344 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is not surprised, therefore, to find here in great profusion a summing 

 up in stone, both in sculpture and architecture, of all the motives scat- 

 tered in clay, wood, textile and feather-work over the northern con- 

 tinent. Here also are seen fully developed those virile art forms and 

 decorations of which Gushing finds among the pueblos only vestiges on 

 pottery and basketry. The high culture of the Mexican and the Mayan 

 broke down in Honduras, Salvador and Nicaragua, where are even 

 now found any number of unclassed, insignificant tribes. 



The Colombian area. 



The extension of the Cordilleras southward need not detain the 

 reader. Stretching from Nicaragua to the southern limits of Colombia 

 were the Muyscas or Chibchas, metallurgists and jewelers par excellence. 

 It was in their country that Balboa heard of the great riches farther 

 south. Theirs was the home of 'El hombre dorado,' or Eldorado, where, 

 on the inauguration of a chief, a procession of men richly dressed 

 marched to the borders of their sacred lake bearing him on a splendid 

 litter. The chief's ' naked body had been anointed with resinous gums 

 and covered with gold dust.' He was rowed to the middle of the lake 

 and plunged himself in to wash the gold from his body as an offering, 

 at the same time his followers casting in enormous quantities of gold 

 and emeralds. (Bandelier, 1893, p. 14.) 



The women were farmers, potters and weavers. They cultivated 

 maize, beans, yucca and cotton. Irrigation was practiced, the ditches, 

 no doubt, being the result of organized, far-reaching and long-continued 

 labor among the men. The conditions for united effort in large archi- 

 tectural enterprises did not exist, but commerce in salt and gold was 

 active. It was not until a widening of the area and a lengthening of 

 roads farther south in the inter-Andean valley made larger aggrega- 

 tions of men feasible that the noblest of arts discloses itself again. 



The Peruvian area. 



The Quichuan, or Kechuan family, including the Aymaran, occu- 

 pied a strip of upland two thousand miles long on the Pacific slope of 

 South America, all parts of which were joined by trails. Here Indian 

 men reached their zenith. The dissemination of their culture was con- 

 terminous with their speech. The foci of this virility were Quito and 

 Cuzco. The architecture was rock-hewn and cyclopean, wrought with 

 tools of stone. Agriculture had passed to the artificial conditions in 

 which metallic tools were used, in which terraced gardening, irrigation, 

 use of guano and grain storage were practiced. The llama and paca 

 were bred in vast numbers for food, for textile material and for pack 

 beasts. Metallurgists wrought skilfully in bronze, silver and gold. 



