Note 1085 — Chapter III · (continued 2)

Dr. Bernoulli, who died at San Francisco, in California, in 1878, and whose labors are commemorated in a notice in the Verhandlungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft (vi. 710) at Basle, found at Tikal, in Guatemala, some fragments of sculptured panels of wood, bearing hieroglyphics as well as designs, which he succeeded in purchasing, and they were finally deposited in 1879 in the Ethnological Museum in Basle, where Rosny saw them, and describes them, with excellent photographic representations, in his Doc. Ecrits de l’Antiq. Amér. (p. 97). These tablets are the latest additions to be made to the store already possessed from Palenqué, as given by Stephens in his Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan; those of the Temple of the Cross at Palenqué, after Waldeck’s drawings in the Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France (ii., 1864); that from Kabah in Yucatan, given by Rosny in his Archives Paléographiques (i. p. 178; Atlas, pl. xx.), and one from Chichen-Itza, figured by Le Plongeon in L’Illustration, Feb. 10, 1882; not to name other engravings. Rosny holds that Rau’s Palenqué Tablet (Washington, 1879) gives the first really serviceably accurate reproduction of that inscription. Cf. on Maya inscriptions, Bancroft, ii. 775; iv. 91, 97, 234; Morelet’s Travels; and Le Plongeon in Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., i. 246. This last writer has been thought to let his enthusiasm—not to say dogmatism—turn his head, under which imputation he is not content, naturally (Ibid. p. 282).