Ancient Inhabitants I2I 
always on the look-out for them, and never saw any return 
swarms of butterflies. Their migration every year in one 
definite direction is quite unintelligible to me. 
We gradually ascended the range that separates the water- 
shed of the Lake of Nicaragua from that of the Blewfields 
river, passing over grassy savannahs. About two leagues 
from Libertad there are many old Indian graves, covered 
with mounds of earth and stones. A well-educated English- 
man, Mr. Fairbairn, has taken up his abode at this place, 
and is growing maize and rearing cattle. There are many 
evidences of a large Indian population having lived at this 
spot, and their pottery and fragments of their stones for 
bruising maize have been found in some graves that have 
been opened. Mr. Fairbairn got me several of these curiosi- 
ties, amongst them are imitations of the heads of armadillos, 
and other animals. Some of these had formed the feet of 
urns, others were rattles, containing small balls of baked 
clay. The old Indians used these rattles in their solemn 
religious dances, and the custom is probably not yet quite 
obsolete, for as late as 1823 Mr. W. Bullock saw, in Mexico, 
Indian women dancing in a masque representing the court of 
Montezuma, and holding rattles in their right hands, to the 
noise of which they accompanied their motions. Several 
stone axes have been found, which are called “ thunder- 
bolts ” by the natives, who have no idea that they are artifi- 
cial, although it is less than four hundred years ago since 
their forefathers used them. Like most of the sites of the 
ancient Indian towns, the place is a very picturesque one. 
At a short distance to the west rise the precipitous rocks of 
the Amerrique range, with great perpendicular cliffs, and 
huge isolated rocks and pinnacles. The name of this range 
gives us a clue to the race of the ancient inhabitants. In the 
highlands of Honduras, as has been noted by Squiers, the 
termination of tigue or rique is of frequent occurrence in the 
names of places, as Chaparristique, Lepaterique, Llotique, 
Ajuterique, and others. ‘The race that inhabited this region 
were the Lenca Indians, often mentioned in the accounts 
given by the missionaries of their early expeditions into 
Honduras. I think that the Lenca Indians were the ancient 
inhabitants of Chontales, that they were the “ Chontals ” of 
the Nahuatls or Aztecs of the Pacific side of the country, and 
