176. YUCATESE AND MEXICAN SOLAR YEAR DIFFERENCES, 



the day called "Muluc" immediately follows the day Lamat; the 

 ensuing year 2 Muluc commences with the day 2 Muluc, in the 

 same manner as the year 1 Khan commences with the day 1 Khan. 

 It is the same with the other years ; so that the first day of every 

 year has the same name and numerical character as the year itself. 



"Don J. P. Perez acknowledges that amongst the few mutilated 

 remains of Indian manuscripts or paintings, he has not been able to 

 discover any trace of an intercalation, either of one day every four 

 years, or of thirteen days at the end of the cycle, though he pre- 

 sumes that they had indubitably either the one or the other. 



"The Yucatan cycle of fifty-two years, differed in no other re- 

 spect from that of the Mexicans. The combination of the two series 

 of twenty and thirteen days is used in the same manner in both 

 calendars for the purpose of distinguishing the days of the year. 



"The Yucatecs differed materially from the Mexicans with regard 

 to the time of the solar year, when their year bejgan. Don J. P. 

 Perez informs us, that the first day of the Yucatan year correspond- 

 ed with the sixteenth day of July ; and that this was the day of the 

 transit of the sun by the zenith of a place which he does not men- 

 tion. But he adds that, for want of proper instruments, the Indians 

 had made a mistake of forty-eight hours. In point of fact, it is in 

 the latitude of about twenty-one degrees and a half that the transit 

 of the sun by the zenith occurs on the 16th of July; and Yucatan 

 lies between the latitudes of about eighteen degrees and a half and 

 twenty-one degrees and a half. To commence the year on the day 

 of the transit of the sun by the zenith, is attended with the great 

 inconvenience, that this commencement must vary from place to 

 place, according to their respective latitudes. As Don J. Pio Perez 

 counts every year as having 365 days, and without regard to the 

 omitted bissextile days, it is clear that the day in the Yucatan ca- 

 lendar, on which the transit of the sun by the zenith of any one 

 place occurs, would vary twenty days, or a whole Indian month, in 

 the course of eighty years. This would create such confusion that, 

 if it be a well ascertained fact, that the Yucatan year began on the 

 zenith day, this renders it highly probable that the calendar was, 

 like that of the Mexicans, corrected by an intercalation of thirteen 

 days at the end of the cycle. 



"The names of the eighteen months of the Yucatecos, together 

 with such interpretations as Don Pio Perez has given us, their order 

 and their correspondence with our year, new style, appear in the 

 following table : 



