COLUMBIAN HISTORICAL EXPOSITION AT MADRID. 71 



DEPARTMENT OF THE EMPIRE OF GERMANY. 



The collection forwarded by the Empire of Germany was displayed 

 under the intelligent care of Dr. Edward Seler, associate director of 

 the Ethnographic Museum of Berlin. 



Most of the objects exhibited were in originals or photographs, pic 

 tures or casts from specimens in the Berlin Museum. As a rule, how 

 ever, the casts were so well prepared and the selection so judiciously 

 made of articles of general interest in the ancient history of America 

 that this portion of the Exposition formed by no means the least inter 

 esting and instructive of the departments. 



Most prominent among the casts were those in plaster of paris of the 

 remarkable stone monuments, discovered at Santa Lucia Cozumalhualpa, 

 in the department of Escuintla, Kepublic of Guatemala. They were 

 first described by Dr. F. Habel in 1862 in a report which he afterwards 

 presented to the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, 1 and subse 

 quently attracted the attention of Dr. C. H. Berendt, who urged the 

 museum at Berlin to obtain possession of them, and spent the last few 

 months of his life in seeing to their proper packing and forwarding to 

 that destination. Only a part of the considerable number found in the 

 locality are now in the museum, the others having been left at various 

 points on the way. The character of these remains has been made 

 familiar to the public by the monographs of Prof. Charles Ran, of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, and Prof. A. Bastian, of Berlin. They pre 

 sent many points of peculiarity, differing entirely from the remains of 

 the Indian tribes of Guatemala, who descended from the Maya stock, 

 and scarcely less so from the known relics of those of the Nahuatl 

 lineage who inhabited Escuintla at the time of its discovery by the 

 Spanish explorers. Nevertheless, there are traces both of the mythology 

 and of the workmanship of the latter so well marked that we may 

 safely conclude that they are the production of some branch of the 

 Nahuatl peoples. There was a tradition that at a remote time emigrants 

 from the north passed through this portion of Escuintla, and while there 

 they erected these monuments as a memorial to their principal chief 

 and high priest, who had there met his death. 



There were sixteen of these casts, representing the full series as found 

 in Berlin, of the size of the originals. 



Another series of casts, representing a number of remains from the 

 ruins of Tula, the reputed capital city of the ancient Toltecs, about 40 

 miles north of the present City of Mexico, were due to the generosity 

 of Dr. Antonio Penafiel, by whom they were presented to the Museum 

 of Ethnography at Berlin. One of them showed a support for a build 

 ing in the form of a warrior whose face is represented within the open 

 mouth of a serpent. Like other remains from this famous site, these 

 do not betray any marked superiority over others from various parts of 



1 The Sculptures of SantaLuciaCosumalwhuapa, by F. Habel, M. D., Washington, 



1878. 



