PBEPONDEEANCE OP DATES IN THE NINTH CYCLE. 143 



Now, in Maya chronology, the 9th cycle of the 54th great cycle embraced a date, an 

 event, an occasion, an anniversary, a conjuncture — 1 cannot find a word to express 

 exactly what I mean — more significant and momentous than anything we can conceive 

 of as possible to happen in our national annals or in the history of the world. It was 

 a point at which all the multitudinous periods of their different styles of reckoning, 

 except the cycle and great cycle, came to an end and began anew. The conjuncture 

 could occur only at intervals of 18,720 years. Even then, others would not have the 

 importance of this particular occurrence ; for, in addition to being a terminal and 

 beginning point of all the periods, this one marked the commencement of the last 

 quarter of their grand era — 280,800 years had passed ; there was only a trifle of 

 93,600 years more to be got over before their grand- period would have run its course. 



The importance of this particular occasion kept Copan, Quirigua, Menche and Tikal 

 in a state of agitation for fifty years before and after ; that is, they had a whole century 

 of jubilation instead of a single brief year. Even as long as a hundred and fifteen 

 years before, a stela went up telling that this chronological circus was coming, how 

 long it would be before it arrived, and what periods would intervene and round them- 

 selves out meanwhile. But it was not till many years later that these advance agents, 

 as it were, began to come thick and fast. Then all sorts of bill-boards — monuments, 

 altars and dead-walls — were erected and placarded all over with posters stating that 

 the greatest show for 18,720 years was at hand, and what periods would end and begin 

 again, and what other wonderful feats of chronological jugglery would be performed. 

 The occasion itself finally came, and the fact of its being the end-all and beginning-all 

 of nearly everything is duly chronicled on stela, altar and wall. The performance 

 appears to have been perfectly satisfactory and well worth the price of admission, as 

 our modern journals would say. But do not think that the excitement ended with the 

 actual occurrence. As for fifty years and more before they had been loud in the 

 announcement that it would presently come, so for fifty years and more after they were 

 vociferous in the statement that it had just gone. Then they appear to have become 

 calm again. The great event had passed far enough behind to no longer agitate them, 

 and the people of the Archaic empire resumed the even tenor of their way. 



With all the agitation and excited activity which appear to have characterized this 

 jubilee period, it must not be supposed that the numerous memorial monuments and 

 inscriptions which resulted have nothing but a bald relevancy to the principal event. 

 The schoolmaster got abroad and improved the opportunity to get in some good work 

 for educational purposes. Some of the inscriptions of this period are almost complete 

 text-books of their periods and methods of computing time. If the schoolmaster had 

 had a more concise graphic style, or had had more space for the exercise of even the 

 diffusive one he possessed, and time had not laid its destroying fingers on his work, 

 there would be little left in the inscriptions for us to puzzle over. As it is, it is 

 evident enough that these inscriptions — whether on stela?, altars, walls or altar-pieces 



