210 CENTRAL AMERICAN PICTURE-WRITING. 
meant, his labor and his learning have not been all in vain. It will be 
one more proof that human effort, even misdirected, is not lost, but that 
it comes, later or earlier, ‘‘ to forward the general deed of man.” 
Il. 
MATERIALS FOR THE PRESENT INVESTIGATION. 
My examination of the works of Mr. J. L. STEPHENS has convinced 
me that in every respect his is the most trustworthy work on the 
hieroglyphs of Central America. The intrinsic evidence to this effect is 
very strong, but when I first became familiar with the works of WAL- 
DECK I found so many points of difference that my faith was for a time 
shaken, and I came to the conclusion that while the existing representa- 
tions might suffice for the study of the general forms of statues, tablets, 
and buildings, yet they were not sufficiently accurate in detail to serve 
as a basis for the deciphering [had in mind. Iam happy to bear witness, 
however, that STEPHENS’S work is undoubtedly amply adequate to the 
purpose, and this fact I have laboriously verified by a comparison of it 
with various representations, as those of DmsAtx and others, and also 
with a few photographs. The drawings of WALDECK are very beautiful- 
and artistic, but either the artist himself or his lithographers have taken 
singular liberties in the published designs. STEPHENS’S work is not 
only accurate, but it contains sufficient material for my purpose (over 
1,500 separate hieroglyphs), and, therefore, 1 have based my study ex- 
clusively upon his earliest work, “‘ Incidents of Travel in Central America, 
Chiapas, and Yucatan,” 2 vols., 8vo. New York, 1842 (twelfth edition). 
I have incidentally consulted the works on the subject contained in the 
Library of Congress, particularly those of BRASSEUR DE BOURBOURG, 
KINGSBOROUGH, WALDECK, and others, but, as I have said, the two vol- 
umes above named contain all the the material I have been able to utilize, 
and much more which is still under examination. 
One fact which makes the examination of the Central American anti- 
quities easier than it otherwise would be, has not, I think, been suffi- 
ciently dwelt upon by former writers. This is the remarkable faithful- 
ness of the artists and sculptors of these statues and inscriptions to a 
standard. Thus, at Copan, wherever the same kind of hieroglyph is 
to be represented, it will be found that the human face or other object 
employed is almost identically the same in expression and character, 
wherever it is found. The same characters at different parts of a tablet 
do not differ more than the same letters of the alphabet in two fonts of 
type. 
At Palenque the type (font) changes, but the adherence to this is 
equally or almost equally rigid. It is to be presumed that in this latter 
