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have a connexion with astrological ideas. The 

 human victim was called guesa, wandering-, 

 houseless, and quihica, door, because his death 

 announced as it were the opening of a new cycle 

 of a hundred and eighty-five moons. This denomi- 

 nation reminds us of the Janus of the Romans, 

 placed at the gates of Heaven, and to whom 

 Numa dedicated the first month of the year, 

 tanquam bicipitis dei mensem *. The guesa 

 was a child torn from the paternal home. He 

 must necessarily be taken from a certain village, 

 situate in the plains called at the present day the 

 Llanos de San Juan, which extend from the 

 eastern slope of the Cordilleras to the banks of 

 the Guaviare. It was from this same country of 

 the east that Bochica, the emblem of the Sun, 

 came, when he made his first appearance among 

 the Muyscas. The guesa was most carefully 

 educated in the temple of the Sun at Sogamozo, 

 till the age of ten years ; he was then made to 

 go out to walk in the paths, which Bochica had 

 trodden, at the period when, in his instructions 

 to the people, he had consecrated those spots by 

 his miracles. At the age of fifteen years, when 

 the victim had attained a number of sunas equal 

 to that contained in the indiction of the Muysca 

 cycle, he was sacrificed in one of those circular 

 places in the centre of which was an elevated 



* Macrobius, Lab. i, c. 13. 



