Epigraph
“Hieroglyphics old,
Which sages and keen-eyed astrologers,
Then living on the earth, with labouring thought,
Won from the gaze of many centuries.”
—Keats
Preface
In the following pages I have endeavored with the greatest brevity to supply the learner with the elements necessary for a study of the native hieroglyphic writing of Central America. The material is already so ample that in many directions I have been obliged to refer to it, rather than to summarize it. This will explain various omissions which may be noted by advanced scholars; but they will not, I believe, diminish the usefulness of the work as an elementary treatise.
In conclusion I would express my thanks to the officers of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, and of the Peabody Museum of Archæology, Cambridge, for various facilities they have obligingly furnished me.