10th Series.—Alphabets, or graphic letters, expressing simple sounds, and disposed in rows. Found in many inscriptions, medals, and coins in North and South America, and lately introduced everywhere by the European colonists; similar to the alphabets of Asia, Africa, and Europe.
11th Series.—Abbreviations, or letters standing for whole words, or part of a glyph and graphic delineation, standing and expressing the whole; used by almost all the writing nations of North and South America, as well as Asia, Europe, and Africa.
12th Series.—Numeric system of graphic signs, to express numbers. All the various kinds of signs, such as dots, lines, strokes, circles, glyphs, letters, &c., used by some nations of North and South America, as well as in the eastern continent.
Some years ago, the Society of Geography, of Paris, offered a large premium for a voyage to Guatemala, and a new survey of the antiquities of Yucatan and Chiapa, chiefly those fifteen miles from Palenque, which are wrongly called by that name. I have restored to them the true name of Otolum, which is yet the name of the stream running through the ruins. I should have been inclined to undertake this voyage and exploration myself, if the civil discords of the country did not forbid it. My attention was drawn forcibly to this subject as soon as the account of those ruins, surveyed by Captain Del Rio as early as 1787, but withheld from the public eye by Spain, was published in 1822, in English.
This account, which partly describes the ruins of a stone city seventy-five miles in circuit (length thirty-two English miles, greatest breadth twelve miles), full of palaces, monuments, statues, and inscriptions—one of the earliest seats of American civilization, about equal to Thebes of Egypt—was well calculated to inspire me with hopes that they would throw a great light over American history, when more properly examined.
I have been disappointed in finding that no traveller has dared to penetrate again to that recondite place, and illustrate all the ruins and monuments, with the languages yet spoken all around. The Society of Geography has received many additional accounts, derived from documents preserved in Mexico; but they have not been deemed worthy of the reward offered for a new survey, and have not even been published. The same has happened with Tiahuanaco, in Bolivia, in South America, another mass of ancient ruins, and a mine of historical knowledge, which no late traveller has visited or described.
Being, therefore, without hope of any speedy accession to our knowledge of those places, I have been compelled to work upon the materials now extant, which have happily enabled me to do a great deal, notwithstanding all their defects, and throw some light on that part of the history of America.
Philadelphia, January, 1832.