1898-99. ] DECIPHERING HIEROGLYPHIC INSCRIPTIONS OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 207 
universal Polynesian belief in the enchanted island of Bolootoo 
doubtless led many adventurous spirits to search for it as a place of 
rest and happiness, just as Ponce de Leon explored the Caribbean Sea 
in quest of Bimini, the fountain of youth. But what speaks more 
strongly in favor of the Malay-Polynesian origin of the Maya-Quiches 
is the voice of language and tradition. Uniting the Algonquins with 
the Maya-Quiches in his comparison, and having drawn attention to 
physical resemblance and similarity of character, together with softness 
of speech, the writer has said elsewhere: “ According to Sir John 
Lubbock and Dr. Tylor, the Polynesians do not worship the heavenly 
bodies. I do not know whether this is the case with the Mbaya- 
Abipone family or not, but solar worship had, at least, no prominence 
among the Maya-Quiches, and was unknown among the Algonquins, 
before the adoption of the Delawares into the Iroquois confederacy. 
On the other hand, the Dacotahs, Iroquois, Choctaws, Natchez, 
Mexicans, Peruvians, Muyscas, and Chilenos were sun worshippers. 
The heaven of the latter peoples was supposed to be continental, happy 
hunting grounds in some distant region, or it was celestial, above the 
clouds ; but the Algonquin heaven was, like that of the Polynesians, an 
island in the ocean. The Abbé Maurault,in his Histoire des Abénaquis 
says: ‘Ce Grand Esprit résidait sur une ile du grand lac (I’ Océan 
Atlantique).’ In this we find an evidence of insular derivation. The 
same appears in the story of the creation of the world. Maui of New 
Zealand, with whom Dr. Tylor compares the Algonquin Manitou or 
Monedo, fished up the earth with a hook from the universal ocean, as 
did Tangaloa of the Friendly Islands. The Quiche Tohil, Tzakoll or 
Tockill, who is undoubtedly the Malay-Polynesian Tangaloa or Tagala, 
according to the Popol-Vuh or sacred book of the Quiches, called the 
earth into being in a similar waste of waters. The Ojibbeways and 
Delawares tell an identical story of Manitou; while other Algonquin 
tribes made the rat his agent in the work of creation. The notion of 
the Ojibbeways of Lake Superior that they inhabited an island, and 
their habit of alluding to the American continent as such, seemed 
surprising to Kohl, the traveller, who imagined it to be the result of 
knowledge acquired by exploration, instead of a necessary result of 
their system of cosmology. 
“In their un-Darwinian account of the origin of man, the Malay- 
Polynesians, Algonquins and Maya-Quiches agree. The Tagalas of the 
Philippines believed that ‘mankind sprang out of a large cane with two 
joints, and the man came out of one joint and the woman out of the 
other.’ In Samoa the tradition is that the first land brought forth wild 
