d nor tried to be read. The writing
upon it was the natural veining of some most strange leaf that grew in
heaven, or it was the pattern miraculously woven by a miraculous workman
with thread miraculously finer than their cotton! It was strange
that they should have no notion at all--not even their chieftains and
priests--of writing! Any part of Asia, however withdrawn, surely should
have tradition there, if not practice!

In this hut or lodge, doored but not windowed, we found a kind of table
and seats fashioned from blocks of some dark wood rudely carved and
polished. The cacique would have us seated, sat himself beside us, the
_butio_ at his hand.

There seemed no especial warrior class. We noted that, it being one of
the things it was ever in order to note. No particular band of fighting
men stood about that block of polished wood, that was essentially throne
or chair of state. The village owned slender, bone or flint-headed
lances, but these rested idly in corners. Upon occasion all or any might
use them, but there was no evidence that those occasions came often.
There was no body of troops, nor armor, no shields, no crossbows, no
swords. They had knives, rudely made of some hard stone, but it seemed
that they were made for hunting and felling and dividing. No clothing
hid from us any frame. The cacique had about his middle a girdle of
wrought cotton with worked ends and some of the women wore as slight a
dress, but that was all. They were formed well, all of them, lithe and
slender, not lacking either in sinew and muscle, but it was sinew
and muscle of the free, graceful, wild world, not brawn of bowman and
pikeman and swordman and knight with his heavy lance. In something they
might be like the Moor when one saw him naked, but the Moor, too, was
perfected in arms, and so they were not like.

We did not know as yet if ever there were winter in this land. It
seemed perpetual, serene and perfect summer. Behind these huts ran small
gardens wherein were set melons and a large pepper of which we grew
fond, and a nourishing root, and other plants. But the soil was rich,
rich, and they loosened and furrowed it with a sharpened stick. There
were no great forest beasts to set them sternly hunting. What then could
give them toil? Not gathering the always falling fruit; not cutting from
the trees and drying the calabashes, great and small, that they used for
all manner of receptacle; not drawing out with a line of some sto