the archaeologists
by profession. A step that might take me a year to accomplish might be
made in an instant by one to whom the Maya and Aztec mythology was
familiar, if he were proceeding according to a sound method. At the
present time we know nothing of the meaning of any of the Maya
hieroglyphs.

It will, therefore, be my object to go as far in the subject as I can
proceed with certainty, every step being demonstrated so that not only
the archaeologist but any intelligent person can follow. As soon as the
border-land is reached in which proof disappears and opinion is the only
guide, the search must be abandoned except by those whose cultivated and
scientific opinions are based on knowledge far more profound and various
than I can pretend or hope to have.

If I do not here push my own conclusions to their farthest limit, it
must not be assumed that I do not see, at least in some cases, the
direction in which they lead. Rather, let this reticence be ascribed to
a desire to lay the foundations of a new structure firmly, to prescribe
the method of building which my experience has shown to be adequate and
necessary, and to leave to those abler than myself the erection of the
superstructure. If my methods and conclusions are correct (and I have no
doubts on this point, since each one has been reached in various ways
and tested by a multiplicity of criteria) there is a great future to
these researches. It is not to be forgotten that here we have no Rosetta
stone to act at once as key and criterion, and that instead of the
accurate descriptions of the Egyptian hieroglyphics which were handed
down by the Greek cotemporaries[TN-1] of the sculptors of these
inscriptions, we have only the crude and brutal chronicles of an
ignorant Spanish soldiery, or the bigoted accounts of an unenlightened
priesthood. To CORTEZ and his companions a memorandum that it took one
hundred men all day to throw the idols into the sea was all-sufficient.
To the Spanish priests the burning of all manuscripts was praiseworthy,
since those differing from Holy Writ were noxious and those agreeing
with it superfluous. It is only to the patient labor of the Maya
sculptor who daily carved the symbols of his belief and creed upon
enduring stone, and to the luxuriant growths of semi-tropical forests
which concealed even these from the passing Spanish adventurer, that we
owe the preservation of the memorials of past beliefs and vanished
histories.

Not th