src="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@38352@38352-h@images@illus-004-1.jpg" alt="Hieroglyphs" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}img"/>

Dèspues al cabo le pegan la parte junta. Ha que quiere dezir agua, porque la haché tiene a, h, antes de si la ponen ellos al principio con a, y al cabo desta manera:—

Tambien lo escriben a partes, pero de la una y otra manera, yo no pusiera aqui ni trétara dello sino por dar cuenta entera de las cosas desta gente. Ma in kati quiere decir no quiero, ellos lo escriben a partes desta manera:—

This is all on the subject the bishop vouchsafes us. Let us now attempt a free translation of his words, premising that they are so obscure in parts, and the composition so careless and provincial, that we shall not take it at all amiss if any reader thinks he can improve our rendering:

"Of their letters, I shall place here an A, B, C, their clumsiness not allowing more; for they employ one character for all the aspirations of the letters, and another to denote their repetitions, and so they go on in infinitum, as one may see in the following example: Le means a lasso and to hunt with one. In order to write with their characters, although we told them it contains but two letters, they make use of three, giving to the aspiration of the l the vowel é, which is before it, and in this they are not in error, if they wish to write it in their curious manner. Example:

e    l    e    lé

Afterwards they put at the end the part which is joined. Again in ha, which means water, because the letter h contains the sounds a, h, they place the a both at the beginning and at the end, in this manner:—

a  h  a

They can write it either with separate letters or united together. I would not have inserted nor have mentioned this but that I wished to give a complete description of this people. Ma in kati means I do not wish; they write it in separate letters in this way:—

ma    i    n    ka    ti    ."

From these valuable though too scanty hints we learn that the letters were employed connected together in a manner somewhat analogous to, though more intimately than our cursive shrift, and also separately, as in the Roman alphabet. When the latter was the case, they were repeated apparently in their connected form. Further, the vowel sound which is necessarily associated with the enunciation of every consonant (la aspiracion), and which in the Maya language of Yucatan is so pronounced as to have been called by the Abbé de Bourbourg, "une certaine affectation gutturale," was taken account of, and expressed in writing. Then there were a number of arbitrary signs, figures, and symbols, with syllabic values, as we see in the last example given. These peculiarities, of course, make the system clumsy, but are by no means insurmountable difficulties in the way of elucidating it.

Immediately at the close of the foregoing extract Bishop Landa gives the alphabet subjoined, which has been carefully copied on wood, by Mr. Edward Bensell, of Philadelphia, the arrangement of the letters being slightly altered:—