“In Yucatan,” says Brinton, “the books of the Mayas consisted of a kind of paper made by macerating and beating together leaves of maguey and afterwards sizing the surface with a durable white varnish. The sheet was folded like a screen, forming pages about nine by five inches. Both sides were covered with figures and characters painted in various brilliant colours. On the outer pages boards were fastened for protection, so the completed volume had the appearance of a bound book of large octavo size. Parchment was sometimes used instead of paper. It was made of deerskin cured and smoked. Twenty-seven rolls of such parchments covered with hieroglyphics were among the articles burned by Bishop Landa at Mani in 1562.” “None of them, however,” remarks Goodman of the Maya books that have been found, “can be of much assistance in solving Maya historical problems, as they are all merely text-books explaining the meaning of signs, the elementary principles of their respective calendars and certain phases of lunar, solar, and in a few places, bissextile and chronological reckoning. I believe the figures usually supposed to represent deities to be only personifications of different periods or phases of time, and that most of the glyphs are merely numerals or symbols used for the occasion in their numerative sense only.” It is plain, therefore, that much of the supposed interpretation of the Maya inscriptions has had little solid foundation, has in fact been little better than guesswork. There was one sanguine translator who was discovered to have begun at the _wrong end_ of the book! The readings of the Maya inscriptions sometimes suggest that other mysterious operation of certain brilliant scholars of our time, the discovery and reading of the Shakespeare-Baconian cipher. The lack of real understanding of the Maya subject is pretty well indicated by the various estimates of the value of Landa’s legacy. One author, Holden, states that it was a positive misfortune, while Goodman, after following other lines for a time, returns to Landa as the only real foundation for accurate study. There is even yet difference of opinion as to the proper directions, left to right or up and down, etc., in which the works are to be read when they are read. Apparently the first sensible thing to be done is to gather together all that Landa wrote and reduce it to a shape that will place it before the greatest number of students, in connection with specimens of every kind of a mark or picture that by any possibility might have alphabetic significance. A striking peculiarity of the Maya remains is that there are not found any preliminary or originating forms of the glyphs. “We are compelled therefore to admit,” says Thomas, “that the origin of this writing is a mystery we are unable to fully penetrate.”[69] It may be that the forms from which it was derived were recorded on skins, on wood, or on bark, and in that case they probably disappeared before the beginning of the