ected), then by the long count such a date _must_ have been either
1502, 5350, or 12,786 years after the date of Stela 9, Copan. Mr.
Bowditch favors the lower figure, chiefly because it is the lower, and
thus puts Stela 9 at A. D. 34. To get this date the longest possible
distance from Ahpula's death to the end of the katun must be used--that
is, "6 tuns short" must be taken to mean "almost 7 tuns short." I can
only say here that if, in correcting the figures 1536, as demanded by
the immediate context, we make the simplest possible correction, and put
them one katun earlier, 1516, and then take as the unexpired time to the
end of the katun the shortest of the three terms given as possible, or 5
tuns 139 days, bringing the end of Katun 13-Ahau on Jan. 28, 1522, we
not only bring the end of Katun 11-Ahau within the year 1541, as is most
positively stated by the practically contemporary Pech Chronicle, but we
also bring in line nearly all the important events of the Chronicles,
from the fall of Mayapan, ca. 1450, the coming of the Spaniards, and the
smallpox, in 11-Ahau (1521 to 1541), the conversion to Christianity in
9-Ahau, down to Landa's death (1579) in 7-Ahau; as well as many outside
references. Any other combination requires harsher emendations somewhere
else. But the above choice of the term of 5 tuns 139 days, thus
seemingly called for, means that Stela 9 at Copan is dated, by the long
count, 5350 years before Ahpula's death, or B. C. 3824. Whether this is
right, is a question for the future.

[42-*] "In ethnology however one troubles oneself little with the detail
of linguistic structure. It is held quite sufficient to gather from
different peoples and collate a couple of hundred vocables, into whose
actual nature all insight is lacking, and then upon dubious, often
purely superficial and apparent similarities, to deduce linguistic
affinities. Or else, as is now most in fashion, the claims of linguistic
research towards the solution of ethnological questions are reduced to a
'most modest share' in comparison with other fields 'somewhat more in
line with natural sciences'--meanwhile pointing for justification to the
absurdities set forth as the results of too far-fetched linguistic
deductions.... The errors and sophistries charged against ethnological
linguistics are rather an accidental result of the individuality of
single investigators, than essential to the subject. They are at least
scarcely greater than those