the tablet 
belongs. The headdress of the larger of the two figures, on the right, is 
curiously like that of the Tokari, as represented on the Egyptian monu- 
ments. Kenrick thus describes it: “A high cap or helmet, wider at the 
top than at the base, divided into coloured stripes, with disks of metal 
attached to it, descending on the back of the neck and fastened beneath 
the chin.”” By the name of their god Tohil, Tockill, the Maya-Quiches 
claim some sort of connection with the ancient Tokari, intermediate 
links being found in the Tagalas of the Philippines, and in the almost 
universal Polynesian god Tagaloa or Tangaloa. Theancient art of Java 
