105 
village situate on the plain of the ancient Cundi- 
namurca. His office having enabled him to 
gain the confidence of the natives, who are 
descendants of the Miiyscas, he has endeavoured 
to collect all that tradition has preserved during 
three centuries concerning the state of those 
regions before the arrival of the Spaniards in 
the New Continent. He succeeded in procuring 
one of those sculptured stones, by which the 
Muysca priest regulated the division of time ; 
he acquired the knowledge of the simple hiero- 
glyphics, which denote both numbers and the 
lunar days ; and he has written a statement of 
the knowledge he acquired, the fruit of long and 
laborious researches, in a memoir that bears the 
title of Disertacion sohre el Kalendario de los 
MuyscaSy Indios naturales del nuevo Reyno de 
Grenada. This manuscript was communicated 
to me at Santa F6, 1801, by the celebrated 
botanist Don Jose Celestino Mutis. Mr. Du- 
quesne gave me permission to sketch the penta- 
gonal stone, of which he has endeavoured to give 
an explanation ; and it is this drawing, which 
has been engraven on the 4th plate. 
I shall here offer a few desultory observations 
on the calendar of the Muysca Indians, from the 
materials contained in the Spanish memoir which 
1 have just cited ; and shall subjoin certain con- 
siderations relative to the analogy between this 
calendar and the cycles of Asiatic nations. 
