The ancient cities of the New World : being travels and explorations in Mexico and Central America from 1857-1882 . d friend Don Benito, who owns an islandcalled Chinal on the Usumacinta, having mounds, tombs, ormaybe basements of temples. Some excavations were madein them, when terra-cotta guns, 4 feet 11 inches long, withbullets likewise of terra-cotta, were brought to light. I waspresented with some bullets, which are now in the only plausible explanation I can give for the presenceof these guns in an Indian mound, is that after the greatbattle of Centla in Tabasco, in which C
The ancient cities of the New World : being travels and explorations in Mexico and Central America from 1857-1882 . d friend Don Benito, who owns an islandcalled Chinal on the Usumacinta, having mounds, tombs, ormaybe basements of temples. Some excavations were madein them, when terra-cotta guns, 4 feet 11 inches long, withbullets likewise of terra-cotta, were brought to light. I waspresented with some bullets, which are now in the only plausible explanation I can give for the presenceof these guns in an Indian mound, is that after the greatbattle of Centla in Tabasco, in which Cortez artillery wroughtso much destruction, the natives tried to copy this new war-engine, but being unacquainted either with iron or the effect CaMPECIIE and TENOSIQUlt. 419 of powder, they reproduced them in the material most famiharto them, fondly imagining that the result would be the same, andburied them later with their chief. The journey from Carmen to Frontera takes twelve hours,where we land the very day twelve months after our first visit,and put up again at the detestable fonda. We learn that small-. HOTEL GRIJALVA AT FRONTERA. pox and yellow-fever have decimated and are decimating thetown, but nothing daunted, for these epidemics seem to spareforeigners, I fill up the time I must wait here until a steamercalls, by collecting ancient pottery. Indian idols are of frequentoccurrence in Central America, but up to the present time no onehas cared to collect them, and the Mexican Museum does notpossess a single specimen. Among those I picked up are variousfigures resembling more or less those of the table-land, while 2 E 2 420 The Ancient Cities of the New World. their differences of style connect them with the idols at drawing shows the two best preserved, and although veryrude in make, they are not devoid of interest. The figure to theleft is a Quetzalcoatl, easily recognised from the serpent sur-rounding his head, and is the facsimile of a stone idol at Ca
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