444 



APPENDIX. 



Thus the 11th of September Was the 18th of Zip, which does fall on 9 

 Ymix, and accords with the date given in the MS. This date appears, 

 therefore, to have been very correct. 



Of the Origin of this Cycle > 



The origin and use of this species of age, epoch, or cycle, and (the time) 

 when it commenced, are not known. Neither the Mexican nor Toltecan 

 authors, nor those who corrected the chronological system for the computa- 

 tion of time, ever used it, nor had their writers any knowledge of its exist- 

 ence. The few and incomplete manuscripts which exist in this peninsula 

 make no mention of it ; so that there is neither record nor even conjecture 

 to guide us, unless there be something on the subject in the work written 

 by Don Cristobal Antonio Xiu,"son of the King of Mani, by order of the 

 then government, which, according to the padre Cogolludo, existed in his 

 time, and some allege to be even yet extant. 



It appears only that the Chevalier Boturini had some knowledge, though 

 imperfect, of that mode of reckoning time; inasmuch as Don Mariano 

 Veytia, in the second chapter of his " Historia Antigua de Mexico," tran- 

 scribes literally the explanation which Boturini gives at page 122 of the 

 work which he published under the title of " Idea of a New History of 

 North America," and says, " that the Mexican Indians, when they reckon- 

 ed in their calendar the first sign of their indiction under number 1, as, for 

 instance, Ce Tecpatl (1 Tecpatl), it was understood that it was (so placed) 

 only one time in every four cycles, because they spoke then of the initial 

 characters of each cycle; and thus, according to the contrivance of their 



painted wheels, Ce Tecpatl was but once the commencement of the four 

 cycles" [meaning— began a cycle but once in four cycles. But the fact 

 is not so : both in the Mexican and the Yucatec calendar, every cycle of 52 

 years begins with the same initial character of the year] ; " for which rea- 

 son, any character of those initial signs placed in their history means that 

 four Indian cycles of 52 years each have elapsed, which makes 208 years 

 before they can again occur as initial, because, in this way, no account is 

 taken of characters which are in the body of the four cycles ; and though 

 the same characters are found there, they have not the same value." 



Veytia affirms that he did not find any similar explanation, or anything 

 alluding to the system of Boturini, in any of the ancient monuments which 

 he had collected or examined, or mentioned by any Indian historian, not 

 even in order to designate the epochs of the most remarkable events. But 

 I believe that, in answer to this remark of Veytia, it may be said that Botu- 

 rini, as Veytia states elsewhere, had examined the calendars used in old 

 times by the Indians of Oaxacac, Chiapas, and Soconusco, and these 

 being similar to that of the Yucatecos, it is not unreasonable to suppose 

 that they, like the Yucatecos, computed by cycles greater than the Mexi- 

 cans employed ; and that Boturini took from them the idea, though con- 



