i8 9 i.] 
251 
[Crawford. 
The Tucoas (Teucos) could have given topaz, translucent 
quartz, plumage of birds, and skins. 
The Mosquitos could have offered skins, feathers and gold from 
the rich gold placer deposits near the Rio Prinzapulka. 
And in this intercourse Christopher Columbus and his com- 
panions (if the tale is not a myth) would have first heard the 
name Amerrique in September 1502. 
4th. The impalpable form of this very ancient chief has been 
seen by very old Indians (and they become almost wild with ex- 
citement as they gesticulate and relate it) proudly walking and 
gesticulating on top of Mesa Totumbla, that he sometimes points 
eastwardly (to the Caribbean sea) then westwardly to the Pacific 
ocean, both of which oceans they declare can be seen on a very 
clear day from the top of this Mesa ; that he is buried in or re- 
turns by day to a deep cavern in this Mesa, and that by his gest- 
ures he declares that he will ere long collect the Indians into one 
great army and in person lead them to many victories, etc., etc. 
This Mesa Totumbla is a mass of gneiss whose top, about nine 
square miles, has been carved out into a shallow channel about two 
miles wide from east to west and extending across the mountain 
from north to south, exposing u moutonn6es”-backed masses of 
rocks near the centre of the channel, and many large, loose, 
straited rocks along in the channel on its inner surface, and on 
the top of the Mesa ; and commencing precipitously, from the 
southwest, is a ravine over eleven hundred feet deep and about 
fifteen hundred feet wide at its upper surface and 30 to 70 feet 
wide at its bottom. This ravine has been cut by glaciers through 
the solid gneiss. It has no hydrographic area — excepting its 
nearly precipitous sides, and no water in it only for a few days 
after rain, it enters the broad, shallow channel, before described, 
and extends for about one mile northward. Both terminate at 
large deposits of boulders, clay, etc., near the Rio Viejo (Old 
River), which empties into Lake Managua a few miles nor'h 
from Volcano Mometomba) : Near the head of this deep ravine, 
in the solid gneiss, is a cavern about 320 feet below the surface 
of the Mesa. This was the tomb of the Great Prophet or Cacique 
about whom the Indians related so many tales. In November 
1888, accompanied by Doctor M. Garcia, of Metapa, Nicaragua, 
we found this cave, although its entrance was well concealed and 
very difficult and dangerous ; and in the cave we found three era- 
