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1898-99.] DECIPHERING HIEROGLYPHIC INSCRIPTIONS OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 177 
priests took part with Ahcunal, who agreed to test his word against 
the king’s by a singular duel. Four baskets of cocoyoles, a nut witha 
very hard shell, were to be broken on the head of each of the competi- 
tors. The wily grandmother prepared Ahcunal’s head for the ordeal, 
and one of Nohpat’s stoutest warriors broke the nuts with a heavy stone 
club without injury to the victim. Then, Nohpat, relying upon the 
divinity of his royalty, exposed himself to the same test, and met his 
death with the first descending blow of the club. Ahcunal sat on the 
vacant throne, and, while his grandmother lived, ruled well. After her 
death, he gave way to his passions, and committed sacrilege. Then the 
statue of his protecting deity, Kineh Ahau, disappeared mysteriously 
from its temple, and all knew that the new king’s fate was sealed. The 
Mayas, tired of his yoke, rose in rebellion, marched on Uxmal, and the 
Diviner died fighting on the threshold of his palace.° 
“Tt is known,” says Brasseur, “that, during the thirteenth century, 
Yucatan was invaded by barbarian hordes, to whom the chronicle gives 
the name Ah-Witzil, or Mountaineers, which corresponds in sense and 
etymology to that of the Quiches. This coincidence, no less than the 
accordance of that period, leaves no doubt as to the origin of the 
invasion. The pride of the kings of Quiche, augmented by their recent 
victories over Ilocab and the neighbouring nations, already sought more 
distant conquests. It was about the time of the reign of Iztayul I.; 
and there is every reason to believe that it was his arms, or those of 
his successor, which then devastated the rich provinces of the Mayas. 
The warriors of Izmachi or of Gumarcaah descended from the 
Chuchumatanes, called by parties who had set on foot an agitation in 
the peninsula, or attracted by the hope of a brilliant and easy conquest. 
Spite of the ignorance we are in of the events which led to this invasion, 
we at least know that the citadel of Ichpaa was taken by the Guate- 
malan mountaineers, and that Mayapan, which had begun to rise from 
its ruins, was given to the flames and overturned from top to bottom by 
the Ah-Witzils.”’ 
Concerning the Huastecs, another people mentioned on the Tablet of 
Palenque, Dr. Brinton says: “It cannot be denied that the Mayas, the 
Kiches, and the Cachiquels, in their most venerable traditions, claim to 
have migrated from the north or west, from some part of the present 
country of Mexico, These traditions receive additional importance 
from the presence on the shores of the Mexican Gulf, on the waters of 
the river Panuco, north of Vera Cruz, of a prominent branch of the 
Maya family, the Huastecs. The idea suggests itself that these were 
the rear guard of a great migration of the Maya family from the north 
