OTCLOPEAK WALLS. 
,110 
Muyscas of New Grenada, never appears to have had any 
sensible influence on the moral state of the nations of 
Guiana. It must be observed further, that in North 
America, between the Ohio, Miami, and the Lakes, an un- 
known people, whom systematic authors would make the 
descendants of the Toltecs and Aztecs, constructed walls of 
earth and sometimes of stone without mortar,* from, ten to 
fifteen feet high, and seven or eight thousand feet long- 
These singular cireumvallations sometimes enclosed a hun- 
dred and fifty acres of ground. In the plains of the Orinoco, 
as in those of Marietta, the Miami, and the Ohio, the centre 
of an ancient civilization is found in the west on the back of 
the mountains ; but the Orinoco, and the countries lying be- 
tween that great river and the Amazon, appear never to 
have been inhabited by nations whose constructions have re- 
sisted the ravages of time. Though symbolical figures are 
found engraved on the hardest rocks, yet further south than 
eight degrees of latitude, no tumulus, no circumvallation, no 
dike of earth similar to those that exist farther north in the 
plains of Varinas and Canagua, lias been found. Such is the 
contrast that may be observed between the eastern parts of 
North and South America, those parts which extend from the 
table-land of Cundinamarcaf and the mountains of Cayenne 
towards the Atlantic, and those which stretch from the And? 8 
of New Spain towards the Alleghanies. Nations advanced n* 
civilization, of which we discover traces on the banks of hd { ® 
Teguyo and in the Casas grande s of tho 11 io Gila, might har 
sent some tribes eastward into the open countries of ^ t' 1 
Missouri and the Ohio, where the climate differs little fro' 1 ' 
that of New Mexico ; but in South America, where the g r ° 8 
flux of nations has continued from north to south, those "j 1 
had long enjoyed the mild temperature of the back of tb 
equinoctial Cordilleras no doubt dreaded a descent hit 0 
burning plains bristled with forests, and inundated by tb 
periodical swellings of rivers. It is easy to conceive ho 
much the force of vegetation, and the nature of the soil 
* Of siliceous limestone, at Pique, on the Great Miami ; of sandston® 
at Creek Point, ten leagues from Chillakothe, where the wall is fine 
hundred toises long. j rl M 
t This is the ancient name of the empire of the Zaques, founded 1 
Bochica or Idacanzas, the high priest of Iraca, in New Grenada. 
