Ch. IX.] ANCIENT INHABITANTS. 155 



dred years ago since their forefathers used them. Like 

 most of the sites of the ancient Indian towns, the place 

 is a very picturesque one. At a short distance to the 

 west, rise the precipitous rocks of the Amerrique range, 

 with great perpendicular cliffs, and huge isolated rocks 

 and pinnacles. The name of this range gives us a clue 

 to the race of the ancient inhabitants. In the highlands 

 of Honduras, as has been noted by Squiers, the termina- 

 tion of tiqiie or rique is of frequent occurrence in the 

 names of places, as CJiaparristique, Lepaterique, Llotique, 

 Ajuterique, and others. The race that inhabited this 

 region were the Lenca Indians, often mentioned in the 

 accounts given by the missionaries of their early expedi- 

 tions into Honduras. I think that the Lenca Indians 

 were the ancient inhabitants of Chontales, that they 

 were the " Chontals " of the Nahuatls, or Aztecs of the 

 Pacific side of the country, and that they were partly 

 conquered, and their territories encroached upon by the 

 latter before the arrival of the Spaniards, as some of the 

 Aztec names of places in Nicaragua do not appear to be 

 such as could be given originally by the first inhabitants ; 

 thus Juigalpa, pronounced Hueygalpa, is southern Aztec 

 for " Big Town." No town could be called the big 

 town at first by those who saw it grow up gradually from 

 small beginnings, but it is a likely enough name to be 

 given by a conquering invader. Again Ometepec is nearly 

 pure Aztec for Two Peaks, but the island itself only 

 contains one, and the name was probably given by an 

 invader who saw the two peaks of Ometepec and Madera 

 from the shore of the lake, and thought they belonged 

 to one island. The Lenca Indians nowhere appear to 

 have built stone buildings, like the Quiches, and Lacan- 



