The Manuscript Troano
Dr. Le Plongeon here assumes that the story is taken up by the Manuscript Troano. As no one is able to decipher this manuscript completely, he is pretty safe in his assertion. Here is what the pintura alluded to says regarding Queen Móo, according to our author:
“The people of Mayach having been whipped into submission and cowed, no longer opposing much resistance, the lord seized her by the hair, and, in common with others, caused her to suffer from blows. This happened on the ninth day of the tenth month of the year Kan. Being completely routed, she passed to the opposite sea-coast in the southern parts of the country, which had already suffered much injury.”
Here we shall leave the Queen, and those who have been sufficiently credulous to create and believe in her and her companions. We do not aver that the illustrations on the walls of the temple at Chichen do not allude to some such incident, or series of incidents, as Dr. Le Plongeon describes, but to bestow names upon the dramatis personæ in the face of almost complete inability to read the Maya script and a total dearth of accompanying historical manuscripts is merely futile, and we must regard Dr. Le Plongeon’s narrative as a quite fanciful rendering of probability. At the same time, the light which he throws—if some obviously unscientific remarks be deducted—on the customs of the Maya renders his account of considerable interest, and that must be our excuse for presenting it here at some length.
Piece of Pottery representing Tapir (from Guatemala)
[1] These words are obviously onomatopoetic, and are evidently intended to imitate the sound made by a millstone. [↑]
[2] See my remarks on this subject in The Popol Vuh, pp. 41, 52 (London, 1908). [↑]