214 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vou. VI. 
If, then, this art was introduced from abroad into America, it must have 
arrived by a more southern route, and, to all appearance, through the 
medium of the Malay race. I would remark further,that the route must 
have been yet south of San Francisco, where I observed only one, and 
that a doubtful, instance of aboriginal agriculture.”’ But Humboldt 
says, “It is no longer doubted among botanists that Maize, or Turkey 
corn, is a true American grain, and that the old continent received it 
from the new.” Humboldt was in his day a very wise man, but far from 
infallible. To his statement Mr. Crawford replies, referring to the Malay 
name for maize: “ The word /agung, which I imagine to be purely 
native, is the term by which this plant is known from one extremity of 
the archipelago to another. There can, therefore, be little doubt, as in 
the case of rice, that one tribe instructed all the rest in its culture. As 
far as a matter of this nature is capable of demonstration, it may also be 
conjectured that maize was cultivated in the Indian islands before the 
discovery of America, and that the plant is an indigenous product. The 
name bears no analogy to that of any language of America, although, in 
respect to their other exotic productions, whether animal or vegetable, 
either the native term, or one which points at the origin of them, is in- 
variably preserved in the languages of the Indian islanders.”* There 
can be little doubt that Mr. Crawford is right, even although the Malay 
name looks like a corruption of the older Maya, the original of which 
may have been gwcum,as in Gucumatz, to denote its feathery aspect, 
upon which the Algonquin mind dwells in the fable of Mondawmin.’ 
When the migration took place that brought the Maya-Quiche peoples 
to the west coast of America it may be difficult, even impossible, to tell, 
for it is evident that the Books of the Katuns, or chronological tables, of 
the Mayas embrace events belonging to periods in their history so 
ancient as to be generally regarded as mythological. They were 
undoubtedly in their seats when the Othomis and Toltecs arrived in 
Mexico, in the beginning of the eighth century, A.D. Between that 
time and the fifteenth, to which the inscriptions read in this treatise 
belong, there was abundant time for developing the high culture of a 
certain kind which they indicate. There is no evidence of Sanscrit or 
Arabic influence in their dialects such as is found in the languages of 
the Malay Archipelago, as would naturally be expected from the distance 
of their time of separation from the parent stem ; nor does the Javanese 
calendar, the only native Malay calendar surviving, shew any affinity to 
that of the Mayas.° We have not even the means of determining when 
the Malay islands were first peopled. It is possible that hieroglyphic 
texts on stone may yet be found in the line of Malay-Polynesian migra- 
