gallery of the British Museum. No one can form an
exact idea of the monuments of Mayapan by reading mere
descriptions. It is necessary to either examine the buildings
themselves (and this is not quite devoid of danger, since the most
interesting are situated in territories forbidden to white men,
and occupied by the hostile Indians of Chan-Santa-Cruz, who since
1849 wage war to the knife on the inhabitants of Yucatan, and have
devastated the greatest part of that State), or to study my
magnificent collection of photographs where they are most
faithfully portrayed; that can be done with more ease, without
running the risk of losing one's life.

It is said that the deciphering of the American hieroglyphics is a
rather desperate enterprise, because we have no Rosetta stone with
a bilingual inscription. I humbly beg to differ from that opinion;
at least as regards the inscriptions on the walls of the monuments
of Mayapan. In the first instance, the same language, with but few
alterations, that was used by the builders of these edifices is
today commonly spoken by the inhabitants of Yucatan and Peten, and
we have books, grammars and dictionaries compiled by the Franciscan
friars in the first years of the conquest, translated in Spanish,
French and English. We do not, therefore, require an American
Rosetta stone to be discovered. Secondly, if it is undeniable that
Bishop Landa consigned to the flames all the books of the Mayas
that happened to fall into his hands, it is also true that by a
singular freak he preserved us, in great part at least, the Maya
alphabet in his work, "Las Cosas de Yucatan," discovered by
Brasseur de Bourbourg in the national library of Madrid. The
Americanists owe much to the researches of the abbe. I consider his
works as deserving a better reception than they have ever had from
the scientific world at large. It is true that he is no respecter
of Mosaic chronology,--and who can be in presence of the monuments
of Central America? Reason commands, and we must submit to evidence
and truth! I have carefully compared the characters of said
manuscript with those engraved upon the stones in Chichen, which I
photographed, and found them alike. Some on the frontispieces of
the palaces and temples differ, it is true, but do not our
o