D. G. Brinton on Central American Languages. 223 
shown by the authors of the Mithridates* to be an offshoot of 
the Maya. These various dialects resemble each other, both 
in vocabularies and grammatical forms as closely as the various 
Romanic tongues of modern Europe. 
This linguistic family is of great interest for several reasons. 
It included the most highly civilized portions of the red race ; 
their ruined cities are among the wonders of the New World ; 
they had elaborated a phonetic alphabet far superior to the pic- 
ture writing of the Aztecs; they had a body of mythology 
and poetry of which some very respectable relics still exist ; 
and what of civilization was found in ancient Anahuac is sup- 
Presented by Mariano Galvez, Governor of Guatemala, in 
1836. They seem to have escaped the notice of scholars, their 
Me existence there having been entirely unknown even to 
While not one of them is included in the more recent list . 
Works given by Pimentel,f nor in Ludewig’s “Literature 0: 
= apg Lithridates oder Allgemeine Sprachenkunde, Th. II, Abth. III, 8. 15, Berlin,, 
oat 1Guadro Descriptivo de las Lenguas Indigenas de Mexico, Tom. I, p. 124, Mex- 
ay, 5. : 
