ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCHES IN NICARAGUA. 47 



pottery, to be described later under the head of Santa Helena, the place where 

 it was found in largest quantity and best state of preservation. There were also 

 chips of chalcedony and a portion of a basalt pestle. At the house little children 

 were using the flint chips as knives to split cacao beans before planting. 



Senor Baltaza had several celts which he called aerolites. He gave me two 

 small pieces of greenish stone resembling argillite, an arrow-head of chalcedony, 

 and a small piece of obsidian the only specimen of it seen by me in Nicaragua. 

 He reported celts and arrow-heads as frequently found in the ravines after heavy 

 rains. They were often seen around the Indian huts, and one of black tremolitic 

 rock was given me at the village. 



CHILAITE. 



About five miles north of Moyogalpa, at a point on the lake shore called 

 Chilaite, antiquities were unusually abundant but a few feet above the water, on 

 a flat between the hills and the lake. Here, within half a mile of each other, 

 were both urn and mound burials; while between the two and around the mounds 

 the soil was literally filled with shards and small images of the Santa Helena 

 class. ' In the first par excellence the Ometepec style of burial were found the 

 round and shoe-shaped jars, containing bones, beads, &c. Several of these urns 

 were covered with the peculiar, fancifully painted bowls of the Luna type. The 

 jars were imbedded in sandy soil near the lake ; not in a line parallel to the 

 present beach, but irregularly placed, as if in the sandy shore of a cove in the 

 old coast line. The soil here was not full of shards as in the neighboring 

 locality of the Santa Helena pottery. The jars were from eight inches to three 

 feet below the surface. Twenty were unearthed, fifteen round and five oblong, all 

 of which had caps. Two small black vessels were obtained ; and in the jars were 

 a few green argillite and black terra-cotta beads. 



