210 The Voyage of Aguirre in Search of El Dorado. 



fit himself for this importaut ceremony, he smeared his body 

 with turpentine, and then rolled in gold dust, which caused the 

 precious metal to adhere. In this condition he went upon a 

 raft, in company with his chief nobles, and when the centre of a 

 lake (Guatavita) was reached, he made an offering of precious 

 stones, and then jumped in to bathe. These proceedings were 

 supposed to propitiate the aquatic deity of the place — the mira- 

 culous Cacica — who, having been thrown into the lake by a 

 quarrelsome husband, was believed to dwell in a delicious re- 

 treat beneath its waters, in company with her daughter, whose 

 favour the worshipper likewise invoked. In his learned work* 

 on the antiquities of these countries, Mr. Bollaert informs us 

 that " the principal places of adoration of the Chibchas were 

 lakes, where they could make offerings of the most precious 

 things, without fear of others profiting by them ; for although 

 they had confidence in their priests, and knew that they care- 

 fully buried the offerings in the vases destined to receive them, 

 they were naturally more secure when they threw those objects 

 themselves into lakes and rivers." The same writer tells us 

 that the Geques, or Chibcha priests, were taught, during an 

 initiation of twelve years, the computation of time and other 

 traditional learning, which has been lost through the savage 

 persecutions to which the bigoted Spaniards exposed the 

 ministers of a superstition scarcely grosser than their own most 

 deplorably perverted faith. 



The origin of Mexican civilization will remain a puzzle for 

 future ethnologists and antiquarians to unriddle, if they can ; 

 but in any speculations of this nature we must not be too easily 

 induced by analogies to imagine that it was copied from other 

 countries, as large allowance should be made for the operation 

 of the law, under which, similarity of condition, tends to produce 

 similarity of habits and opinions amongst races the most remote. 

 Whatever may have been the early history of the people of 

 Mexico, Bogota, and Peru, they were found by the Spaniards 

 in a state of society peculiarly calculated to stimulate their ad- 

 venturous and avaricious propensities. The love of the mar- 

 vellous, the desire to acquire wealth without the monotony of 

 daily toil, together with boundless opportunities for personal 

 distinction, all conspired to make the New World a favourite 

 field for the exertion of restless spirits, and as its unfortunate 

 inhabitants were heathens who resisted conversion, they might 

 be robbed and murdered with the sanction of the Church. It 

 was while these feelings were in their full strength that a Captain 

 Pedro de Ursua, having been duly authorized by the powers of 



* Antiquarian, Ethnological, and otlier Researches in New Granada, Ecua- 

 dor, Peru, and Chile, with Observations on the Pre-Incarial, Incarial, and other 

 Monuments of Peruvian Nations, by Wm. Bollaert, F.R.G.S. Triibner and Co. 



