Copper Medal at Guatemala.
COPPER MEDALS AND FORTIFICATIONS.
The immediate vicinity of Guatemala seems not to have yielded any antiquarian relics of importance. M. Valois reports the plain to be studded with mounds which the natives regard as the tombs of their ancestors, which others have searched for treasure, but which he believes to be ant-hills.[IV-17] Ordoñez claims to have found here two pure copper medals, fac-similes one of the other, two inches in diameter and three lines thick, a little heavier than a Mexican peso fuerte, engraved on both sides, as shown in the cut, which I give herewith notwithstanding the fact that this must be regarded as a relic of doubtful authenticity. M. Dupaix noticed an indication of the use of the compass in the centre of one of the sides, the figures on the same side representing a kneeling, bearded, turbaned man, between two fierce heads, perhaps of crocodiles, which appear to defend the entrance to a mountainous and wooded country. The reverse presents a serpent coiled round a fruit-tree, and an eagle—quite as much like a dove or crow or other bird—on a hill. There are, besides, some ornamental figures on the rim, said to resemble those of Palenque, and, indeed, Ordoñez refers the origin of these medals to the founders of that city. He kept one of them and sent the other to the king of Spain in 1794.[IV-18]
About 1860, a stone idol forty inches high was dug up in a yard of the city, where it had been buried fifty years before, having been brought by the natives from a point one hundred and fifty miles distant. Its discovery was mentioned at a meeting of the American Ethnological Society in 1861, by Mr Hicks. The same gentleman also spoke of the reported discovery of a great city in ruins in the province of Esquimatha, buried in a dense forest about fifty-six miles from the city.[IV-19]
A few leagues west of the city are the ruins of Mixco, a fortified town of the natives down to the time of the conquest, mentioned by several authorities but described by none. Fuentes, however, as quoted by Juarros, speaks of a cavern on a small ridge by the side of the ruins. The entrance was a Doric portico of clay about three feet wide and high. A flight of thirty-six stone steps leads down to a room one hundred and twenty feet square, followed by another flight still leading downward. This latter stairway no one has had the courage to fully explore, on account of the tremulous and insecure condition of the ground. Eighteen steps down this second flight, however, is an arched entrance on the right side, to a passage which, after a descent of six steps, has been explored for a distance of one hundred and forty feet. Furthermore, the author tells us there are some extravagant (!) accounts not worthy of implicit belief, and consequently not repeated by him. Hassel states that gigantic bones have been found here, and that the cave is natural, without any artificial improvements whatever.[IV-20]
In this same valley, where the Pancacoya River enters the Xilotepec, Juarros speaks of "a range of columns curiously wrought, with capitals, mouldings, etc.; and a little farther on there are several round cisterns formed in the rock." The cisterns are about four feet in diameter and three feet deep, and may have served originally, as the author remarks, for washing auriferous earths in the search for gold.[IV-21] The Santa María River, near its junction with the Motagua, is said to flow for a long distance underground, and at the entrance to its subterranean channel are reported some carvings, the work of human hands, but from superstitious fears the interior of this bewitched cave has never been explored.[IV-22]
PETAPA, ROSARIO, AND PATINAMIT.
Petapa, twelve or fifteen miles southward from Guatemala on Lake Amatitlan is another of the localities where the old authors report the discovery of mammoth human bones, including a tooth as large as a man's two fists. Such reports, where they have any other than an imaginary foundation, may probably result from the finding of animal bones, by which the good padres were deceived into the belief that they had come upon traces of the ancient giants reported in all the native traditions, which did not seem to them unworthy of belief, since they were told elsewhere that "there were giants on the earth in those days."[IV-23]