HOLDEN. ] THE MAYA HIEROGLYPHS. 209 
Suppose, for example, that we know the meaning of a dozen characters 
only, and the way a half dozen of these are joined together in a sentence. 
The method by which these were obtained will serve to add others to 
the list, and progress depends in such a case only on our knowledge of 
the people who wrote, and of the subjects upon which they were writing. 
Such knowledge and erudition belongs to the archeologists by profes- 
sion. A step that might take me a year to accomplish might be made 
in an instant by one to whom the Maya and Aztec mythology was famil- 
iar, if he were proceeding according to asound method. At the present 
time we know nothing of the meaning of any of the Maya hieroglyphs. 
It will, therefore, be my object to go as far in the subject as I can pro- 
ceed with certainty, every step being demonstrated so that not only the 
archeologist but any intelligent person can follow. As soon as the 
border-land is reached in which proof disappears and opinion is the only 
guide, the search must be abandoned except by those whose cultivated 
and scientific opinions are based on knowledge far more profound and 
various than I can pretend or hope to have. 
If I do not here push my own conclusions to their farthest limit, it 
must not be assumed that I do not see, at least in some cases, the direc- 
tion in which they lead. Rather, let this reticence be ascribed to a de- 
sire to lay the foundations of a new structure firmly, to prescribe the 
method of building which my experience has shown to be adequate and 
necessary, and to leave to those abler than myself the erection of the 
superstructure. If my methods and conclusions are correct (and I have 
no doubts on this point, since each one has been reached in various ways 
and tested by a multiplicity of criteria) there is a great future to these 
researches. It is not to be forgotten that here we have no Rosetta stone 
to act at once as key and criterion, and that instead of the accurate de- 
scriptions of the Egyptian hieroglyphics which were handed down by 
the Greek cotemporaries of the sculptors of these inscriptions, we have 
only the crude and brutal chronicles of an ignorant Spanish soldiery, or 
the bigoted accounts of an unenlightened priesthood. To CoRTEZ and 
his companions a memorandum that it took one hundred men all day to 
throw the idols into the sea was all-sufficient. To the Spanish priests 
the burning of all manuscripts was praiseworthy, since those differing 
from Holy Writ were noxious and those agreeing with it superfluous. 
It is only to the patient labor of the Maya sculptor who daily carved 
the symbols of his belief and creed upon enduring stone, and to the lux- 
uriant growths of semi-tropical forests which concealed even these from 
the passing Spanish adventurer, that we owe the preservation of the 
memorials of past beliefs and vanished histories. 
Not the least of the pleasures of such researches as these comes from 
the recollection that they vindicate the patience and skill of forgotten 
men, and make their efforts not quite useless. It was no rude savage 
that carved the Palenque cross; and if we can discover what his efforts 
14 A 5 
