138 BUEEAU OF AMEEICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 64 



Mounds of this kind are found throughout the area, though not in 

 great numbers. Some of these are circular or horseshoe shaped, some 

 crescentic, and others curved or even straight ridges. As a rule 

 they contain nothing except a few potsherds, which would natu- 

 rally be picked up with the earth of which most of them are made; 

 in some, however (especially in the straight ridges), superficial inter- 

 ments have been found. These mounds were probably used as forti- 

 fications, the circular, horseshoe-shaped, and crescentic mounds 

 being particularly well adapted to tliis purpose. 



At Yalloch, just across the Guatemala boundary line from Choro, 

 a small village in the western district of British Honduras, the 

 Alcalde made a remarkable discovery a few years ago. Wliile hunt- 

 ing for a gibnut he traced one to a hole in the ground; on poking a 

 stick into this hole, he was astonished on withdrawing it to find that 

 he had brought out on its end a small painted pottery cyhnder. 

 The hole on being enlarged proved to be the entrance to a chultun, 

 one of those curious underground chambers cut in the limestone rock 

 found throughout Yucatan and the northern part of British Hon- 

 duras, especially in the neighborhood of ruins. This chultun con- 

 tained numbers of fragments of very finely painted and decorated 

 pottery vases, together with two complete cylindrical vases, an ovoid 

 vase, and a pottery cyhnder without bottom. Some of these were 

 within the chultun, some in a pit sunk in its floor, from which at a 

 later date several pieces of beautifully decorated pottery were taken. 

 The pit had evidently been used as a burial place, in wliich the 

 memorial pottery was deposited with the body. Merwin found 

 similar painted Maya vases some years later in a chamber covered 

 by a mound, at Holmul, within a few miles of Yalloch, and at Platon, 

 on the Mop an Kiver, a sepulchral chultun was cleared out in which 

 human bones still remained. (Pis. 23-28.) 



Near the point where Blue Creek or Rio Azul joins the Rio Hondo, 

 in the northern district of British Honduras, is situated in the bush 

 about 100 yards from the latter river a small circular lagoon, of a 

 deep blue color and considerable depth; from this flows a narrow 

 stream, also deep blue in color and higlily impregnated with copper, 

 which opens into the main river just below the mouth of the Rio 

 Azul. The little lake is bounded on its eastern side by an almost 

 perpendicular chff of limestone, in which are several small caves 

 and one large cave. The interior of one of the smallest of these 

 caverns, situated near the base of the chff, not more than a few 

 yards in depth, was roughly hewn out so as to form shelves. Upon 

 these were found several hundred small binequins of incense, vary- 

 ing in size from 3 to 4 inches in length by 1| to 2 inches in 

 breadth, to 8 to 10 inches in length by 3 to 4 inches in breadth. 

 Tlie incense was composed of the gum of the white acacia mixed 



