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greatest deluge which had occurred within the memory of Their narrative tallies exactly with that of the Maya authors. From that time, they said, all their communications Iwith the inhabitants of the Lands of the West had been interrupted, the sea having become an impassable barrier of mud.

As for the Greeks, they had good reasons for grieving at the loss of Mu, since, according to Egyptian records, thousands of their best warriors lost their lives by it. They celebrated the festival of the Small Panatheneas, in commemoration of the victory gained by their ancestors, with the aid of Minerva, over the Atlanteans, when the latter tried to invade Greece after having conquered the other Mediterranean nations-those living on the coast of Libya as far as Egypt, and those dwelling on the European shores as far as Tyrrhania. After repelling the invaders the Greek warriors pursued them to their own homes; so they also fell victims to the wrath of Homen. In order to preserve the memory of the catastrophe for the knowledge of future generations, they wrote an epic in the Maya language, which seems to have been at that time still prevalent among them. In it were described the geological and meteorological phenomena that took place and caused the wholesale destruction of the Land of Mu and its inhabitants. When in the year 403 B.C., during the archonship of Euclid, the grammarians rearranged the Athenian alphabet in its present form, they adopted for the names of their letters words formed by the agglutination of the various vocables composing each line of said Maya epic. In this most interesting philological and historical fact will be found the reason why certain letters having the same value were placed apart, instead of juxtaposed as they naturally should be. What else

could have induced Euclid and his collaborators, men of intelligence and learning, to separate the Epsilon from the Eta, the Theta from the Tau? to place the Omikron in the middle and the Omega at the end of the alphabet?

In August, 1882, the writer published in the "Revista de Merida," a daily paper of Merida, the capital of Yucatan, a Spanish translation of the Maya epic formed by the names of the letters of the Greek alphabet. He invited Maya scholars to review and correct it, in case any word had been misapprehended, as he was desirous to present his discovery to the scientific world. No correction was offered, although at the time it attracted the attention of students in a country where Spanish and Maya are the vernacular of the people-the Spanish that of the white inhabitants, the Maya that of the natives; all, however, speaking more or less Maya, a knowledge of it being necessary to hold intercourse with the latter, who absolutely refuse to even learn the Spanish, which they hate. That language perpetually revives the memory of the lost autonomy of their people; of the long and cruel persecutions their race has suffered since 1540 at the hands of the Spanish invaders, the destroyers of their civilization, and at those of their descendants whose serfs they have become and remain, although called free in accordance with the law.1

The following translation may be regarded as absolutely correct, being an English rendering of that published in Spanish in Merida.

1 See Appendix, note iv.

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EPSILON.

ZETA.

ETA.

there are obstructions, shores form and whirlpools
strike-the-earth

with water.

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