luxurians, the wild grass from which, in the opinion of botanists, the Zea Mais is a variety developed by cultivation.
Cotton was largely cultivated, and the early writers speak with admiration of the skill with which the native women spun and wove it into graceful garments.[1]As in Yucatan, bees were domesticated for their wax and honey, and a large variety of dye-stuffs, resins for incense, and wild fruits, were collected from the native forests.
Like the Mayas and Aztecs, they were a race of builders, skillful masons and stone-cutters, erecting large edifices, pyramids, temples, and defensive works, with solid walls of stone laid in a firm mortar.[2] The sites of these cities were generally the summits of almost inaccessible crags, or on some narrow plain, protected on all sides by the steep and deep ravines—barrancas, as the Spaniards call them—which intersect the plateau in all directions, often plunging down to a depth of thousands of feet. So located and so constructed, it is no wonder that Captain Alvarado speaks of them as "thoroughly built and marvelously strong."[3]
- ↑ "Hay mucho algodon, é son las mugeres buenas hilanderas é hagen gentiles telas dello." Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Par. III, Lib. III, Cap. IV. "De la fertilidad de la tierra é gobernacion de Guatimala."
- ↑ "Son muy dados á edificar, y en lo que hoy vemos erigido de los antiguos, reconocemos ser máquinas soberbias." Fuentes y Guzman, Recordacion Florida, Lib. II, Cap. I.
- ↑ "Esta ciudad es bien obrada y fuerte á maravilla," Relacion de Pedro de Alvarado, in Bib. de Autores Españoles, Tom. XXII, p. 459. So Herrera wrote from his authorities: "En Utlatan (i. e., the city of Gumarcaah, capital of the Quiches), havia muchos, i mui grandes templos de sus dioses, de maravillosos edificios." Historia de las Indias Occidentales, Dec. III, Lib. IV, Cap. XIX.
