78 ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCHES IN NICARAGUA. 



the way through, and two smaller ones leading diagonally into the first from the 

 sides an ingenious manner of making a perforation for suspension without 

 drilling entirely through the ornament. 



The turtle, No. 28,979, has a hole in one forefoot and one hindfoot, and must 

 have been worn suspended side up. It is of green marble. The woodpecker, 

 parrot, or some other bird, in serpentine is No. 28,978. 



Green appears to have been the sacred color with the aborigines from 

 Arizona to Peru. Throughout this region green stone ornaments were found by 

 the Spaniards to be objects held in the highest estimation. Sahagun says that 

 the common people of Mexico were not allowed to wear them.* The Aztecs' 

 knowledge of mineralogy was not sufficient to enable them to make fine distinc- 

 tions in the character of material ; and in Mexico the term chalchihuitl seems to 

 have been applied to all pretty green stone susceptible of high polish. The god 

 Quetzalcoatl taught the art, and was the patron of the workers in chalchihuitl. 

 The divinity worshipped by the fishermen, the goddess Chalchihuitlicuc, is 

 described by Clavigero as the goddess of water, clothed in a green robe of chal- 

 chihuitls.f 



Persons who have been in the tropics at the close of the dry spell, when 

 vegetation was parched and dying, and have seen the whole face of nature rejuv- 

 enated by the first showers of the rainy season the dry llanos transformed as 

 by magic into lawns of freshest green can well understand how water came to 

 be a synonym for life, and green the color in which its goddess was clothed. 



The fact that at the same season the serpents come out in great numbers and 

 gorgeous coats may help to account for their symbolic significance. On the trip 

 to Costa Rica, during the dry season, although riding through the wildest 

 country for more than two weeks, not a snake was seen ; after the first rain they 

 were observed in great numbers. 



*Squier in American Naturalist. May, 1870. Page 173. 



" Lc cultc dc 1'cmeraudo n'existait pas a la Nouvello Granadc: mais on attribuait a cctte pierre uno origine 

 celeste." (Saffray. Voyage a la Nouvelle Granadc, La Tour du Hondo, 1873.) 



Some of the old Spanish chroniclers speak loosely of all green stono ornaments as emerald, as in the 

 frequent allusions made to this mineral by Piedrahita and Simon in their writing? recording the conquest of 

 Columbia. (See articles of Tcrnaux-Compans on Cundinimarca, Nouvolles Annales des Voyages, 4 me serie, 6, 7, 8.) 



f Bancroft. Native Kaces of the Pacific States, Vol. Ill, page 368. 



