calls Chibchachum. In treating of the origin of the cult which the Muysca or Chibcha offered to the rainbow, calling it Cuchauiva, or Chuchauiva, he states (4):

"The foundation for these Indians to worship, with offerings, the rainbow Cuchauiva, was in this manner. They found this, their reason, on saying that, on account of certain deeds which they thought the God Chibchachum had done unto them, the Indian murmured against him, offending him secretly and openly. Chibchachum, angered by it, devised to punish them by overflowing their lands, for which purpose he created or brought over from other parts the two said rivers of Sopo and Tibito, through which the waters of the valley increased so much that the soil, as they say, taking no pains to absorb them, a great portion of it came to be flooded, as had not been the case before the two rivers entered the valley.”

In this stress the Indians appealed to Bochica, sacrificing to him, whereupon he appeared to them on a rainbow with a golden rod in his hand, promising relief. "And saying this, he thrust the rod toward Tequendama, cleaving the rock between which the river now flows; but the rod being slender, it did not make an opening large enough for all the many waters that accumulate in winter, so that it still somewhat overflows. But after all the ground became free for planting and for the necessary sustenance [crops]." (5) Thenceforth they performed ceremonies whenever a rainbow appeared.

Thus far Simon agrees in substance with Piedrahita, but that which follows was either unknown to or was overlooked by the latter.

66

Although filled with fear by what Chibchachum afterward gave them to understand that many were to die when the rainbow would appear to them, on account of the punishment Bochica had inflicted upon him, [compelling him] to carry the whole earth and sustain it, whereas they say it previously rested on large timbers [guayacanes]. And this is the reason why now the earth trembles, which it did not before: That as it is heavy, when he shifts it from one shoulder to the other it moves, and all of it shakes." (6)

The story about Bochica's opening the cleft of Tequendama would hardly deserve attention were it not for a remark by Humboldt, who visited and examined the site. He says:

"The river narrows much, close to the cataract itself, where the cleft, which seems to be the result of some earthquake, has only ten or twelve meters of width." (7)

If we place this observation of the great man of science beside the story of the cause of earthquakes as related by Fray Pedro Simon, in which Chibchachum is converted into a modern Atlas, the opening of the rent at Tequendama might be fancied as a beginning of seismic disturbances in Colombia. But unfortunately all these reputed Indian tales are open to grave objection from our present point of view.

In the first place, the primitiveness of these stories is not yet established. Simon was born 38 and Piedrahita 82 years after the first meeting of Europeans with the natives of Bogotá. The writings of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada (8) might possibly settle the question whether or not the Tequendama story is untainted aboriginal lore. The teachings of the Catholic church rapidly penetrated native lore, introducing not only biblical ideas, which the Indian remodeled to suit their primitive notions, but even fragments of Greek mythology. The resemblance between the story of Atlas and that of Chibchachum supporting the earth and causing it to quiver is striking indeed. I am far from suggesting relationship, merely hinting at a possible infiltration into Indian lore after 1536, such as no doubt occurred among other and very remote Indian tribes.

None of the general works on Spanish America in the sixteenth century, based on original material, mentions, so far as known, traditions of the Chibchas, but this does not affect the possible authenticity of the tales in question. Oviedo, for instance, wrote his chapters on New Granada only a few years after the conquest, too early for obtaining reliable information on specific points not relating to military or administrative questions (9). Afterward, it seems, the earliest writings on Colombia were not or could not be consulted by the painstaking compilers of the century of the conquest.

It should also not be forgotten that the above Indian stories, even if precolumbian originally, might have been "myths of observation." Comparison of the remarkable cleft of Tequendama with the effects of earthquakes experienced elsewhere may have led to an explanatory tale in which the seismic forces became personified.

Transition from Colombia to Ecuador is through Pasto, situated near the confines of both countries. Of one of its well-known volcanoes Pedro de Cieza relates, in 1550, after having visited it in 1539:

"Farther on (south of Popayan) is a tall range; on its summit is a volcano, from which sometimes much smoke arises and, in times past, according to what the natives say, it broke out once and threw out a great quantity of stones." (10)

This evidently refers to some eruption previous to the arrival of the Spaniards, for, had it occurred subsequently, Cieza would have recorded the fact. The term "stones" refers to lapilli.

The tale of giants having landed, in precolombian time, at Punta Santa Elena, west of Guayaquil, has been discussed in a paper previously published in this journal,' and I return to the subject because of the report of Agustin de Zárate on the manner in which the story became confirmed in the eyes of the Spaniards, and for the reason that a somewhat different version of the tale has been obtained subsequent to its publication.

Zárate, who was an administrative officer of high rank, went to Peru in 1543 (11). My translation of his statements not being literal, I give the original text in a note (12). He says:

66

Withal, what the Indians told about these giants was not fully believed until, in the year 1543, when the captain Juan de Olmos, a native of Trujillo, was lieutenant governor at Puerto Viejo, he caused excavations to be made in the valley, having heard of these matters. They found ribs and bones so large that, if the heads had not appeared at the same time it would not have seemed credible [i. e., that the remains were] of human beings. And so, after the investigations were finished and the marks of the thunderbolts seen in the rocks, what the Indians said was held to be true; and of the teeth found there, some were sent to various parts of Peru and found to measure, each, three fingers in width and four in length."

There is hardly any doubt concerning the precolumbian origin of the tradition, for it cannot be a distorted account of the first appearance of Spaniards on the coast of Ecuador in 1525 (13).

1 American Anthropologist, vol. VII, 1905, p. 253 et seq.

The large human-like skulls dug up were those of mastodons, as Prof. H. F. Osborne of the American Museum of Natural History has informed me, judging from the close outward resemblance of the skull of the elephant with that of man. Hence the statement of Zárate has also the merit of being the earliest mention of fossil remains in Ecuador thus far known. Pedro Gutierrez de Santa Clara was a soldier of the same sort as Cieza, that is, he not only observed and inquired, but recorded his observations and the results of his investigations very carefully. He wrote what is now being published in five volumes, embodying a detailed account of the civil wars in Peru, from 1544 to 1548, of which he was an eye-witness, as well as much valuable material on the manners, customs, and traditions of the aborigines. He appears to have been an honest recorder, but, like Cieza, not a critical one-a consequence of the times. His version of the "giant" story is too long to be given here, except those parts that diverge from the texts of Cieza and Zárate; and even then only in a condensed or synoptic form.

Gutierrez places the arrival of the giants in the time of the Inca war-chief Tupac Yupanqui, that is, in the second half of the fifteenth century. They arrived on the coast of Ecuador in "barks or rafts of great size made of dry timber and canes, propelled by lateen sails, of triangular shape, and from the direction of the Moluccas or of the Straits of Magellan." They at once began their depredations. The natives threatened them with the power of the Incas, and they settled peaceably, out of fear of the great might the natives represented the Inca to have (14). For the remainder of the tale Gutierrez is fairly in agreement with his predecessors. The immoral customs, the wells cut into the rock, the destruction of the monsters by some meteoric (or volcanic ?) phenomenon, are told in the same manner as by Zárate and Cieza. But he says also that Francisco Pizarro saw the gigantic bones of mastodons which were taken for those of human beings, and that similar ones were discovered in the valley of Trujillo in Peru (15).

The approximate date of the arrival of the giants and the statement that Francisco Pizarro saw the large fossil remains throw suspicion on the tales of Gutierrez. He went to Peru about 1543 (certainly not before), and was probably misled by the statements of

persons who had already begun to "elaborate" the Indian tradition by additions and modifications. If the "giants" had arrived on the coast during the time of Yupanqui and had some intercourse with the Inca as Gutierrez asserts, it would have been preserved in Inca lore, which is or begins to be somewhat reliable only from the time of Tupac Yupanqui (16); and as to Pizarro having seen the fossil remains, it must be remembered that the latter were discovered in 1543, whereas Pizarro was killed at Lima two years before. The information Gutierrez purports to give is therefore of doubtful character.

The authenticity of the giant tale as precolumbian Indian lore is beyond doubt (17), but its connection with volcanic phenomena is by no means certain. The "angel" descending from the skies in fiery garb and shooting fiery darts at the monsters would rather recall some meteorite of unusual size and brilliancy. It would be very unusual for fragments of a siderite to penetrate deeply into hard rock. The tradition might, therefore, though with less probability, be a distorted version of some volcanic display in the interior, but witnessed on the coast or having taken place on the coast itself. Of any such disturbance near Puerto Viejo I have as yet found no trace, unless the asphalt pools of Colonchen be a survival (18). Of the great volcanoes in the interior of Ecuador, Tungurahua, Sangay, and the long extinct Chimborazo lie nearest to Cape Santa Elena, but it would be a matter of surprise, to say the least, if any solid material ejected by them had reached the foot of the coast range. Sangay, which is the most active at present, is somewhat more than 17,000 feet in altitude and rises on the eastern declivity of the Andes (19). Tungurahua is active at intervals, and its elevation is a few hundred feet less than that of Sangay (20). Chimborazo is by far the tallest (20,500 feet) and also the nearest, lying in a direct line nearly 140 miles from Cape San Lorenzo (21); but while the fact of its being an extinct volcano has been lately established (22), and ashes ejected by other mountains have drifted to much greater distances, incandescent rock or lava is not known to have been thrown such a distance as that from Chimborazo to Puerto Viejo. As to Tungurahua, it lies at least 160 miles inland, while Sangay is 200 miles from the coast. Unless geological investigation should reveal other evidences