2

Troano MS., whose author has devoted several pages1 of his interesting work to a minute description of the various phenomena attending the disaster. (Plate LIV.) Thus he recounts the closing scenes of the tragedy: "The year six Kan, on the eleventh Muluc, in the month Zac, there occurred terrible earthquakes, which continued without intermission until the thirteenth Chuen. The country of the hills of mud, the Land of Mu,' was sacrificed. Being twice upheaved, it suddenly disappeared during the night, the basin being continually shaken by volcanic forces. Being confined, these caused the land to sink and rise several times and in various places. At last the surface gave way, and the ten countries were torn asunder and scattered in fragments; unable to withstand the force of the seismic convulsions, they sank with their sixty-four millions of inhabitants, eight thousand and sixty years before the writing of this book."

Does not this recital recall the story of the destruction of Atlantis told by Plato, and the division of the country by Poseidon into ten portions, assigning one to each of his ten sons?

Let us hope that no one will be so bold as to accuse Plato of having been in collusion with the author of the Troano MS.

The third narrative of the destruction of the "Land of Mu" is by the author of that Maya book known to us as Codex Cortesianus. His style is more prolix, less terse, more symbolical than that of the writer of the Troano.

of the event reads as follows (Plates LV.-LVI.):

1 Troano MS., part ii., plates ii. to v.

2 Ibid., plate v.

His relation

Have we not here the origin of that singular superstition that attributes ill luck to the number thirteen? And is not this superstition a reminiscence of the cataclysm, that has come down to us through the lapse of centuries?

"By his strong will, Homen1 caused the earth to tremble after sunset; and during the night, Mu, the country of the hills of mud, was submerged.

"Mu, the life of the basin, was submerged by Homen during the night.

"The place of the dead ruler is now lifeless; it moves no more, after having twice jumped from its foundations. The king of the deep, while forcing his way out, has shaken it up and down, has killed it, has submerged it.

"Twice Mu jumped from its foundations. It was then sacrificed with fire. It burst while being shaken up and down violently by the earthquake. By kicking it, the wizard that makes all things move like a mass of worms sacrificed it that very night."

From the fact that the Mayas changed their mode of computation, and began, as it were, a new era from the time of the submergence of the Land of Mu, it is evident that in reading their ancient history, in order to establish correct dates, it becomes necessary to know if the events related took place before or after the cataclysm.

The commotion produced by that disaster seems to have been no less great among the populations bordering on the Mediterranean than among those inhabiting the Western Continent. Plato tells us that the Egyptians preserved a relation of it in the archives of their temples, asserting it was the

1 Homen was the overturner of mountains, the god of earthquakes, the wizard who made all things move like a mass of worms, the volcanic forces anthropomorphized and then deified. The Mayas deified all phenomena of nature and their causes, then represented them in the shape of human beings or animals. Their object was to keep for the initiates the secrets of their science.

Landa, Las Cosas de Yucatan, chap. xxxix., p. 234.