ure, and versed in
the arts of spinning, weaving and dying cotton. Their remaining sculptures
prove them to have been of no mean ability in designing, and it is
asserted that they had a form of writing, of which their signs for the
numerals have alone been preserved.

The knowledge of these various arts they attributed to the instructions of
a wise stranger who dwelt among them many cycles before the arrival of the
Spaniards. He came from the East, from the llanos of Venezuela or beyond
them, and it was said that the path he made was broad and long, a hundred
leagues in length, and led directly to the holy temple at his shrine at
Sogamoso. In the province of Ubaque his footprints on the solid rock were
reverently pointed out long after the Conquest. His hair was abundant, his
beard fell to his waist, and he dressed in long and flowing robes. He went
among the nations of the plateaux, addressing each in its own dialect,
taught them to live in villages and to observe just laws. Near the village
of Coto was a high hill held in special veneration, for from its prominent
summit he was wont to address the people who gathered round its base.
Therefore it was esteemed a sanctuary, holy to the living and the dead.
Princely families from a distance carried their dead there to be interred,
because this teacher had said that man does not perish when he dies, but
shall rise again. It was held that this would be more certain to occur in
the very spot where he announced this doctrine. Every sunset, when he had
finished his discourse, he retired into a cave in the mountain, not to
reappear again until the next morning.

For many years, some said for two thousand years, did he rule the people
with equity, and then he departed, going back to the East whence he came,
said some authorities, but others averred that he rose up to heaven. At
any rate, before he left, he appointed a successor in the sovereignty, and
recommended him to pursue the paths of justice.[1]

[Footnote 1: "Afirman que fue trasladado al cielo, y que al tiempo de su
partida dexo al Cacique de aquella Provincia por heredero de su santidad i
poderio." Lucas Fernaudez Piedrahita, _Historia General de las Conquistas
del Nueoo Reyno de Granada_, Lib. i, cap. iii (Amberes, 1688).]

What led the Spanish missionaries to suspect that this was one of the
twelve apostles, was not only these doctrines, but the undoubted fact that
they found the symbol of the cross already a religi