DISTRIBUTION OF THE MAYANCE LINGUISTIC STOCK. 609 
Joseph Delgado, who had just returned from travels the year before among the 
Choles. Setting out from Cahabén, at 23 leagues 1 in the forest they formed a small 
settlement, according to Villagutierre, calling it San Lucas Tzalac; 4 of the 11 towns 
said to have been formed in the next two years bear the names of towns included in 
the Leon Pinelo 19; some 30 other places are named, to most of which they could 
not go, but some of these are also the same as those named in 1639. The popula- 
tion of the whole district is here given as 30,000. Villagutierre also mentions 
Ordonez de Villaquiran as still Alealde Mayor of Chiapa aid Adelantado of Prés- 
pero about 1680, and as starting to put down a Queache uprising beyond Tenosique. 
In the beginning of 1685 we are told that San Lucas Tzalac was established a third 
time. The maintenance of this settlement was the only thing attempted in the 
succeeding years, and in 1688 the Indians burned the church and houses; but 
happily a small manuscript volume escaped, as we shall presently see. This manu- 
script was presented by President Mariano Galvez in 1836 to the American Philoso- 
phical Society, since which time it appears to have lain wholly unused, save only 
for a scanty and very inadequately copied extract by Berendt. It begins with 
some notes about the road to the region of the Choles and the settlement thereof 
in 1689 to 1692; then follow two transcripts, by different hands, and with minor 
variances of the Moran grammar; then Moran’s Doctrina, with considerable addi- 
tions; next at page 75, a Confessionario, written “at San Lucas de Salac de el Chol, 
in 1685”; and finally the Vocabulario Grande of Moran, with some additional 
words and a colophon dating this as having been written “‘In this town of the 
Lacandones called La Senora de los Dolores, June 24, 1695.” 
This manuscript is doubly important. It contains not only the earliest Cholti 
vocabulary known, but also the most extensive one, and in a larger sense has been 
more useful than any other source in filiating the Chorti with the Cholti as parts 
of the same branch. 
The territory we are discussing is given by Leon Pinelo roughly as stretching 
from 15° to 16° 30’ north latitude, and some 4 degrees east to west, or about “‘40 by 
70 leagues.” In this region we have two “‘provinces,’’ Manché in the east and 
Lacandon, or Prospero, in the west. Going north from Cahabén one entered 
“Chol” territory almost at once, which then continued, according to Padre Cano, 
for some 45 or 50 leagues to that of the Mopanes, for whom the Cholti needed an 
interpreter, and whom he classes as belonging to the great Itza nation, which he 
divides into the Mopan-Itzas and the Petén-Itzas. There is no reason to doubt 
the accuracy of Padre Cano’s statement, and it definitely places the Mopanes as 
speaking what we now call Yucatecan Maya, though with dialectic differences; 
and it confirms the distinction of the Cholti. 
When Padre Moran first set out in 1625 for Laguna de Términos, he reached a 
river, rapid and unnavigable, at 12 leagues of travel; in 6 days’ journey more he 
reached the Salinas of Bolontevitz, or Nueve Cerros ‘“‘among the Lacandones,”’ 
and then 1 league farther the navigable river “which he was seeking,” namely, 
the Chixoy. When the 1695 expedition set out, in three divisions, one from Caha- 
bon, one from Huehuetenango, and one from Ocosingo, the first, and that which 
Padre Cano accompanied, returned after penetrating close to Petén; while the 
other two met, after some 6 weeks of travel by easy stages, at Dolores. This latter 
place is described as being located a short league beyond a great river with green 
waters, which the company from Huehuetenango took for the Ocosingo River, 
and again as about 12 leagues beyond a large lake encountered by the company 
from Ocosingo, under President Barrios himself. 
We thus have in this little Cholti volume, now in the library of the American 
Philosophical Society, memoranda written at Belén, apparently at the distance of 
a considerable journey from Rabinal, in 1690 to 1692; then next the grammar; 
