Ch. IX.] GRAVES OF CHIEFS. 169 



the god of rain, the very god whose emblem was the 

 cross a contrast too great to the " Suffer little children 

 to come unto me' of the loving Saviour, not to make 

 the mind revolt against the idea that the cross of the 

 god of rain had been derived from the cross of the 

 Christian. 



I see no reason for supposing that the images of El 

 Salto had been idols, as they were supposed to be by the 

 early Spaniards, and are still by the degenerate half- 

 breeds. They are more likely portrait-statues of famous 

 chieftains who led the tribe to many a victory ; and 

 when they died, a loving people, with wailings and 

 lamentations, celebrated their funeral obsequies. 



The funeral pyre was built, the body burnt, and the 

 ashes carefully gathered together, and placed in the 

 finely-wrought urn and painted cinerary, and this 

 in one larger and coarser. These were buried with the 

 stone maize-grinder, and sometimes weapons and earthen 

 dishes and, perhaps, food ; and over the grave a pile of 

 stones was raised, and skilful artificers were set to work 

 on the hardest and toughest stone they could find to 

 make a statue of the chief whose memory they reverenced. 

 It must have taken months, if not years, to have fashioned 

 the statue I have figured, out of the trachyte, without 

 tools of iron ; and it strikes one with wonder to think 

 of the patience and perseverance with which the details 

 were worked out. No time-servers were these Indians ; 

 before and behind they bestowed equal pains and labour 

 on their work, undeterred by the hardness of the materials 

 or the rudeness of their tools. 



"When we turn from these works and remains of a 

 great and united tribe to the miserable huts of the present 



