﻿FIEL1 S AND FOREST. 1 33 



Archaeological Explorations in Nicaragua. 



One of the most successful explorers of antiquities in Central America 

 is Dr. Earl Flint, residing near the northwest border of Lake Nicaragua. 

 He has contributed many curious articles and valuable suggestions to 

 the National Museum. A strip of mountainous country separates his 

 station on the Lake from the Pacific Ocean, having a varying width of 

 from seventy to one hundred miles, and over this uneven country 

 everything has to be conveyed to the sea port. Jnst within the margin 

 of the Lake lie the Islands Omotepec and Zapatero, which abound in 

 aboriginal remains, and if not at one time the residence of extensive 

 populations, bear evidence that a people now extinct formerly swarmed 

 over the adjacent shores. Slight excavations, made almost anywhere, 

 discover a series of- tombs of very remote antiquity, containing relics 

 which are almost the sole reliance for solving great ethnological 

 questions. By diligently collecting such objects, studying their con- 

 nexions with each other, and the style of work or ornamentation 

 exhibited, Dr. Flint has deduced epochs or periods of settlement near 

 the lake, each characterized by such diverse features that he is con- 

 vinced that they are the monumental records of at least three separate 

 nationalities which have succeeded each other. As the accounts 

 derived from the chronicles of the Spanish invasion, (about A. D. 1523,) 

 are speculative and conflicting, and as it is conceded that the native 

 traditions are worthless, and that even the languages of existing tribes 

 are almost beyond recovery, the relics above referred to, are about all 

 that is now left to illustrate the history of these people. Long inter- 

 vals of time seem to have passed between the degradation and extinc- 

 tion of one people, and the ascendency of their successors, themselves 

 to be subsequently driven out and to disappear. In one instance it 

 would seem that a stratum of lava and volcanic ashes is recognized as 

 covering the burial places of the second epoch, forming a striking line 

 of demarcation, but conveying only an imperfect idea as to the abso- 

 lute age of the deposit for the reason that this is the region of ? in others 

 which has suffered most frequent disturbance from these erupt'' ,s. The 

 incursion of warlike races probably fromAnahuac, in Mexico, frequently 

 unsettled the country, leading many to suppose that from this cause and 

 a semi-nomadic character prevalent at the time, that no settlement was 

 very permanent, and that many continued only for a generation. The 



