It is apparent at the outset that the first of these theories can not be accepted in its entirety; for although there are undeniable traces {27} of phoneticism among the Maya glyphs, all attempts to reduce them to a phonetic system or alphabet, which will interpret the writing, have signally failed. The first and most noteworthy of these so-called "Maya alphabets," because of its genuine antiquity, is that given by Bishop Landa in his invaluable _Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan_, frequently cited in Chapter I. Writing in the year 1565, within 25 years of the Spanish Conquest, Landa was able to obtain characters for 27 sounds, as follows: Three _a's_, two _b's_, _c_, _t_, _e_, _h_, _i_, _ca_, _k_, two _l's_, _m_, _n_, two _o's_, _pp_, _p_, _cu_, _ku_, two _x's_, two _v's_, _z_. This alphabet, which was first published in 1864 by Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg (see Landa, 1864), was at once heralded by Americanists as the long-awaited key which would unlock the secrets of the Maya writing. Unfortunately these confident expectations have not been realized, and all attempts to read the glyphs by means of this alphabet or of any of the numerous others[19] which have appeared since, have completely broken down. This failure to establish the exclusive phonetic character of the Maya glyphs has resulted in the general acceptance of the second theory, that the signs are ideographic. Doctor Brinton (1894b: p. 14), however, has pointed out two facts deducible from the Landa alphabet which render impossible not only the complete acceptance of this second theory but also the absolute rejection of the first: (1) That a native writer was able to give a written character for an unfamiliar sound, a sound, moreover, which was without meaning to him, as, for example, that of a Spanish letter; and (2) that the characters he employed for this purpose were also used in the native writings. These facts Doctor Brinton regards as proof that some sort of phonetic writing was not unknown, and, indeed, both the inscriptions and the codices establish the truth of this contention. For example, the sign in _a_, figure 13, has the phonetic value _kin_, and the sign in _b_ the phonetic value _yax_. In the latter glyph, however, only the upper part (reproduced in _c_) is to be regarded as the essential element. It is strongly indicative of phoneticism therefore to find the sound _yaxkin_, a combination of these two, expressed by the sign found in d. Similarly, the character representing the phonetic value _kin_ is found also as an element in the glyphs for the words _likin_ {28} and _chikin_ (see _e_ and _f_, respectively, fig. 13), each of which has _kin_ as its last syllable. Again, the phonetic value _tun_ is expressed by the glyph in _g_, and the sound _ca_ (_c_ hard) by the sign _h_. The sound _katun_ is represented by the character in _i_, a combination of these two. Sometimes the glyph for this same sound takes the form of _j_, the fish element in _k_ replacing