A STUDY OF CHIRIQUIAN ANTIQUITIES. 



that of the earliest known period ; but neither ventures to claim an identity of 

 origin. 



The source from which the purple was obtained remains a mystery. That its 

 origin was known only to a few, is evident from its rare use. It does not seem 

 to have been known outside the province of Chiriqui, from which only eight 

 specimens have been reported that include purple as a delineating color. Six 

 are in the Yale Museum and two in the United States National Museum. The 

 color probably comes from a non-ferruginous metallic oxide and was apparently 

 applied before firing. Had it been applied after the firing, a vegetable or animal 

 dye might have been used ; that from a mollusk (Purpura patula) for instance, which, 

 according to Dr. H. Pittier de Fabrega, may be found clinging to the rocks between 

 high and low tide levels on both the Atlantic and the Pacific coast of Panama. 



The purple industry is practised by the natives of Cano Island, off the mouth 

 of the Diquis river ; also by those living at Golfo Dulce, 1 on the southwest coast 

 of Costa Rica. In Nicoya, the Indians color their cotton thread in a primitive 

 manner by simply drawing it over the shell opening of the snail, thereby dampen- 

 ing it in the escaping purple liquid. The color, which is at first greenish yellow, 

 becomes violet on drying. The shell is reddish about the opening, remind- 

 ing one of P. hcemastoma Linne of the Mediterranean, with which the fishermen 

 of Minorca still mark their linen. On the other hand, the purple of the ancient 

 Phenicians and Greeks came from Murex trunculus and M. brandaris Linne. 



On page 181 of his Conchyliologie (1742), M. Degallier d'Argenville states that 

 the " Conque Persique" is made use of both in Panama and Guatemala to color 

 cotton thread and, on that account, is called " Pourpre de Panama." According to 

 van Maartens, the " Conque Persique" of d'Argenville is the Purpura persica of 

 Brugiere and Lamarck, a species very similar to Purpura patula and its representa- 

 tive in the Indian Ocean. 



As early as 1744, Don Antonio de Ulloa saw at S. Elena, in what is now 

 Ecuador, and also at Nicoya (Costa Rica), purple color produced from a snail, 

 and speaks of it as being pronounced and durable, so that it lost nothing either 

 from frequent washing or from long use. 



Thomas Gage 2 was a still earlier observer, his account being as follows : 



" About Chira, Golfo de Salinas, and Nicoya, there are some farms of Spaniards, few and 

 very small Indian Townes, who are all like slaves employed by the Alcalde Maior, to make 

 him a kind of thred called Pita, which is a very rich Commodity in Spain, especially of 

 that colour wherewith it is dyed in these parts of Nicoya, which is a purple colour ; for the 

 which the Indians are here much charged to work about the Sea shore, and there to finde 

 out certain shels wherewith they make this purple dye." 



In this connection, the observations of Mr. C. V. Hartman are interesting. On 

 one of his recent expeditions to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, he visited Guana- 



1 Joaquin Bernardo Calvo. Administracion Soto, Repiiblica de Costa Rica, Apuntamientos 

 geograficos, estadisticos e historicos. S. Jose de Costa Rica, 1886. 



2 The English-American, his Travail by Sea and Land : or, A New Survey of the West- 

 Indies, Containing A Journall of Three thousand and Three hundred Miles within the main 

 Land of America, 192, 193. London (R. Cotes), 1648. 





