74 ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCHES IN NICARAGUA. 



vase, prettily painted, a black one shaped like an aguacate, and a piece of jadeite 

 (No. 28,992) about two inches in cubic dimensions. These were all from Culebra, 

 a hacienda at the head of the bay of that name. The fragment of jadeite was 

 said to have been eight inches long, but was broken by the children who had 

 used it as a plaything. 



While I was confined to the house by illness for three days, Dr. Flint visited 

 Culebra and reported several mounds of stone seven feet in height, with many 

 fragments of metatcs in basalt. He mentioned tall stones in the mounds, like 

 the tombstones of Santa Helena, and discovered large shell-heaps in the same 

 neighborhood. 



Among the articles said to have come from these mounds were a mortar of 

 lava, a rude vase with excrescent-like ornaments, a painted tripod, and a frag- 

 ment of pottery painted green. 



Near Bocarones, on the Rio Tempisque, were small heaps of stones similar 

 in appearance to those at San Francisco. I had no time to open them, but was 

 informed by the proprietor of the land that they were tombs, and contained 

 metates, painted pottery, &c. 



Throughout this fertile valley of the Tempisque, which is well wooded and, 

 along the road, well cultivated, relics of the old Indians abound. This, indeed, 

 has been the case wherever I have examined fertile spots on the Pacific slope 

 of Central America. In many places where dense forests now stand, the mould- 

 ering leaves cover vestiges of a once teeming and prosperous population. 



An old Spanish lady at Bocarones described without the aid of leading 

 questions urn burials precisely similar to those at the hacienda de Lima, 

 Ometepec. She said the skeletons were sitting in the urns with knees drawn up 

 to their chins, and that in the jars and around them were small vessels, beads, 

 burnt corn, beans, &c. The burials were on the opposite side of the river, and 

 were shown by a son of the lady. They were in huacas on a hill about half a 

 mile from the river. The hill, some fifty feet high, was one of a narrow irregular 

 range. On the southwest edge of the summit was a parapet of columnar 

 basalt the columns so regular as almost to appear chiseled. There were several 

 mounds of earth and stone, about eight feet high, on the west side of the hill, 

 some of which had been opened, and scattered around were fragments of 

 metates of great variety in size and ornamentation, the feet of some being twelve 

 inches long; also many shards of pottery, some of them painted, pieces of 

 tripods, and fragments about an inch thick of very large jars. The latter, judg- 

 ing by the curve of the fragments, must have been three or four feet in diameter. 



Standing in a fence in the village was a basalt idol of the Zapatera style. 

 It projected some four feet above the surface. Scilor Vargas informed me that it 

 was brought from a neighboring huaca. 



