ound, nearly one hundred and fifty feet high, having five summits,
crowned with as many temples. Its height allows the spectator to overlook
the whole city, whilst, too, it is itself a conspicuous object from every
direction." This sacred mound or pyramid actually marks the centre of the
empire. From the surrounding walls of the sacred city four roads diverge
towards the cardinal points, dividing the capital into four quarters. Each
province was ruled by an official and both province and ruler seem to have
been anciently designated by the term Mountain=Yo or Kan. A superior
official, entitled the "President of the Four Mountains" is mentioned as
the counsellor of Emperor Yaou in the Shu King. One name for mountain is
yo, another is kan, a word which resembles k'an=water and kwan=earth,
which forms the name of the earth mother=Kwan-yin. Without drawing any
hasty conclusions, I merely note the curious fact that the title "the
President of the Four Mountains," must sometimes have been rendered as Kan
and as Yo, and that a variant the name of "four seas" may well have been
"four _ho_" or lakes or rivers. The title kan, meaning mountain or
eminence, and the idea of four rivers flowing from a common centre or
spring, may well have developed themselves among Chinese-speaking people.
It may be an odd coincidence only that the word kan=mountain, should be so
intimately connected with the numeral four in the Chinese title; while it
is a synonym for four in the Maya, it is also found employed in the
honorific Maya title Kukul-kan=the divine Kan, and as a synonym for
mountain in certain names of localities in the valley of Mexico. An
interesting but little known fact is that the peak of the mighty Kulkun
mountain in China is designated as the "King of Mountains, the summit of
the earth, the supporter of heaven and the axis which touches the pole"
(Meyer's Conversations-Lexikon).

I should much like to know whether the name kul-kun is a variant of
kul-kan, and literally signifies "divine mountain." In this case it would
strangely resemble the Maya Kukulkan and the Nahuatl Cul-hua-can, the name
of the fabulous recurved mountain of Aztec tradition. Feeling that I am
here treading upon extremely dangerous ground I shall abandon further
comparisons and conclusions to philologists and Chinese scholars and
merely conclude by stating the certain facts, that in Chinese and Maya
alike the syllable _ho_ seems to be associated with the Middle; w