tal principles which
influenced not only the distribution of the population, but the
ground-plan of the capital itself, any text I could publish with the
map would be incomplete. As matters now stand, I propose to treat of
the City of Mexico as a type of an ancient American sacred city, to
compare its ground plan with those of other native capitals and to
trace, as far as possible, the localization of the various tribes
and classes of the ancient population, so that we can form an
adequate idea of the topography and machinery of the great state
known as the Empire of Montezuma. I hope and expect to complete this
publication in a reasonable period of time but dare not define its
limits, as all scientific research demands more time and strength
than can be determined upon in advance. In conclusion I would state
that, at the Congress of Americanists which took place at the city
of Mexico in 1895, the distinguished Mexican cartographer, Senor
Garcia Cubas, whose splendid maps of Mexico are well known, made an
interesting communication on this map, of which he had seen a copy.

66 It has been surmised that the name Palenque is of Spanish origin and
means "a palisade;" but it seems far more likely to be the
approximate rendering of the sound of the old native word by a
Spanish word, in the same way that the Nahuatl Quauh-nahuac became
the Spanish Cuerna-vaca, literally cow's horn.

67 Brasseur de Bourbourg's Maya Vocabulary contains an interesting
instance of a native tribe or lineage bearing the name of a bird:
"Chel: name of a kind of bird; ancient name of a great sacerdotal
family reigning at Tecoh (near Izamal, Yucatan). Thence the title
'Chelekat,' which meant holy, exalted, great, and was applied to the
head of this family."

68 On a large tablet at Ixkun, the cast of which is now in Mr.
Maudslay's collection at the South Kensington Museum, similarly
placed figures support on their bent backs and shoulders standing
personages, facing each other, and surrounded by glyphs. In this
case, however, the men who serve as footstools, are bound and
distinctly show a difference of type and costume, so that there can
be no doubt that the tablet commemorated the conquest of an alien
tribe.

69 Estudio arqueologico y jeroglifico