256 
GUATEMALA. 
importance, and the vases, bowls, and jars, often of great 
size, were colored with certain waters and mineral de¬ 
posits. I do not know that they had any glaze, other 
than perhaps salt. 
They had no iron, but they made tools from an alloy 
of copper and tin to which they gave an extraordinary 
hardness, and they also used obsidian for knives and 
cutting instruments generally. Remains of knife-fac¬ 
tories are common enough through the country, and often 
too where the raw material is not in situ. Gold was 
found in the streams, and the goldsmiths attained no little 
skill in making ornaments, which were often enriched 
with precious stones, especially opals from Honduras. 
Curious feather work was brought from Tesulutan in 
Verapaz. 
They made paper from a bark called amatl , and also 
used parchment. Maps were plotted, and the scribes had 
books in which were entered all the divisions of the land; 
and to these, as to a registry of deeds, were referred all 
disputes about real estate. Chroniclers there were who 
compiled great books, many of which Las Casas saw; and 
these, he tells us, were burned by the early missionaries, 
who have thus earned the curses of succeeding genera¬ 
tions. Superhuman must have been their good deeds to 
counterbalance this destruction! 
The Quiches, Cakchiquels, and nearly all the other 
tribes divided the year into eighteen months of twenty 
days, adding five days (consecrated to Yotan) to complete 
the cycle, and every fourth year still another day. There 
were twenty day-names, of which we have three slightly 
differing lists; but the month was not subdivided into 
weeks. 
