122 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. VI. 
deciphered. All is conjecture, imagination, attempt to connect 
pictographs and hieroglyphics, preconceived ideas of calendars, deities, 
sacrifices, and other rites that ought to be set forth in these records, but 
that are not. 
These gentlemen follow what is called the method of science, which is 
to proceed to interpret the unknown from the known. This is very 
natural and is the course that has often brought about great results. 
The known Greek in the Rosetta stone led to the interpretation of the 
unknown Egyptian; but the Greek alphabet has not interpreted the 
Etruscan, nor the Devanagari the Lat Indian, in spite of Prinsep and 
Cunningham. When clever men have been working for many years, 
and some of them for centuries, along the line of the so-called method of 
science without results, it is time for a change, a reformation, a revolution, 
time to drop the traditions of the past, and inaugurate a new method of 
arriving at truth. Had the so-called method of science been such, the 
Etruscan inscriptions would have been read long ago; had Landa’s key 
been a real key, such men as De Bourbourg, Bollaert, De Charencey, 
De Rosny and Thomas, would have ere this given the world complete 
translations of the texts. The method of science may have been a very 
noble lion, but it is dead; a living dog is better. Landa might have 
saved the world a great deal of trouble had he been a wise man; but he 
was not. He saw that the Mayas had writing, and burned twenty-seven 
rolls of it in 1562, to the great distress of the natives. He at once 
eoncluded that, as Spanish writing was by letters, so was that of the 
Mayas. Hemight have known better, for Father Alonzo Ponce in 1588 
said: “The natives of Yucatan are, among all the inhabitants of New 
Spain, especially deserving of praise for three things: First, that, 
before the Spaniards came, they made use of characters and letters, 
with which they wrote out their histories, their ceremonies, the order of 
sacrifices to their idols, and their calendars, in books made of the bark 
of a certain tree. These were on very long strips, a quarter or a third 
of a yard in width, doubled and folded, so that they resembled a bound 
book in quarto, a little larger or smaller. These letters and characters 
were understood only by the priests of the idols (who in that language 
was called Ahkins) and a few principal natives. Afterwards some of 
our friars learned to understand and read them, and even wrote them.” 
Why did Landa not apply to these industrious friars ? 
Thanks to the kind attention of several eminent scholars, the Maya 
hieroglyphic problem has been for some time under the writer’s eye. 
Judging that it lay out of his sphere, he acknowledged the kindness of 
these scholars, and their eminent qualifications as interpreters of the 
