P OP ULAR MIS CELL ANY. 



427 



forms a precipitate of little isolated flakes 

 easily soluble in an excess of gastric juice. 

 It does not load the stomach of the sickly 

 and puny infants, who ought to be spared 

 all possible difficulty in digestion. Mare's 

 milk would be, if it were easy to get, a still 

 better substitute for mother's milk. It has 

 nearly the same composition, and M. Ber- 

 ling, a Russian physician who has tried it, 

 has found in it all the qualities necessary 

 to sustain new-born children. 



Aborigines of the Isthmus. Mr. E. G. 



Barney has given in the " American Anti- 

 quarian " an account of the history and 

 present condition of the native races of the 

 United States of Colombia. The territory 

 of that republic, now divided into nine 

 States and six Territories, was inhabited at 

 the time of the discovery and conquest, 

 from 1498 to 1545, by a dense population, 

 which was variously estimated at from eight 

 million to twenty million souls. The inhab- 

 itants of the State of Panama were in vari- 

 ous stages of advancement, " from dwellers 

 in the tree-tops to a degree of civilization 

 very much superior to that of Britain at the 

 time of the Roman conquest, or indeed at 

 the time the Saxons ruled the island." Co- 

 lumbus in one of his letters speaks of his 

 brother having seen a house devoted to the 

 dead, and containing many well-embalmed 

 bodies, over which were wooden slabs en- 

 graved with the figures of various animals, 

 and one bearing a good portrait of the de- 

 ceased. During a journey in the interior, 

 this brother found a dense population, en- 

 tirely agricultural, and passed at one place 

 eighteen miles through continued fields of 

 corn. The inhabitants of the coasts and 

 islands wore little clothing, but valuable or- 

 naments of gold, and these appear to have 

 been imported from other states, being 

 bought for gold-dust, dried fish, and prod- 

 ucts of the soil. Balboa and his forces 

 were entertained in the spacious house of a 

 cacique, in one of the rooms of which were 

 kept the embalmed ancestors of the chief 

 for many generations, and which was sur- 

 rounded by large grounds with towering 

 palm-trees and gardens and orchards. These 

 people, who appear to have compared favor- 

 ably with most European nations before the 

 invention of gunpowder, are believed to 



have been of the same race with the North 

 American Indians, but agricultural in their 

 habits. Their weapons of Avar were bows 

 and arrows, darts, lances, war-clubs, etc. 

 Their implements of husbandry were stone 

 axes and sharpened sticks hardened in the 

 fire, and their mills were smooth stones, 

 rubbed together with the hand. Their nets 

 for fishing were made of the fibers of the 

 Agave Americana, and their hooks were 

 made from turtle-shells. On the head-wa- 

 ters of some of the tributaries of the Atrato 

 " were found one tribe of very skillful arti- 

 sans in golden ornaments ; another equally 

 skillful in spinning and weaving cotton 

 cloths, nets, hammocks, etc., the former be- 

 ing very tastefully colored ; and another 

 tribe adjacent were agriculturists, but 

 showed unusual taste in adorning the sur- 

 roundings of their homes with gardens, 

 fruit-orchards, etc. One tomb is mentioned 

 as having been artistically constructed, from 

 which the sum of forty thousand dollars 

 was taken by Cesar and his party. . . . 

 These tribes are said to have had adorato- 

 rios, and a system of religious belief too 

 variously stated to enable me to form any 

 opinion of its character." In the upper 

 valley of the Cauca, on the slopes and val- 

 leys of two immense mountain-ranges, dwelt 

 many tribes, either wholly agriculturists or 

 partly agriculturists and partly fishermen, 

 or manufacturers of salt, golden ornaments, 

 or cotton cloth, etc. Many of the tribes in 

 this valley were considerably advanced in 

 culture ; some had the streets of their 

 towns wide and regular ; some were manu- 

 facturers of cotton goods ; one manufact- 

 ured golden ornaments, and two made salt 

 by boiling down saline waters. It cost much 

 Castilian blood to subdue these people, but, 

 finding that they could not contend against 

 the superior weapons of the Europeans, they 

 generally refused to plant, and in two years 

 the Spaniards were compelled to begin to 

 introduce negroes to till the ground so lately 

 occupied by a happy and contented people. 

 " Along the eastern side of the Gulf of Da- 

 rien and along the northern slopes of the 

 Abibe, the descendants of the independent 

 tribes, whose poisoned arrows defeated 

 nearly every attempt to penetrate their 

 country, still hold their native land as free 

 from the intruder as when the European 



