448 



APPENDIX. 



"unfortunate." The whole of those 13 days was a time of penitence and 

 fasting, for fear that the world should come to an end ; nor did they eat any 

 warm food, as the fire was extinguished through the whole land till the new 

 cycle began, when the ceremony of the new fire was celebrated. 



But as all these were matters relating only to rites and sacrifices (not to 

 the true computation of time), this mode of intercalating had no application 

 to the natural year, because it would have greatly deranged the solstices, 

 equinoxes, and beginnings of the years ; and the fact is abundantly proved 

 by the circumstance that the days thus intercalated (at the end of the cycle) 

 had none of the symbols belonging to the days of the year, and the ritual 

 calendar accounted them bissextiles at the end of each cycle, in imitation, 

 though by a different order, of the civil bissextiles, which (as being more 

 accurate) were more proper for the regulation of public atfairs. 



AN ALMANAC, ADJUSTED ACCORDING TO THE CHRONOLOGICAL CALCULATION OP 

 THE ANCIENT INDIANS OF YUCATAN, FOR THE YEARS 1841 AND 1842, BY DON 

 JUAN PIO PEREZ. 



Observations. — The notes or remarks utz, yutz Jdn, a lucky day, lob, u 

 lob kin, an unlucky day, signify that the Indians had their days of good 

 and of ill fortune, like some of the nations of ancient Europe ; although it 

 is easily perceived that the number of their days of ill fortune is excessive, 

 still they are the same found by me in three ancient almanac? which I 

 have examined, and found to agree very nearly. I have applied them to the 

 number, not the name, of the day, because the announcements of rain, of 

 planting, &c., must, in my opinion, belong to the fixed days of the month, 

 and not to the names of particular days ; as these each year are changed, 

 and turn upon the four primaries, Kan, Muluc, Gix, and Cauac, chiefs of 

 the year. In another place, however, I have seen it laid down as a rule 

 that the days Chicchan, Cimi or Kimi, Oc, Men, Aliau, and Alibal, are the 

 days of rest in the month ; and this appears probable, as I see no reason 

 why there should be so great an excess of days of ill fortune. In the al- 

 manacs cited above, this order was not observed, either from ignorance or 

 excessive superstition. 



Thus the days on which the burner takes his fire, kindles it, gives it free 

 scope, and extinguishes it, are subject to the 3d, 4th, 10th, and 11th of the 

 days Chicchan, Oc, Men, and Ahau; as they say, for example, that on the 

 3d Chicchan the burner takes his fire, on the 10th Chicchan he begins, the 

 4th Chicchan he gives it scope, and the 11th Chicchan he extinguishes it; 

 the same may be said of Oc, Men, and Ahau ; from which we see that 

 these epochs are movable, as the days 3, 4, 10, and 11 do not always fall 

 on the same days of the month, but only according to the combination of 

 the weekly numbers with the days referred to. 



