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quered the others one by one, and also those which had aided the queen, reunited the severed parts, and again made the country whole under his sway. This happened on the eighth day of the fourth month of the year Ix;" that is, on the third Imix, of the month Zoo, of the year Ix, or ten months and eight days after Queen Móo's departure for Zinaan.

An explanation of the illustrations accompanying the text of the Maya author may serve to show that we have correctly apprehended his narrative.

Beginning with the picture on the right of the chapter, we see the queen on her knees, her hands joined as in supplication. Her foe holds her by the hair and kicks her. This explains sufficiently the text "he caused her to suffer from blows."

Next she is portrayed as a bird, a macaw, Móo, with black plumage, typical of her misfortunes. Her leg is hanging; the claw half open, as having just lost hold of the hindquarter of the deer-another symbol of the country. This is emblematic of her losing the last grasp on that part (the south) of the empire. The deer is severed in two, to show the political condition of the country divided into two factions. She is in full flight toward Zinaan, a figure of which the bird holds in its beak. The line joining it to the deer indicates that the West Indies were a dependency of the Maya Empire. The last picture represents Aac carrying away triumphantly the country of which he is now sole master, whose several parts, reunited, are under his sway. We shall leave for another occasion the recital of the events that took place in Mayach after Móo's departure from the country, and follow her in her journey eastward. Enough to say that Aac, left alone in the government, became so tyrannical that the people uprose against him and expelled him from the country. That event ended the

Can dynasty, and brought about the dismemberment of the empire.

As far as our present knowledge of American records concerning Queen Móo goes, her history comes to an end with her flight to Zinaan. Not feeling safe in that country, she continued to travel toward the rising sun, in the hope of reaching some of the isles, remnants of the Land of Mu. It was known that that country, once the "pride of the sea," had greatly suffered in consequence of an awful cataclysm caused by earthquakes. She was well aware that a few islands had escaped the general destruction, and remained above the waters the only vestiges of that place, once so populous and so rich that in their writings the Maya authors styled it “the Life,” the Glory of the Ocean," and of which, in his "Timæus," 1 Plato has given so glowing a description. In one night it had suddenly disappeared, engulfed by the waves, with the majority of its inhabitants, some time previous to the happening of the political events in Maya history which we have just related. To one of those islands Queen Móo resolved to go to seek shelter.

66

'Plato, Dialogues, "Timæus," ii. 20.

XIV.

THE Occurrence of that dreadful cataclysm caused great commotion among the inhabitants of the countries on both sides of the Atlantic. They recorded it in the annals kept in the archives of their temples, and in other places where its remembrance was most likely to be preserved for the knowledge of coming generations; and so it has lasted to our day.

The existence of this land, and its destruction by earthquakes and fire, then by submergence, is a mooted question among modern scientists. There are many who, disdaining to investigate the ancient American records, and affecting to regard as fabulous Plato's narrative and that of the Egyptian priests Psenophis and Sonchis to Solon, although these asserted that "all that, has been written down of old, and is preserved in our temples," prefer to invent hollow theories and to advance opinions having no firmer foundations than their own magistral ipse dixit, and thus dispose of the question by a denial, little dreaming that, besides Plato's narrative, the records of the catastrophe are to be found, full of details, in the writings of

four different Maya authors, in the Maya language. Each of these has written the relation in his own particular style, but all agree as to the date of the occurrence and the manner in which the destruction of the Atlantean land was effected. It may be that three of them had read each other's writings on that subject; but as to the fourth, it can be safely presumed that he knew nothing of the works of those writers, all communications between his country and theirs having ceased to exist long before his time.

One of these narratives, carved on stone in bas-relief, is preserved in the city of Chichen. The slab on which it is written forms the lintel of the door of the inner chamber at the southern end of the building called Akab-ɔib, "the awful, the tenebrous record." It is as intact to-day as when it came from the hand of the sculptor. (Plate LIII.) Not only did the Maya historians record the submergence of Mu in such a lasting manner, but the date of its occurrence became a new starting point for their chronological computations. From it they began a new era and reckoned the epochs of their history, as the Christians do from the birth of Christ, and the Mohammedans from the Hegira or flight of Mohammed from Mecca.

They also arranged all their other computations on the base of 13, in memory of the thirteenth Chuen, the day of the month in which the cataclysm occurred. So they made weeks of thirteen days; weeks of years of four times thirteen, or fiftytwo years; and their great cycle of thirteen times twenty, or two hundred and sixty years, as we are informed by Father Pedro Beltran.1

The second narrative of the cataclysm is to be found in the

1 Pedro Beltran, Arte del Idioma Maya, numeracion p. 204.

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