ns of this palace at one
hundred and fifty paces the length and eighty paces the breadth. Its
ceilings were carved and the floors were artistically decorated. They
noticed a storehouse filled with native provisions of the country,
and a cellar stacked with earthenware barrels and wooden kegs, as in
Spain, or Italy. These receptacles contained excellent wine, not of
the kind made from grapes, for they have no vineyards, but such as
they make from three kinds of roots and the grain they use for making
bread, called, as we have said in our first book, yucca, ages, and
maize; they likewise use the fruit of the palm-trees. The Germans,
Flemings and English, as well as the Spanish mountaineers in the
Basque provinces and the Asturias, and the Austrians, Swabians, and
Swiss in the Alps make beer from barley, wheat, and fruits in the same
manner. The Spaniards report that at Comogra they drank white and red
wines of different flavours.

Attend now, Sovereign Pontiff, to another and horrifying sight. Upon
entering the cacique's inner apartments the Spaniards found a room
filled with bodies suspended in cotton ropes. They inquired the motive
of this superstitious custom, and were informed that they were the
bodies of the ancestors of Comogre, which were preserved with great
care, according to the rank they had occupied in life; respect for the
dead being part of their religion. Golden masks decorated with stones
were placed upon their faces, just as ancient families rendered homage
to the _Penates_. In my first book I explained how they dry these
bodies by stretching them on grid-irons with a slow fire beneath, in
such a way that they are reduced to skin and bone.

The eldest of the seven sons of Comogre was a young man of
extraordinary intelligence. In his opinion it was wiser to treat those
Spanish vagabonds kindly, and to avoid furnishing them any pretext
for the violent acts they had committed on neighbouring tribes. He
therefore presented four thousand drachmas of wrought gold and seventy
slaves to Vasco Nunez and Colmenares, as they were the leaders.
These natives sell and exchange whatever articles they need amongst
themselves, and have no money. The Spaniards were engaged in the
vestibule of Comogre, weighing his gold and another almost equal
quantity they had obtained elsewhere. They wished to set aside the
fifth belonging to the royal treasury; for it has been decided that
the fifth part of all gold, silver, and preci