The evidences of phonography are few and, as must be admitted, not entirely satisfactory; yet they are apparently sufficient to justify the somewhat general belief that the writing of the Mayas had reached that stage where characters are sometimes used to indicate sounds. That comparatively little advance had been made in this direction at the time of the conquest is possible; moreover there is nothing to justify the belief that they made use of true letters as Landa supposed. If they had a phonographic system of any kind it was very imperfect and was only in that primary stage in which syllables are represented by single characters and words of more than one syllable by compound characters. Judging by the changes observed in the relation of the parts of compound characters to one another, we conclude that the order of arranging these parts was not uniform or essential. It is also doubtful, if any of these characters are phonetic, whether the parts of the longer words were always written out in full. I am led to believe, from a few slight indications, that, in forming words of more than one syllable, they often used only the leading phonetic elements of the single words of which they are composed; in other words, that they followed the rebus method of the Mexicans. Descending to particulars and examples, the following are, perhaps, the strongest proofs which can be presented on this point: As there can no longer be any doubt that the symbols for the cardinal points have been ascertained and that those relating to the polar points are distinguishable from those relating to the equatorial points, we are justified in referring to them in this discussion. As each of the two assigned to the equatorial points contains the symbol for "sun" or "day" and as the two Maya words for these points--_Likin_ or _Lakin_ and _Chikin_--contain the Maya term for sun or day ("kin"), there is some reason for believing that the characters are phonetic. There is to be added to this evidence the fact that the symbol of the month _Yaxkin_ contains the same sun symbol. It would be somewhat remarkable to find the same single character in three different combinations, representing three different ideas expressed by words containing the same sound, yet having no reference to the sound. It is now generally admitted by students of American paleography, on what appears to be satisfactory evidence, that symbol No. 7 of the preceding list, _Cab_, is used to signify "earth" or "land" and "honey," both of which are designated by the same Maya term, _Cab_. As there is no similarity in the things denoted the character is probably phonetic. The "bee" appears also to be frequently indicated by the same character with an affix, as may be seen by reference to the lower divisions of Plates III*--X* of the Manuscript Troano.