XI.] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 421 



found in great numbers and still occasionally turn up on the 

 plateau. These finds are partly accounted for by the practice 

 of offering such objects at the altars erected everywhere in the 

 open air to the personified constellations and forces of nature, 

 which were constantly increasing in number according to the 

 whim or fancy of their votaries. Any mysterious sound emanating 

 from a forest, a rock, a mountain pass, or gloomy gorge, was 

 accepted as a manifestation of some divine presence ; a shrine 

 was raised to the embodied spirit, and so the whole land became 

 literally crowded with local deities, all subservient to Bochica, 

 sovereign lord of the Muysca world. This world itself was up- 

 borne on the shoulders of Chibchicum, a national Atlas, who 

 now and then eased himself by shifting the burden, and thus 

 caused earthquakes. In most lands subject to underground 

 disturbances analogous ideas prevail, and when their source is 

 so obvious, it seems unreasonable to seek for explanations in 

 racial affinities, contacts, foreign influences, and so forth. 



It has often been remarked that at the advent of the whites 

 the native civilisations seemed generally stricken as if by the 

 hand of death, so that even if not suddenly arrested by the 

 intruders they must sooner or later have perished of themselves. 

 Such speculations are seldom convincing, because we never know 

 what recuperative forces may be at work to ward off the evil day. 

 But so much may be admitted, that the symptoms of decay were 

 everywhere more in evidence than the prospects of stability. 

 Such was certainly the case in Muyscaland, where the national 

 life and all hopes of healthy development had been stifled by an 

 oppressive system of exclusive social castes headed, as in India, 

 and with like baneful results, by the priestly class. Although 

 the High Priest who like the Tibetan Dalai Lama, dwelt in some 

 sanctuary inaccessible to the public was chosen by election, the 

 sacerdotal hierarchy inherited their offices through the female 

 line, doubtless a reminiscence of matriarchal customs. These 

 xeques, as they were called, obtruded themselves everywhere, and 

 exercised such diverse functions as those of the shaman, the 

 medicine man, judge, and executioner. 



Then followed, in exactly the same order as in India, the 

 warrior caste, utilised also as police and tax-gatherers, the traders, 



