h. IV.] MAIZE AND MAXDIOCA EATERS. 55 



above the level of the sea ; and in the same country it 

 has been found in tombs apparently more ancient than 

 ihe times of the Incas.* In Mexico it was known from 

 the earliest times of which we have any record, in the 



> 



picture writings of the Toltecs ; and that ancient people 

 carried it with them in all their wanderings. In 

 Central America the stone grinders, with which they 

 bruised it down, are almost invariably found in the ancient 

 graves, having been buried with the ashes of the dead, 

 as an indispensable article for their outfit to another 

 world. When Florida and Louisiana were first dis- 

 covered, the native Indian tribes all cultivated maize as 

 their staple food ; and throughout Yucatan, Mexico, and 

 all the western side of Central America, and through 

 Peru to Chili, it was, and still is, the main sustenance of 

 the Indians. The people that cultivated it were all more 

 or less advanced in civilization ; they were settled in towns ; 

 their traders travelled from one country to another with 

 their wares ; they were of a docile and tractable dis- 

 position, easily frightened into submission. It is likely 

 that these maize-eating peoples belonged to closely affi- 

 liated races. In. the West India Islands they occupied 

 most of Cuba and Hayti ; but from Porto Rico south- 

 wards the islands were peopled by the warlike Caribs, 

 who harassed the more civilised tribes to the north. From 

 Cape Gracias a Dios southward, the eastern coast of 

 America was peopled on its first discovery by much 

 ruder tribes, who did not grow maize, but made bread 

 from the roots of the mandioca (Manihot aipim) ; and 

 still in British Guiana, on the Lower Amazon, and in 

 north-eastern Brazil, farina made from the roots of the 

 * Yon Tschudi, " Travels in Peru," English edition, p. 177. 



