CHAPTER XIV

THE ANCIENT MAYANS

There is no field of inquiry in which the imagination of students could roam further or more uselessly than in the reconstruction of the life of a vanished people from their ruined monuments. In attempting, as we shall in this chapter, to place before the reader a concise sketch of the political, religious, and social life of the Mayans at the time of the Spanish invasion of Yucatan, we cannot too strongly emphasise our conviction that the marvellous buildings which we have described in the preceding pages are not monuments of a vanished people. The Mayan toiler to-day in the milpas or the henequen fields is, we are convinced, the lineal descendant of the Mayan architect who was capable of creating a Chichen or a Sayil.

The history of Yucatan is the history of Egypt save for one fact. When Europe first interested itself in the architectural wonders of the Land of the Pharaohs centuries of darkness had overwhelmed the Copts and the Fellaheen and the arts of their ancestors were entirely lost to them. But when the white man first set foot in Yucatan the civilisation of her people was an actual living civilisation, though the key to the origin of it has yet to be discovered. The half-century which elapsed between the first discovery of the Peninsula and the establishment of Spanish authority sufficed to render desolate the mighty cities which covered its surface, to scatter and decimate its vast populations, to extirpate and suppress the native religion, and by the substitution of a new creed, a new polity, and a new social organisation so completely to ring down the curtain upon the Mayan past that the Indian victims of Spanish brutality and bigotry seemed separated from their ancestors by a gulf which even the most remarkable archæological acumen would find it hard to bridge. But though much archæological acumen has been exercised and many writers have laboured to aggrandise the Ancient Mayans at the expense of their descendants, it has really been labour lost. The life which the Mayans were found by the Spaniards to be living was probably in its minutest detail the life which they had led for centuries before. And thus in presenting here a short account of their civilisation, pieced together from the haphazard writings of those Spaniards who were not entirely absorbed in the congenial task of massacring and destroying, we are safe in assuming that we are giving the reader a very fair and accurate idea of how the builders of even the oldest ruins lived and loved and died.

Politically Yucatan was divided into a number of provinces, each ruled by a cacique. These provinces at the time of the Spanish invasion appear to have numbered nineteen. The power of these caciques within their own territory was so absolute as to amount to a virtual monarchy; though kingship in its true constitutional sense would appear to have never existed in Yucatan. The caciqueship was hereditary, and passed from father to son. Females appear to have been excluded from succession. If a cacique died leaving a son who was a minor, his eldest or most capable brother succeeded as cacique, and actually held the position after the heir had reached full age; the nephew being obliged to wait until his uncle's death before he attempted to claim his heritage. If the cacique left no brother, the priests and chief elders elected a successor who held the government for his life, the rightful heir only acceding at his death.

Each cacique maintained a small bodyguard; but the army for the defence of the State was the whole body of citizens capable of bearing arms. The cacique himself does not appear to have been commander-in-chief, but delegated this post to two subjects, one of whom held his military leadership by inheritance, transmitting it to his son, and the other being elective every three years. This latter official combined with his military duties certain sacerdotal functions, presiding at the feast of the War God, and during his term of office leading a hermit's life, maintaining complete chastity and abstaining from intoxicating liquor. The weapons of the soldiers were bows and arrows pointed with stone or fishbone, stone axes, and lances, swords and daggers of wood hardened by fire. They carried shields of plaited cane covered with deer-skin, and wore an armour of thickly woven cotton. Having no horses and no draught animals of any kind, each soldier had to be commissariat waggon for himself, and this difficulty of providing food for a long campaign made the wars short and sharp. Ordinary captives were usually reduced to the condition of slavery, but the general or cacique who was made prisoner was sacrificed to the War God as a thank-offering.

The centre of each town or village was occupied by the chief temple, around which were built the houses of the priests, the palace of the cacique and those of the chief men. Outside this sacred pale lived the poorer people in huts of the same type as those inhabited by the Mayans of to-day. Close to the temple was ordinarily the market-square, where stood the town hall in which all public business and reunions of the tribe took place, and justice was administered. Here presided a special functionary who ordered public festivals and ceremonies, and took the chair, so to speak, at general meetings of the people. As a matter of fact he appears to have rejoiced in the name of _Holpop_, which according to D. G. Brinton means literally "head of the mat," because at the tribal meetings when the elders squatted round on the mats, the _Holpop_ sat at the end. He appears also to have been Master of the Music, and to have had in his keeping the musical instruments of the tribe--namely the _tunkul_, which seems to have been a small drum of wood, trumpets of conch-shell and flutes of cane. The _tunkul_, which produced a melancholy note, was used to summon the people to worship, to give notice of dances and festive meetings, to call together the warriors, and as an alarm signal in case of sudden attack. Thus the _tunkul_ was in a special sense the sacred national instrument of the Mayans.

Justice was administered in a summary manner by the cacique, who personally heard plaints and disputes and gave such judgment as he thought fit. In the matter of damage to property the guilty party was made to compensate the injured by payment of his own goods. If he had no property, his relatives had to pay for him. This penalty of fining was the usual punishment for accidental homicide and unintentional arson and in the case of conjugal quarrels. Adultery was regarded as a grave offence when committed with a married woman. Accusation of adultery having been notified, the cacique, accompanied by the tribal elders, held a court, when with the greatest solemnity, and in the presence of the injured husband, the adulterer was tied hand and foot to a post of infamy. He was then at the disposal of the injured man. The latter could pardon him if he wished, or could take his life there and then by smashing in his head with a stone. The woman in fault suffered no bodily punishment, but was branded with infamy and usually repudiated by her husband. It is obvious that much respect was shown to women, for the penalty of death was meted out to any man who was guilty of outrage or rape, technical or actual. The cacique always condemned the offender to be stoned, and the penalty was inflicted by the whole village. Nobody, not even the highest noble, appears to have been able to escape the rigour of this law.

For murder the penalty was death, either by order of the cacique; or, if the criminal escaped, he could be pursued by the family of his victim and killed wherever they found him, his crime thus making him an outlaw. In the case of murder by a minor, the penalty of death was not inflicted nor could the injured family pursue him. But he became their slave for the rest of his life. Unintentional homicide was less rigorously punished. A fine either in goods or a slave was usually the penalty imposed. Other accidental injuries, such as the unmalicious firing of houses or crops, were made good by fining. In the case of intentional arson, however, the culprit was put to death; and the supreme penalty of the law was also inflicted on traitors.

Enslavement was the punishment of all robbers, who could only regain their liberty by restoring the stolen goods and making good the damage. So severe were the laws as to robbery that no excuse was found in circumstances of extreme want. The man who stole because he was starving was reduced to the condition of a slave just the same as the wanton or violent robber. Robbery and war were the chief sources of recruiting the ranks of the slaves. But if a theft was committed by a cacique, priest, noble or official, an exception was made in their favour. They did not become slaves, but were obliged to submit to a public degradation. The popular assembly was summoned, and there, before the eyes of all the people, the culprit was branded on both cheeks, from chin to forehead, with figures symbolical of his crime, tatooed on in paints with fishbones.

There were no regular prisons or houses of detention. Indeed they were not needed, as justice was in all cases summary. Where possible the offender was brought before the cacique forthwith. If, however, the arrest took place during the night, or the carrying out of the sentence had to be delayed for some hours, the criminal was imprisoned in an enclosure of stakes. If the penalty was death it was executed immediately, except in those cases where the criminal was reserved for sacrifice, and then he was kept caged up until such day as the priests had ordained. A murderer condemned to slavery became the property of one of the chief men, if there was no kinsman of his victim to whom he could become servant.

There was a very marked differentiation of classes among the Mayans. There were the nobles, the priests, the people, and the slaves. The children of these latter inherited their parents' status and _ipso facto_ became slaves. A free man who married a slave woman lost his freedom. Thus were class distinctions sternly maintained. Even sexual intercourse between a free man and a slave woman was severely punished on the first offence, and, if repeated, the man lost his liberty and became a slave to the owner of the girl. There appears to have been a regular slave-market in each large Mayan city. The Spanish chroniclers endeavour to denigrate this system of servitude, declaring it to be a cruel debasement of human beings to the position of beasts of burden. But though all slavery is detestable, there seems to have been little or no cruelty in the system in vogue among the Mayans, and it is quite obvious that it was untainted by that basest of all advantages which are taken of a slave class--namely, the using of them for immoral purposes. Spanish writers should recollect, in view of this very black page of their own history, a homely little proverb which begins "those who live in glass houses."

As has been said, the Mayan city had as its centre an open space where stood the temple and the chief houses. Thence branched off paths (they were not roads) connecting this central plaza with the houses of the nobles and middle class, the outlying suburbs of the city being occupied by the poor and the slaves. The richer people lived in stone houses, but those able to afford these were always few, and the average Mayan city consisted of huts built just as they are to-day by the modern Mayans; palm-thatched, oval-shaped enclosures of stakes bound together by lianas and sometimes plastered over with earth. The huts were of various sizes and shapes. The majority were oval, some were nearly round with a diameter of twenty-five feet, while a very few were rectangular. They were often divided into two apartments, a sleeping and a living room. There was no attempt at or need for foundation, the natural earth forming the flooring, as it does in the huts to-day. Each hut stood in its own garden, in which were cultivated plum-trees, the _mamey_ and the _sapota_ for their fruits, and other trees and shrubs, possibly a little cotton and henequen, and such flowering plants and sweet-scented herbs as wormwood, sweet basil, white and violet irises, and a small white flower, much like the English jasmine and strongly perfumed, which one sees growing everywhere in the woods of Yucatan to-day. Outside each city were the clearings devoted to agriculture, the chief products being maize, frijoles or black beans, a kind of pumpkin, sweet potatoes, cotton, and maize of different kinds. When the harvest was abundant it was stored in granaries as a reserve for bad years.

The Mayans had few domestic animals. They kept turkeys, which were indigenous to Central America, and they probably early domesticated the wild pig or peccary. They had a type of dog which one chronicler declares was incapable of barking, though an excellent hunter. These dogs were often fattened to form a dish at the feasts, being regarded as a great delicacy. The women and children appear to have made pets of the small Yucatecan racoon, the _coati_ or _pisotl_, as the Indians call it, and birds were tamed and kept.

The Mayan family, irrespective of sex and age, all slept in that portion of the hut that was set aside as a sleeping apartment. They slept on beds of rushes loosely strewn or woven into mats. The hammock was unknown in Yucatan until the arrival of the Spaniards. It is a very common mistake to believe that the hammock was indigenous to Yucatan. Columbus is the first to mention the hammock, and he found it among the West Indians. It is said to have originated in San Domingo; but whether this is so or not, it is quite certain that the Mayans did not sleep in hammocks until the Spaniards introduced the custom. These Mayan rush beds were sometimes raised from the ground on a sort of rough table made of sticks bound together and supported on four legs. In the poorer huts this is quite a common form of bedstead to-day. As bed-clothes they had cloaks of cotton of varying degrees of thickness according to the wealth of the family.

The farm lands belonging to the city were cultivated by the people in common. A special portion of these public lands was set apart each year for the support of the cacique and his family, and it was his subjects' duty to cultivate and reap his crops and carry the harvest to his granaries. A like apportionment of land was made to the highest nobles and functionaries of the State. Hunting grounds were also allotted to the cacique and his chief nobles, and anybody trespassing on these was punished. The Mayans were great hunters, going out in large parties into the woods after attending at the temple and praying for good sport from the gods of the woodland. The quarry were the several birds of the pheasant family which haunt the Yucatecan woods, the marvellously beautiful ocellated turkey and other members of the gallinaceous family, deer, rabbits, the wild pig and, last but not least, the jaguar. A tithe of the "bag" was presented to the caciques. Of fisheries, where available, the cacique and his nobles also got the pick. Fish were abundant, as they are to-day, along the whole coast of the Peninsula, and the Mayans caught them with nets or, when the water was low, by shooting them with arrows. The fish were dried in the sun, and thus kept for many days, and carried twenty or thirty leagues into the interior. The Mayans also hunted the shark, manatee, and the turtle. The manatee they hunted with harpoons, wading out into the estuaries and following it when wounded in their canoes. It was valued for the sake of its fat as well as its flesh. Before starting out to fish they made supplication for good luck in one of the temples which it was the custom to build for this purpose on the beach. Those caciques who held territories on the coast obtained salt from the saline lagoons, which are found in many places on the coast of Yucatan. At the end of the dry season, when these marshes were nearly waterless and it was possible to cross them on foot, expeditions were made for the collection of the salt which formed a crystal crust on the mud.

Thus it is obvious the condition of the ancient Mayans was far from being an unhappy one. They had plenty to eat and they had not to labour much to obtain that plenty. The race was what it is to-day, healthy and strong and free of disease. The men were fine examples of muscular development, and the women were often quite beautiful, even according to a European standard, and were certainly in youth objects of grace and sweetness. But the Mayans did not leave well alone, and were in many ways the victims of cruel fashion or foolish superstition. Thus it was regarded as a mark of the highest rank for girls to be cross-eyed, and Mayan mothers cut their daughters' hair on their foreheads so as to hang down over the eyes and make them squint. The heads of children of high rank were often flattened, and huge earrings of stone were worn; while the septum of the nose was pierced and adorned with a spindle of stone or a feather. The habit, too, which the Mayan woman still has of carrying her youngster astride her hip tended to create bow-leggedness.

The Mayans wore no hair on the face at all. They daubed their cheeks with a red earth on occasions of ceremony and when going into battle; at which time their only ordinary garment the wide loin-cloth (Mayan _Uit_) was supplemented, at any rate in the case of caciques and nobles, by long square-cut cotton mantles fastened on the shoulders. Mr. E. Thompson has given a good picture of a chief dressed for festival or war. He writes: "A penanche or frontlet encircled his forehead, above it waved plumes, while from beneath it on each side the long black hair fell until nearly touching his shoulders. Perforating the lobes of his ears were huge round ear ornaments, generally of the precious green-jade stone. His arms were bare save for armlets and bracelets. A richly worked loin-cloth protected his loins, while his legs were covered with leggings of quilted cotton elaborately worked and coloured, fastened in front by a series of rosette-like ornaments. Two-thonged sandals protected his feet, while the mace of authority, the _acatl_ or dart sling, and the terrible two-handed serrated sword of obsidian or flint were his weapons. His large round shield was painted with his heraldic devices." The dress of the priests was still more elaborate, and in their case at least was substituted for the cotton robe a deer or jaguar skin. This is clearly seen in the plates reproduced from Stephens on pages 220 and 221.

The women wore the chemise-like garment which all Mayan women wear to-day, with the headcloth we have previously described. They smeared and scented their bodies with an unguent made of a favourite resin, and their long hair, parted in the middle, was worn either in a thick plait or loose over the shoulders. The Mayan woman was as much the head of the domestic household as members of her sex are in civilised countries. The chief food of the Mayans was always maize, with which the housewife made _atole_, a thick porridge mixed with honey, still a favourite dish of the Indians to-day. This and the tortillas formed the morning meal. Sometimes a mess of ground black beans was added. There were two meals a day, the chief one being the evening meal, when venison, birds, and fresh or salted fish figured in the menu of the richer people. The family did not eat together: the men having their meal separately from the women. The Mayan drinks consisted of a maize-water called _keyem_ and fermented liquors made of honey, fruits, and pepper.

Marriage was an important matter among the Mayans, and the arrangements were left in the hands of the parents; sometimes in the hands of a professional matchmaker. A union having been arranged, the day of the ceremony was made the occasion for a great feast. There seems to have been a great deal of poetry about the Mayan nature, for flowers figured largely in the decorations and the Mayan word for marriage is poetical and allegorical in the extreme: _Kamnicte_--literally, "the reception of the flower of May." The actual ceremony appears to have been nothing more than the formal handing over of the bride to the groom by the priest, after he had satisfied himself that they knew their own minds. Thereafter there were feasting and dancing, lasting well into the evening, generally ending in the fermented drink being far too much for the men of the party, who had to be helped home to their huts by their wives and daughters.

After the wedding the bridegroom lived with his father-in-law for five or six years, working for him. This appears to have been a custom very strictly enforced, the son-in-law thus repaying with his personal service the honour granted him by being admitted to the family. If the young husband refused this personal service, he was ignominiously expelled from the house and the marriage was dissolved. The marriages of widows and widowers were very simple affairs. There was no feast, comparatively no religious ceremony, and no gathering of relatives. A widow had merely to receive a widower in her house and give him food, for a legal marriage to be constituted. The visiting lists of old and undesirable widows must have been very limited indeed. One wonders whether the elder Mr. Weller could have found language to express his views at this terrible facility. No doubt the Mayan "mere man" learnt, as did the old coach-driver, to "beware of widows." But every cloud has its silver lining, and if the Mayan became the property of a neighbouring widow by simply taking a cup of afternoon tea with her, he had really only himself to blame if he found his fetters irksome. For it appears that he had only got to walk off in order to dissolve a union of which he had wearied.

Little or no trouble was taken over the education of children, who, girls and boys, ran wild and naked till about their fifth year. At puberty the sexes were strictly separated; the girls being confined to their parents' huts, and the boys going to live in a large house where all the unmarried youths dwelt in common like soldiers in a barracks. Here they lived a life of their own, having little or nothing to do with the older men. As soon as a youth married, he took equal rank with the fathers of families; but it was only nominally equal, for a characteristic of the Mayans was the great respect shown to age, and the younger men were expected to defer to their elders in all matters. The youths living in the communal house were distinguished by their face-paintings of black, in contrast with the red used by the grown men. Men bore their parents' name; but the maids appear to have been, until married, practically nameless. For they were not entitled to bear their fathers' names. In the matter of inheritance, too, they were passed over, the property of their father, in default of his leaving sons, passing to their uncles or nearest male relatives.

Indeed no relationship was traced through the female line; and while marriage was prohibited with any relative who bore the paternal name, there were no restrictions as to unions with those on the mother's side. Marriage was forbidden between a man and his sister-in-law, the widow of his brother, his step-mother, and the sisters-in-law, aunts, and sisters of his mother. Though polygamy was apparently never approved by the Mayans, they repudiated their wives on the most frivolous pretexts, forming a series of new unions. This fickleness seems to have developed a shrewishness among Mayan women, who, usually docile and obedient, avenged themselves upon their husbands for the least infidelity by personal violence, scratching their faces and tearing out their hair. After all, women are much of a muchness all over the world; but, apart from these very natural outbursts of passion, the Mayan women really appear to have been model wives and mothers and to have devoted considerably more attention to the education of the girls than the fathers did to that of the boys.

Mayan women do not appear to have taken part in the sacrifices at the temples, whether of human victims or otherwise. The ceremonial dances, too, which appear to have often been of an indecent character, were never attended by them. Indeed it appears that the sexes rarely if ever danced together. The Mayans were passionately fond of dancing, which was of two kinds: the sacred dances at the temples and the public dances on occasions of festival or ceremony. One dance only, called _Naual_, there was which was danced by men and women together. Otherwise the women danced separately from the men, as they ate separately from them. The Mayan women indeed seem to have borne themselves modestly in every way, and drunkenness, the greatest vice of the men, was almost unknown among them.

The Mayans appear to have been, at any rate in later times, great traders. Cortes encountered them trading round the coasts of the West Indian Islands, and they certainly trafficked with the tribes of Mexico and Honduras. Trade was carried on principally by means of barter. Their exports were salt, cotton cloth, dried fish, and resins; their imports, the cocoa bean, stone beads, nephrite stone from the highlands of Mexico, mineral paints and obsidian, of which they made knives or lance-heads. From Guatemala, too, they got jade. There may have been also a traffic in slaves. There was no standard coinage, for metals were almost unknown; but more as counters than as money were used the cocoa bean, tiny bells, and rattles of copper and stone beads. Sales do not appear to have been evidenced by writings. One chronicler states that a bargain, especially in the sale of slaves, was clinched by the two contracting parties drinking together before two witnesses. The Mayans had many industries, chief among them being those of the potters and the carpenters. The men who carved the wooden, or moulded the pottery idols, lived under severe rules, passing a hermit's life in a hut on the outskirts of the city, dividing their time between work and fasting. To them once a day food was taken by a member of their family, but it was a strictly vegetable diet, as all flesh was forbidden them. A continuous vigil was enjoined upon them until each special task was complete.

The Mayan doctors and medicine men treated their patients with herbs and enchantments. They were in much request at confinements and in cases of snake-bite. They were also employed to divine the future and to pronounce a benediction on new houses.

As we have said, land was held to be common property. There was no strictly proprietary right. Its products belonged in each case to the first occupier; but occupation itself gave but a precarious right which lasted only for the full term of one agricultural season. After harvest the land reverted to public use. This community of land was traditional among the Mayans, and was doubtless largely due to the character of the soil, which did not permit of its being cultivated more than two years running. After two harvests it was exhausted, and had to be allowed to lie fallow. The lands of the caciques and nobles were cultivated by slaves; but the common people helped each other in their sowings and harvestings.

The Mayans were always--they are to-day--a laughter-loving race. It is the easiest thing in the world to make one of them laugh, and their merriment is from the heart, an ingenuous joy in life, a child's glee. And thus every important event in their lives, public or private, was taken advantage of as a fitting occasion for a dance or a feast. Public feasts were given by the caciques or in their honour. At these banquets much ceremony was observed, and, when departing, each guest was presented with a beautifully woven cotton mantle, a carved wooden stool, and a painted drinking-gourd. These guest-gifts were as much an essential part of the entertainment as they are in Japan, where indeed they take an even more practical and rather embarrassing form: for the happy diner on getting into his rickshaw may as likely as not find a raw fish wrapped in tissue paper or a dainty Satsuma bowl filled with lily bulbs packed away there for his delectation during his journey homeward.

At the Mayan feasts rude mummeries were often presented to amuse the banqueters. These as often as not took the form of crude mystery plays, and were of course supplemented by the music of the _tunkul_ and reed flutes. Dancing was what the Mayans liked best; even to-day they will dance from sunrise to sundown if they get the chance. There were set dances assigned for every ceremony, public or private, in the Mayan city. The two chief dances were the dance of _canes_ (Mayan _lomche_) and the dance of flags. The first was a dance by four youths painted black from head to foot, and adorned with feathers and garlands. It lasted all day, with short intervals for drinking and eating. In the dance of banners several hundreds took part.

The Mayans had no cemeteries. They buried their dead or burned them; but they had no common burial grounds. Corpses were usually buried inside the huts, which were thereafter taboo and abandoned. This was the custom for the ordinary citizen; the chiefs and the priests were buried in sepulchral mounds such as we have before described. In cases of cremation the ashes were collected, placed in urns of clay or wood, buried, and small mounds erected over them. Sometimes, in the case of the very great, the urn formed the nucleus for a temple which was built over it. Sometimes, instead of urns pottery figures were made and the ashes deposited in these, which were then placed in the temples. Sometimes, before burning, the scalp of the defunct was stripped off; part of the body was burnt and part buried, the ashes being put in an image of wood through the top of the head, which had been left open for the purpose, the image being then completed by the placing of the scalp on it as a cover.

The Mayans appear to have believed death to be caused by evil spirits, and if the medicine men with their herbs and their charms could do nothing, the afflicted relatives showed their grief by sitting round in silence awaiting the fatal moment, convinced that the sick man was about to be taken possession of by a devil. Mourning lasted for many days and nights and took the form of wailings and groanings. The hut was usually abandoned, the ground around being left uncultivated for many years as a sign of mourning. In cases of burial the corpse was shrouded and the mouth was filled with ground maize, and with it in a vessel were placed, as a provision for the needs of the dead in the next life, a supply of the small stones or beans which served as money. There were usually added some objects indicative of the rank or occupation of the deceased: with the priests sacred books, with the medicine man his stone charms, and so on.

The Mayans believed in the immortality of the soul, and in future punishment and reward. Their heaven was a happy hunting ground where life was a continual round of pleasure. The chief characteristics of their hell were perpetual hunger and cold. Over this lower world they imagined a sovereign-devil ruled, whom they called _Hun Ahau_. The Mayans were essentially polytheistic, and they worshipped many gods and goddesses, each with different attributes, the idols of which, made of stone, wood or pottery, were adored in the temples. There were also family gods which had their place in the houses, and which were bequeathed as heirlooms by the fathers to their sons.

Despite these many deities, the Mayans seem to have retained a belief in an abstract Supreme Being whom they called _Hunab Ku_, "The One Divine." He was regarded as omnipotent and was represented by no idol. To him was attributed the creation of the world and of all living things; and he had a son, _Hun Itzamna_, "Dew of the morning," a Solar deity, dwelling in the Eastern sky. He was alleged to be the inventor of the Mayan alphabet. A lesser god, _Cum Ahau_, thought by some writers to have been the tapir deity, appears to have been much confused, if not actually identified, with Itzamna. Waldeck, in his _Voyage pittoresque dans l'Yucatan_ (1838), says he recognised the tapir snout on various masks and statues at Palenque, and adds that he found the animal still venerated by the Indians. Landa says the tapir was only found on the western shore of Yucatan near the Bay of Campeachy. The myth of the tapir would thus seem to have been imported from Tzental territory, Chiapas and Tabasco. D. G. Brinton believes the tapir came to be a symbol of the Solar deity Itzamna, despite its dull swamp-loving ways, through an ikonomatic method of writing. The Maya for tapir is _tzimin_, and thus, due to a similarity of sound with i-tzamna, the animal was selected as the god's symbol. It looks as if Dr. Brinton were confusing cause and effect here.

The principal minor deities were the gods of War, Poetry, Music, and Trade; the goddesses of Painting, Medicine, Virginity, and Weaving. The Mayans believed that the earth was held in position by four great forces whose homes were situated in the four points of the compass. These forces were worshipped as controllers of the winds and as storm gods. There was also a god of Agriculture, _Chac_. He was believed to have lived on the earth as a giant. Mayan mythology was much affected, too, by ancestor worship, the chief legendary hero being _Cuculcan_ (Cocol Chan), "feathered serpent," who, it is possible, may be identified with the Mexican _Quetzalcoatl_. In addition to these many gods in common, the tribes had gods peculiar to themselves. Thus at Campeachy a god of Vengeance, _Kinch Ahau Haban_, was worshipped with human sacrifice; and at Cozumel _Tel Cuzaan_, whose idol had the figure of a man, the legs representing the wings of a swallow, and _Hulneb_, who was represented with an arrow in his hand, were deities peculiar to that island.

The Mayan priests were greatly feared. Their influence was profound, as is not surprising when one recollects that they monopolised all learning in a race which was practically illiterate. The most popular and the most venerated of these priests were the _Chilans_, exorcisers of spirits and diviners of the future. With them were associated lower orders known as _Chaques_ and _Nacomes_. The former were four old men annually elected to an office which was equivalent to the Christian sacristan. The latter acted as the assistants at the sacrifice. The gods were worshipped by fastings, by vigils, by continence, by the burning of copal and the offerings of flowers and scented herbs, and, of course, by sacrifice. Sacrifices were generally of animals. Self-mutilation, the piercing of ears and lips, the lacerating of tongues and other self-inflicted tortures, formed part of the ritual. During sacrifices women and girls were excluded from the temples. In each temple were two stones of sacrifice, one in the holy of holies and one in the vestibule. The solemnities surrounding human sacrifice were extraordinarily elaborate.

The year of the Mayans began on the 16th of July, when the principal feast, that of the New Year, was celebrated, preceded by a period of fasting which varied in length in different localities. The whole population took part in this festival, which was in the nature of a public holiday. On the 22nd of August were celebrated the feasts of the priests. In every Mayan festival a functionary was elected who presided over the ceremonies other than those of the temples, and who provided the banquets. This official was elected annually. Following immediately after the feasts of the priests was kept the feast of the medicine men. On the 1st of September the feast of hunters occurred, and on the 12th that of fishers. On the 4th of October was the feast of bees, with which was associated no kind of sacrifice; the occasion being evidently one of Mayan "sweetness and light." The 1st of November and the following five days were dedicated to the festival of Cuculcan and the memorialising of the legendary origin of the Mayan race. This festival appears to have been only local.

In December there were three feasts--one in honour of all the goddesses, a sort of All Saints' Day; one a flower festival; and one a dedication of idols. At the first the custom was for everything to be painted green, from the service-book of the priest to the housewife's distaff and the agricultural implements of the men. The lads and lasses took a special part in the ceremonies of the day, being collected in the temple, when the priest gave each child nine playful blows on each joint, praying that the goddesses might grant them dexterity and success in all they undertook in after-life. During January the _Chaques_ or priests' assistants had their special day, which was also the occasion for the medicine men to give their chief prognostications, for the repair of the temples, and for the writing of the mural inscriptions recounting the chief events of the past year. In February the hunters had another celebration, but this time a fast, not a feast, when offerings were made by them of the beasts and birds that they had hunted. Festivals of agriculture were celebrated in April and May, the chief features of these harvest thanksgivings being the offerings of the first-fruits of the crops. The last feast of the Mayan year was that of the War-God, _Pacumchac_, which was kept in the month of May or June. This was celebrated always in the capital city of a caciqueship. There were five days and five nights of preparation; and then sacrifices to the God, followed by orgies of eating and drinking which were continued without much cessation until the New Year, a period of nearly two months. Thus it is not surprising to learn that none but the richest men in a province could afford to be elected to the very onerous post of "patron of the ceremonies," who had to foot the bills for these gargantuan feeds.