December 11, 1885.] 



sciujsrcu. 



515 



in order to vindicate their claims to hereditary 

 lands. Hence several of these documents are 

 called ' titulos,' or family titles. 



Many of these native writings were lost ; so that, 

 of them all, only four are certainly known to be 

 in existence. They are named in the note, ^ and it 

 will be seen, that, while they are now all accessible 

 in print, two have appeared only within a year, 

 and two are merely Spianish translations without 

 the original text. The ' Popol vuh,' or ' national 

 book,' of the Quiches, is already well known to 

 scholars. About one-half of it is concerned with 

 the religious myths of the Quiches, the remainder 

 with then- historic traditions. The precise date of 

 its composition is uncertain, but it may be as- 

 signed to the last half of the sixteenth century. 

 The ' Titulo de Totonicapan • is officially dated in 

 1554 ; the title of the Princess Nehaib is somewhat 

 later, and refers to lands south-west of the Quiche 

 territory, in the province of Soconusco ; while the 

 ' Annals of the Cakchiquels ' were written by a 

 native who was ah-eady a married man when the 

 Spanish troops first entered his country. The 

 Cakchiquels, it may be observed, were of the same 

 lineage and language as the Quiches, and adjoined 

 them on the east. 



These four pubhcations, therefore, offer to stu- 

 dents who would investigate the pre-Columbian 

 liistory of Central America a large amount of 

 authentic aboriginal material. We may say that 

 it has never yet been utilized ; for the Abbe Bras- 

 seur, in his ' Histoire du Mexique,' was utterly un- 

 critical, and spun a romance from these writings, 

 all of which he had consulted ; while Mr. H. H. 

 Bancroft had never seen three out of the four 

 when he prepared his ' Native tribes of the Pacific 

 coast,' and his 'History of Central America.' A 

 comparison shows that all the native writers drew 

 from some common stock of national legend ; all 

 deny that the regions they occupied were their 

 original homes ; all refer to some distant land in 

 the west or north-west, beyond the sea, as the resi- 

 dence of their ancestors. An echo of ancient 

 Nahuatl tradition floats through these earliest 

 reminiscences. We hear of the wondrous city of 

 Tulan, the mysterious land of Zuiva, and of bat- 

 tles with the Nonoalcos. But the many problems 

 presented by these writings cannot even be men- 



1 Popol vuh ; le livre sacre des Quiches. The original 

 text, with a French translation by the Abbe Brasseur de 

 Bourbourg. (Taris, 1861.) 



Titulo de la casa de Ixcuin- Nehaib. Edited by Don 

 Juan Gavarrete. (Guatemala, 1873.) 



Titulo de Ins Senores de Totonicapan. The Spanish text, 

 ■with a French translation by M. le Comte de Charencey. 

 (Alen§on, 1885.) 



The annals of the Cakchiquels. The original text, with an 

 English translation by Dr. D. G. Brinton. ^^Philadelphia, 

 1885.) 



tioned here. As a whole, they offer the most com- 

 plete body of American mythology and legend 

 extant. 



GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 



Heights of mountains in Lapland. — Recent ex- 

 plorations of Swedish Lapland by Bucht Svenonius 

 and Rabot have revealed the existence in the 

 department of Norrbotten of a mass of mountains, 

 of which several summits rise considerably over 

 6,000 feet. Their ravines enclose numerous gla- 

 ciers. The highest is called by the Lapps Kebna- 

 kaisa, is situated in latitude 68°, a degree and a 

 half eastward from the meridian of Stockholm, 

 and between the Luleo and Tomeo lakes, and by 

 trigonometrical measurement appears to be 6,940 

 feet in height. The two next highest are Kaskasat- 

 jokko, 6,800 feet, and Sarjetkt-jokko, 6,760 feet, 

 approximately. 



Northern Norway and Finland. — The observa- 

 tions of Charles Rabot in the mountainous area 

 of Store Baergef jeld, in Nordland, arctic Norway, 

 represented on the best charts as occupied by an 

 immense continuous glacier field, show that it has 

 been wholly misunderstood. There is no primary 

 glacier, but merely seven secondary glaciers, 

 isolated in ravines, and hardly passing beyond the 

 stage of neve. Their total area does not exceed 

 six square kilometres, about one-fiftieth of the 

 area formerly supposed to be ice-covered. The 

 field is not a plateau, but to the north a moun- 

 tain mass, whose culminating points reach nearly 

 6,000 feet, and which averages 3,600 feet ; and to 

 the south a densely wooded tableland, cut with 

 myriads of deep and regular canon-hke valleys. 

 Fir-trees three feet in diameter a yard above the 

 ground were not rare. After completing his 

 work on the field, Rabot made explorations in the 

 Kola peninsula of Russian Finland, determining 

 the existence of three distinct chains of mountains 

 between the Polar and White seas, which reach a 

 height of more than 3,000 feet. The country has 

 hitherto been charted as a sort of plain, broken 

 merely by lakes and low hills. The area between 

 the ranges is level, and trees of good size and form 

 reach latitude 68° 50' ; beyond they extend some 

 distance, but do not exceed twelve or fifteen feet 

 in height. Collections were made of geology, 

 terrestrial and fluviatile mollusks and fishes. 



Connecting the Volga and the Don. — The pro- 

 ject of connecting the Volga and the Don dates 

 back to 1568, when Selim, the son of Solynian the 

 Magnificent, besieging Astrakhan, attempted to 

 join the two rivers in order to transpoil material 

 of war. His work was brought to an end by the 

 power of Ivan the Terrible, czar of Moscow, In 

 1700, aided by John Perry, an English engineer, 



