“Twenty days before the Feast of the Nativity my mother died; soon after, my late father was carried off (xchaptah) while they were burying my mother; my father took medicine but once before we buried him. The pest continued to rage for seven days after Easter; my mother, my father, my brother and my sister died this year.” It could not, of course, be the son of Balam, who died in 1521, who wrote this. Under 1563 the writer mentions:-- “At this time my second son Raphael was born, at the close of the fourth year of the fourth cycle after the revolt.” The last entry which contains the characteristic words _ixnu[c]ahol_, “you my children,” occurs in the year 1559, and is the last given in my translation. My belief is that the document I give was written by the father of Francisco Ernantez Xahila. The latter continued it from 1560 to 1583, when it was taken up by Francisco Diaz, and later by other members of the Xahila family. The Abbé Brasseur was of the opinion that these _Annals_ carry the record of the nation back to the beginning of the eleventh century, at least. A close examination of the account shows that this is not the case. Gagavitz, the earliest ruler of the nation, can easily be traced as the ancestor in the eighth remove, of the author. The genealogy is as follows:-- 1. Gagavitz, “he who came from Tulan.” 2. His son, Cay Noh, who succeeded him. 3. Citan Qatu, son of Cay Noh, who also ruled. 4. His son, Citan Tihax Cablah, who does not seem to have enjoyed the leadership. It was regained by 5. His son, Vukubatz, by the aid of the Quiche king, Quikab.[TN-8] 6. Oxlahuh Tzii, eldest son of Vukubatz, died A. D., 1509. 7. Succeeded by his eldest son, Hun Yg, who died, together with his eldest son Balam, the father of the author, in the year 1521. Allowing to these seven who outlived their parents an average survival of twenty years, we are carried back to about the year 1380, as that on which the migration, headed by Gagavitz, began its wanderings, little more, therefore, than the length of two lives as protracted as that of the author himself. This result is that generally obtained by a careful scrutiny of American traditions. They very rarely are so far-reaching as has usually been supposed. Anything spoken of as more than three or four generations distant, may safely be assumed as belonging to myth, and not to history. It was the expressed intention of the Abbé Brasseur to edit the original text with his translation, but this he did not live to accomplish. He incorporated numerous extracts from it in his _Histoire des Nations Civilisées du Mexique et de l’Amerique Centrale_, and added a few paragraphs in the original at the end of the first volume of that work; but these did not give much idea of the document as a whole.