“By whom and when was this hill terraced and these stones hewn? There is a mystery hanging around this hill which exists nowhere else in the Sandwich Islands. The other structures so numerously scattered over the group are made of rough stone; there is no attempt at a terrace; there is no flight of steps leading to them; there is no hewn or polished stone, nor is there any evidence of the same architectural skill evinced. They are the oldest ruins yet discovered, and were evidently erected by a people considerably advanced in arts, acquainted with the use of metallic instruments, the cardinal points, and some mathematical knowledge. Were they the ancestors of the present Hawaiians, or of a different race that has passed away?” He inquired of the oldest natives concerning the history of this ruin, but “they could give only vague and confused traditions in regard to it, and these were contradictory. The only point on which they agreed was that it had never been used within the memory of man.” They also said there was another old structure of the same kind in Kona, whose history is lost. The language of the Sandwich Islands is so manifestly a dialect of the Malayan tongue, that the influence of the Malays must have been paramount in these islands in ancient times. D. DECIPHERING THE INSCRIPTIONS. In the “Actes de la Société Philologique,” Paris, for March, 1870, Mons. H. de Charencey gives some particulars of his attempt to decipher “fragments” of one or two very brief inscriptions on the bas-relief of the cross at Palenque. I know nothing of his qualifications for this work, but he appears to have studied the characters of the Maya alphabet preserved and explained by Landa. It is seen, however, that his attempt to decipher the inscriptions is a complete failure. In fact, he professes to have done no more than reproduce two or three words in Roman characters. He gives us _Hunab-ku_, _Eznab_, and _Kukulcan_ as words found on the cross. _Eznab_ is supposed to be the name of a month, or of a day of the week, and the others names of divinities. He finds that the characters of the inscriptions are not in all respects identical with those found in Landa, and that Landa’s list, especially when tested by the inscriptions, is incomplete. There is not absolute certainty in regard to the name Kukulcan; nevertheless, M. de Charencey makes this speculative use of it: “The presence of the name ‘Kukulcan’ on the bas-relief of the cross is important in a historical point of view. The name of this demigod, which signifies ‘the serpent with the quetzal plumes,’ is the Maya form of the Mexican name ‘Quetzalcohuatl,’ which has precisely the same meaning. But we know that the name and worship of this god were brought to the high plateaus of Central America toward the ninth century of our era, consequently the bas-relief in question can not be more ancient.”