18386, ] Recent Literature. 445 
ern Mexico, Honduras, etc. Many tracts of Guatemala contain 
sculptures and architectural remains of these gifted tribes, attest- 
Under the Spanish domination several of the more enlightened 
Indians applied themselves to gathering and writing down the 
legends and historic traditions of the people, moved by patriot- 
ism and by the desire of preserving their national antiquities. 
tribal rulers, the Xahila. This legal instrument included in its 
plea the full history of the tribe and the genealogy of the Xahila 
family, to make their claim more valid, and it had several mem- 
bers of that family for its authors. They wrote it in Atitlan in the 
course of the sixteenth century, and only the historic or first por- 
tion of it is printed in the volume before us. The precious man- 
uscript became the property of the late Abbé Brasseur, and with - 
his collection finally passed into the hands of Mr. Alphonse L. 
inart, who loaned it to Dr. Brinton for publication. Assisted 
by natives the learned Abbé had made a tentative French transla- 
tion of the document, and in perfecting it he was materially 
aided by the then extant Spanish translations of some select por- 
tons. The document is authentic and of high ethnographic 
value. Let us now examine how Dr. Brinton has acquitted him- 
‘Self of the task of editing, translating and commenting it. 
cokhe missionary, F, de la Parra, who died in 1560, introduced 
into the Cakchiquel alphabet five un-Spanish letters or signs to 
represent certain “cut” sounds! of that dialect. These occur 
in the Xahila manuscript; Brinton reproduces four of them, 
eerie the fifth by zz. These bold, black-faced characters no- ae 
oubt impart to the book an air of erudition; but Dr. Stollinhis = 
£ mmatic sketch of Cakchiquel replaced them by apostrophed _ 
°nsonants, and Dr. Brinton might have done the same. Atany 
Tate it is puzzling to see that they do not appear also ia the : : 
Proper names of the English translation opposite. One of 
ang 
BS aes e sey bya pape stop of the voice, 
