355 



GEOGRAPHICAL COLLECTIONS. 



On the Asiatic and Japanese Origin of the People of the Upland of Bogota.-^ 

 The Baron de Humboldt had akeady, with his ordinary sagacity, observed that 

 the half civilized people met with in 1537, by the conqueror Queseda, on the fer- 

 tile and elevated land of Bogota, have the most intimate relations with the people 

 of Japan. Like the latter they were clothed in cotton garments, and they cultivated 

 the shrub which furnishes the material ; like them they were united into tribes, and 

 reaped rich harvests of corn ; they were also submitted to two sovereigns at once 

 —the one, supreme pontiff, reminding us of the dairi of Japan ; the other, a se- 

 cular king, analogous to the djogoun or king of Japan. And, like the Japanese, 

 these people of New Grenada employed in their hieroglyphical calendar of a com. 

 plicated structure, cycles, or a series of days and of numbers combined two and 

 iwo ; and more especially they had a period of sixty years, which alone would suf- 

 fice to denote an Asiatic origin ; lastly, in the language Chi-bcha spoken by these 

 people of Bogota, the sound of the letter / was wanting, as it is also wanting in 

 the language of Japan. 



Such had been the first relations discovered by the Baron de Humboldt, and 

 exposed in his splendid work Vues des Cordillieres ; and Mr. de Paravey, in a 

 work published in 182G, on the Origine unique des chiffres et des lettres de tout 

 les Peuples, had shown some further no less striking affinities. In comparing 

 the cycle of days of the Muyscas with that of the Japanese, M. de Paravey found 

 the same significations in each (evidently astronomical) for the same numbers. 

 Thus, at Japan, as a New Grenada among the Muyscas, the fifth day was ex- 

 pressed by the very complex idea of an hieroglyphic of the conjunction of the 

 sun and moon. 



The fourth day offered orf both sides the idea of gates, which is precisely the 

 signification of Daleth of the Hebrews, constantly used for the number four, of 

 which it had even the figure. The second day gave an idea of enclosures or 

 boundaries, as is presented also in the Beth of the Hebrews, and the symbol of 

 the second character of the cycle of Japan ; lastly, the number one at New Gre- 

 nada, as at Japan, offered equally ideas of water and of the tadpole of a frog, or 

 of son, child, which, among the ancient Egyptians, Horapollon informs us, was 

 also expressed by a young frog. 



Without pushing any further this comparison of numbers of a similar value 

 made between people separated by such very great distances, it becomes evident 

 that the cycle of the Muyscas, exposed by De Humboldt from a learned memoir 

 of the Canon Duquesne of Santa-Fe' de Bogota, who was a long time minister 

 among these half civilized people, and who discovered it upon a stone calendar, of 

 which De Humboldt has given a drawing, had been imported into America from 

 Japan itself, or from China, and probably, as De Humboldt suspects, by the 

 north-east of Asia, where winds are met with which conduct easily into America; 

 whilst all the tribes of Spanish America avow having come from the north at not 

 a very remote period, following the elevated chains of the Andes and of the Cor- 

 dilleras, which, as is well known, extend the whole length of the new continent. 



In 1826, M. de Paravey compared the names Ata, Bosca, Mica, Hisca, Cu- 

 hulqa, Ulichchica, of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 10, of the cycle of the 

 Muyscas, to the sounds A, B, C, E, and Z or G, and J or Y, which answer to the 

 same^numbers in the Phenician or Hebrew alphabet. He farther found, as we 

 have already mentioned, the same hieroglyphical meaning attached to several of 

 them ; but he did not at that time think of comparing these same numbers of the 

 Muyscas to the names of the cycle of ten days of theJapanese ; and this is what 

 M. de Siebold, who walks in the steps of De Humboldt, has just done at Japan 

 itself and at Nangasachi. 



VOL. II. 2 z 



