Mysteries Of Ancient South America

SOUTH

MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT
SOUTH AMERICA

by

HAROLD T, WILKINS

RIDER & CO.

LONDON : : NEW YORK : : MELBOURNE I SYDNEY
68, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C-4

Dedicated to my distinguished friend
MILES POINDEXTER

Senator of the United States, one time U.S.
Ambassador to Perti, whose travel-studies on the
mysteries and prehistory of the old Inca Em-
pire, and the Ayar-Incas, have made him famous
all over the countries of the Andes and won him
the Gold Medal of the Sun ofPerti.

First published January
Reprinted . . September

Prittted in Great 'Britain

by The Anchor Press, Ltd.,

Tiptrm, Bsrtx

FOREWORD

"/ have but one object: to bare the mysteries that the jungle fastnesses of
South America have concealed for so many centuries. We are encouraged
in our hope of finding the ruins of an ancient, white civilisation and the
degenerate offspring of a once cultivated race" . . .

(The last message sent to London over the Overland
Brazilian Telegraph in Rondonia, by Colonel P. H.
Fawcett, on April 20, 1925.)

To the above message to Britain, from the first, but, I hope, not
the last of the British conquistadores who conquered South America
by brains and courage, not by rapine and blood and banditry, the
author ventures to add that he has tried as best he may to fill up the
lacunae, which fate ordained that this soldier and explorer of the
Legion of Frontiersmen, forever pushing forward into the un-
known, should leave with a great question mark across them. It
seems unlikely to hope, now, for Colonel Fawcett's return from the
lost world of Brazil's jungles, nearly twenty years after he and his
son and Mr. Rimell vanished. So, having said Ave et Vale to these
brave British spirits, I express the hope that this book may be found
not only entertaining, but to carry farther the trail he, and a long
line of Englishmen, Scotsmen and Americans, from Ephraim
George Squier to Sir Clements Markham and el Gran Caballero, Don
Roberto (the late R. B. Cunninghame Graham), blazed into un-
known and mysterious South America.

THE AUTHOR,

Bexleyheath 9

Kent, England.
Spring 1945

Extract from the 1943-44 volume of Who's Who in America:

Wilkins, Harold T.: Author and traveller, born Gloucester, Eng., March 18,
1891, educated Grammar School and Cambridge U.; began as schoolmaster
and went into journalism, serving in all grades from reporter to editor ; worked
in Fleet Street, London ; travelled in many parts of Europe . . . has done exten-
sive work in S. American archaeology and Brit, and Am. archives for pirate and
treasure hunting stories and general adventure by sea and land. * . . Author of
more than a score of popular and general interest books, pubd. in New York,
Boston, and London, Eng.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PAGE

AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 5

i. OUR EARTH'S GREATEST DISASTER .... 9

H. DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL 35

HI. JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 60

IV. THE MISSIONARY MEN IN BLACK: FORERUNNERS OF THE

GREAT CATASTROPHE 96

V. THE SIGN OF THE SUN : WORLD'S OLDEST ALPHABET . 117
VI. SIGN-POSTS TO THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS . . .130

VH. THE ATLANTEAN " SUBTERRANEANS" OF THE INCAS . 152

TIAHUANACU AND THE GIANTS 1 82

BIBLIOGRAPHY 201

INDEX 2O9

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAG1

Gateway of the Kalasasaya Sun Temple, Tiahuanacu . 32
Treasure Tomb of Guatemotzin, Chiappas, Mexico . . 33
Pre-Inca wood figure of notable 48

Colossal head of Atlantean type of notable found at Tabasco, in
1940 48

QuetzalcoatPs Temple of a Thousand Columns, Chichen Itza 49
Cuneiform (Gilgamesh-Nineveh) brick of Deluge . . .112

Meteor (or Platinum) crater, Arizona 112

Sachsahuaman ruins, Cuzco Hill, Peru . . . -113

Old Inca Wall, Cuzco 113

Colossal head at R.C. Capilla, Tiahuanacu village (pueblo) 128

Ra-Mac: colossus 128

Evolution or stairway sign on Mayan Cap . . , .128
Human Sacrifice stone of old Mexico 129

Gordon- Medusa heads of old Greece, Syracuse and Mayan
Palenque 129

Stairway-evolution sign tattooed on backs of Boro Indians 129

LIST OF DIAGRAMS

VAGI

Hieroglyphs and letters of dead Atlantean-Brazilian city 43, 45, 60
Tibetan and Kanheri letters 61

Ceramics, symbols, petroglyphs of extinct animal and human
subjects, and architecture of ancient South America . . 90

Ideograms of Koaty and Sampaya Indians of Lake Titicaca,
Peril 95

8 LIST OF DIAGRAMS

PACK

Letters from the Kounboum "Alphabet Tree' ', Tibet . .118

Comparative tables of Atlantean-Brazilian, Asoka, Hindu,
Phoenician (Pauch), Babylonian, Egyptian, Early Greek
and Karian ideograms, hieroglyphs and letters . 1 19, 120

Ideograms of Koaty and Sampaya Indians, Lake Titicaca,
Perti 121, 122

Comparative tables of unknown South Californian ancient
race, Maraj6 (Lower Amazon), Egyptian, and ancient
Chinese 123

The Lingam and Yoni of ancient Brazil . . . .125

Comparative tables of symbols, hieroglyphs and ideograms of
Marajo (Brazil), Egypt, old India, ancient China, and pre-
Aztecan and Aztec Mecico ..... 125-130

Petroglyphs, ceramics and statuettes, and symbols of ancient
North and South America . . , . . .132

Petroglyphs found in the Aleutians, in 1937, and in North and
South America 138, 139

Unknown and ancient inscription at Huari, Peru . . .140

Unknown alphabetical ( ?) or syllabary signs at Sahpuayacu,
Peru 141

Rupestrian engraving found near Arequipa, Peru . .142

The Zodiac comparative table of ancient symbols . . . 145

End-paper chart, by Author of this book, of the Great
Atlantean ( ?) Tunnels of the Andes

CHAPTER I

OUR EARTH'S GREATEST DISASTER

"As above, so below. That which hath been shall return again.'*

Warning of an Ancient Mystery,

A FEW months before the outbreak of the Second World War I
was aboard a steamship sailing from Singapore to San Francisco,
making her course for Honolulu. The high, cobalt sky of the
North Pacific had changed to a strange unearthly grey, and the
barometer had fallen. We were, as the radio warned, some miles
and an unpleasantly few hours from the vortex of a typhoon. The
sky seemed to have descended till our mast trucks and the radio
antennae touched what resembled the lid of a flat box or canopy.
Below our keel the sea stretched flat and grey. There were no
waves ; but the waters appeared to drum with the pulsing of a
heavy ground-swell above one of the deepest abysses of the North
Pacific. There came a sudden flash of lighting and the reverbera-
tions of tropical thunder. Then the wind unaccountably died and
the sea began to rise and heave. A strange thing now happened.
All over the ship could be felt a singing hum. Our steel hull had
become a gaint 'cello in the hands of some Titan of a maestro,
who was playing a sort of fugue of an apocalypse. The waters
responded somewhat in the way a flat disc will do when sand has
been laid on it in formless heaps, and the vibration of a fiddle-
bow causes the particles to take a pattern.

Looking over the bulwarks, or gazing down from the navigator's
bridge, passengers and ship's officers saw that the sea had now
become covered with a vast scum of light grey colour. It was pumice-
ash from submarine volcanoes erupting in a tremendous convulsion.
In port, where the captain had divers examine our keel and pro-
pellers to discover what possible damage the ship had sustained, it
was found that the steel had been scoured clear and bright from
marine foulness and barnacles and the blades of the bronze pro-
pellers burnished till they shone. The tremendous submarine con-
vulsion had filled the deep ocean craters till the surface of the
ocean had become one vast detergent and abraded whatever metal
passed through it that day. Possibly, far down below, there lay,
many fathoms under the keel of our ship, some of the highlands of
that drowned continent called Rutas, in the old Sanscrit traditions
current in the goparams of old Hindostan ; or, as others call it, Mu,
Lemuria or Gondwanaland.

But, some ten or twelve thousand years ago when the Great

9

IO MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

Deluge of Noah and Ogyges happened, even worse convulsions of
the shuddering earth and sea stretched right round our globe from
the Pacific across South America to the shores of Africa, where
stood that giant pharos called the Pillars of Hercules, right into the
Mediterranean, till they shook the old Levant and a more ancient
Greece. In the skies of terrible night shone a giant comet, or aerolite,
or wandering star, or planet (we do not know which), but which
brought such destruction on the earth that those who survived the
disasters regained sanity only slowly, and, in some cases, never.
(As in that of the lunatic civilisation of the old Aztecs, to which a
definitely paranoiac twist was given, making murder of bestial
sort a rite of barbaric religion.)

Comets, of course, are not identical with aerolites. The comet
has a tail of deadly and lethal gases, usually too attenuated to
poison mankind in the manner described by fantaisiste novelists.
But the comet has also a hard core, or metallic nucleus, enveloped
by a "coma" that has always, as far back as tradition goes, made
mankind fear and wonder. It has a luminous course of its own
and flashes across our skies like a dog with his tail behind him, and,
past perihelion, may never return, vanishing into infinite space.
But the aerolite is as a cosmic bull running amok in a china shop.
What it may do and, luckily for us, we have no record of the
falling of such gaint lawless bodies, in historic and recorded times,
on thickly populated lands has been vividly seen between the years
1908 and 1937, in North Siberia and in Brazil's hardly explored
forests, where a giant body of this sort laid waste hundreds of miles
of woods and primaeval jungle and bush, and brought death and
destruction upon hundreds or thousands of primitive or savage
people in villages within a radius of hundreds of miles of its
impact.

I was on my way to South America to try how far I could verify
a theory of mine that Atlantis, the famed drowned land, may be
looked for in the splendid and mysterious ruins of her old colony in
unexplored Brazil and parts of western South America. In that
colony, if indications be correct, a very high degree of scientific
civilisation had been attained more than 20,000, perhaps, even
6o>poo years ago, in a day when modern archaeologists, who have
never come within hundreds of miles of these great ruins in the
South American jungles, too confidently assert that nothing but
lowest savagery existed, and perhaps not even a vestige of humanity
was found.

True, we shall have to verify these theories, not by waiting till
some iron man of the year A.D. 1960 can dive to the floor of the
Atlantic, way beyond the modern Canaries and Gape Verde
Islands, in order to grope along carved pillars and splendid temples,
clutched in a forest of sea weeds and the Jair of deep or middle sea

OUR EARTH'S GREATEST DISASTER n

cephalopoda, or devil-fishes* I think the late Doktor Eckener of the
exploded Graf %eppelin airship has indicated the way to this know-
ledge ? or the exploration may be done in one of those giant three or
four-engined Flying Fortresses and Liberators now used to bomb
vast cities and munition works, but which, in our new and better
age to come, may be put to solve the age-old secrets now barred to
us by dense woods and wild uplands, beset with vile insect plagues,
and hunger and thirst and legions of fierce unpacifiable savages,
such as haunt the now deadly and mysterious Brazilian Matto
Grosso and the unknown hinterland of the Andean cordilleras to the
east of Bolivia and Peru. Science has much to learn and unlearn,
and the path of the air-minded may yet rise to stars where, alas, it
now befouls the whole earth!

But, to return to the subject of this giant cataclysm, of the day
when South America was the cradle and beacon of the older
world's civilisation and the home of a humane and civilised race of
white men and beautiful women as it actually was. This cataclysm
is no theory or fantasy of mine. It happened about 9753 B.C.,
according to the long-lost if, indeed, they are not merely buried,
to be resuscitated in due time archives and libraries of the ancient
temples of the Pharaohs at Thebes and Sais, on the Nile. It was
actually witnessed by the remote ancestors of the strange and vanish-
ing race of dwarfs, called Bushmen, still found today in a palaeo-
lithic state of culture, wandering in the dreaded Kalahari desert
of South Africa.

In this book, I find it necessary to start at the end, rather than
the beginning; since there are many intelligent people who have
to be convinced that this cataclysm told in a rather naive and
garbled form, in Genesis, and certainly no myth actually occurred
and was no merely local catastrophe of what is now called Iraq.

Twelve thousand years ago not more than a short hour in the
long history of our planet the ancestors of the fast-vanishing
Bushmen dwarfs of the Kalahari desert of South Africa were cower-
ing in terror behind big boulders or in the darkness of deep caverns
shrouded by forest and dense jungle. They were watching the
night skies, in awed fascination or shrinking in fright from the hoarse
rumbles and cliff-crashing reverberations preceding and accompany-
ing the most appalling earthquake that has ever shaken and con-
vulsed our earth. And well might they be afraid ! They were under-
going the greatest disaster that has ever befallen man since he had
quitted the monkey trees, straightened his back and become true
man, homo sapiens. Night and day the ground shook and heaved.
On the sea coasts, looking eastwards towards a great island-con-
tinent where dwelt a race of men like gods, who h$d evolved a
high type of civilisation, terrific tidal waves were rolling in higher
than the highest hills. They crashed on the beaches with immense

13 MYSTEfclES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

force and a momentum carrying them very far inland, while
colossal league-long rollers came on behind.

Whole countrysides that had never seen the sea were drowned,
while the waves, like some gigantic bore or eagre, swept up the
sides of mountains and even drove backward the powerful current
of deep, wide rivers. Night closed down in terror. There came a
rain of fire from the heavens, which set ablaze great primaeval
forests, or cut mile-long swathes in them when the searing wave
and blast of hot air and gases, preceding the incandescent metallic
core of the immense meteorites, scorched over the woods, rolling
up earth as a scroll of the past that had now no meaning or validity.
As the appalling night wore on the terrifying noises reached a
truly diabolical crescendo of crashing detonations. It seemed
as if Titans in the skies were bombarding the earth with a deluge of
rocks, cleaving earth's skin in order to penetrate to the magma that
lies deep below. The watchers began to fancy that the heavens
were drawing nearer the earth, which was behaving very much like
a planet that has been forced out of her orbit under great stresses
and gravitational pulls from without.

Game day, or a slight lessening of the nocturnal blackness, and
the light of the sun appeared to have gone out like a candle blown
out on an altar. For many days, indeed, night and day could hardly
be told apart. A great pall of black smoke covered the vault. No light
pierced the blackness, unless the vivid, eye-ball-searing blaze of
lightning of an electric glare never seen before even in that sub-
tropical country, or the white flare of the sudden fall of an aerolite.
At times, when the pall of smoke showed a rent in its veil, the sun
hung like a ball of blood, but the penumbra soon darkened all the
air, as in time of eclipse. Then, an immense cloud of reddish powder
filled the air, and to the terrified Bushmen it looked as if the whole
world were now going to blaze up. The powder was followed by a
rain of fine cinders which covered the trees still left in the de-
vastated forests and blanketed the vegetation, with white.

Now, the watchers and listeners cohered on the earth in the
heart-sickening fear of a man who hears the shriek and whistle of a
falling high-explosive bomb deepening its pitch, before it crashes near
to where he lies. . . . The air was pierced by an ear-shattering
shriek then another, and another, and another. Four tremendous
explosions made the ground tremble. Men clinging to trees on the
tops of hills were thrown to the earth. Four enormous white-hot
globes had fallen from the sky into the forest behind the screen of
trees. The river that flowed near by became a cloud of hissing steam
which rose into the air of the night and increased the already terrible
heat engendered by the flames, springing up from the mass of com-
pressed air, glowing white-hot and incandescent, that is borne in
front of aerolites.

OUR EARTHS GREATEST DISASTER 13

Scenes like this were witnessed on a great belt all round our
globe, stretching from isles of Java and Malaysia, right across the
Pacific *to the Andes of South America and the high sierras of old
Mexico and the Antillean islands of the Caribbean, on over the
South and North Atlantic to the shores of North Africa and the
greater Mediterranean basin. They were seen, too, in Northern,
but not Central Asia.

One Bushman, more daring than any other of his cowering clan,
ventured out from his "air-raid" shelter into the night in a lull of
the cosmic bombardment, when the pall of smoke had partly
cleared, and saw, as he said, two moons riding in the sky, where
before there had been no moon ! Far out over the ocean, raging in
a tumult never before seen by man, a whole vast island-continent
in the South Atlantic had vanished, and a highly civilised people in
millions whose pioneers had contacted the Bushmen had been
swallowed up in an abyss which engulfed great palaces and temples
and high towers in the depths of the sea. This is a "legend" told
among the South African Bushmen even to this day !

(Lest the reader suppose that this is a fantasy of my invention
I may point out that the Herreros, or Ova-hereros, a turbulent
Bantu people of former German South- West Africa, have an
ancient tradition that after a great deluge two white men arrived
among them, as their (Ova-herero) ancestors were refuging on
mountain- tops. They add that these white people became the an-
cestors of the black Ova-hereros, which doubtless means that the
strangers acted the part of apostles of a civilisation from a vanished
continent. The Bushmen of die Kalahari are, of course, neighbours
of the Ova-hereros. Also, the Namaqua Hottentots, in the west of
Cape Colony, report the arrival of what they call a "swimming-
house", or Noah's Ark, very long ages ago, aboard which were
men and cattle. These men settled in the country and among them
was one Heitsi-Eibib, a pioneer of culture who, says an ancient
tradition, "came from the east", which may or may not denote an
Atlantean colony of the Old World. In the Sahara desert are
races with traditions of an appalling convulsion which created the
Sahara, and also destroyed vestiges of a very ancient civilisation).

Then torrents of rain, lasting many days forty, says the story
in the Hebrew book of Genesis fell hissing on the hot earth.
Across the raging ocean, in far-away Brazil, to the west, aboriginal
Indians who had taken refuge on the summits of the Serra do Mar,
the eastern coastal range of old Brazil, said there were great and
terrible rumblings, both above and below ground. The sun and
stars turned red, blue and yellow, and wild beasts mingled fearlessly
with men. "A whole month passed and our forefathers heard a
roar and saw darkness ascending from the earth to the sky, while
thunder rolled terrifyingly and great rain in spouts blotted out the

14 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

earth, and made day night. * . . People fled to the trees for refuge
against the rising waters, and many died of hunger and cold as
they hung perched on the highest boughs." (Vide p. 18.)

"Human nature was never lost, even in the days when the
world perished," says an Aztec Codex Letellier "and so the ancients
celebrated their feast (called Pilquixta) of the renewal of the human
race. . . .

"Every four years the ancients (in Mexico and Central
America) added another eight days in memory of the three occas-
ions that the world perished and so they call it on these occasions,
sefior, because although this was lost, that did not perish. They call
it the Feast of Renewal, and so they say that that fast and feast
having concluded, men changed their bodies like children,
and thus, in order to represent this feast in the dance, men sym-
bolically led children by the hand." (Translated from the
Codex Letellier.)

It is remarkable that in far-away Egypt of the Pharaohs there
was in the great hall of the temple of Rameses at Karnak (Thebes)
by the Nile, a picture, col. 8, with legend of a feast of renewal cele-
brating and mourning the loss of a drowned continent in the Western Ocean.
In those days of the Pyramids, it cannot be suggested that ancient
Mexicans cut or painted such a picture on the walls or pillars of the
temple of ancient Karnak, more than 6,400 miles away.

The ancient Mexicans recorded three great catastrophes, of
which the third was the supreme disaster. They were caused, say
their traditions, by volcanic fires, tidal waters and hurricanes.
They participated together, say the ancient Mexican traditions, in
shaking the earth at various times. Each catastrophe was followed
by an era of ruin, and the destruction of the human race. Men
climbed trees, ran everywhere in their terror, crowding and pushing
together, embarked in ships, hid themselves in caves, got on moun-
tain-tops. The few survivors were so far dispersed that they thought
they were alone in the world. Every four years & fiesta was held in
Central America, wherein ancient princes and peoples prostrated
themselves before the gods, praying tor no return of these calamities.
Dances and feasts celebrated the escape of the survivors.

The Codex Chimalpopoca speaks of a

"rain of fire, which followed the c sun of rain'. All that
existed burned and there fell a rain of rocks and sandstone".

The same Codex Chimalpopoca, containing the history of the king-
doms of Gulhuacan and Mexico from "creation downwards", tells
us also;

OUR EARTH'S GREATEST DISASTER 15

"The sky drew near the water and, in a single day, all was
lost The mountains themselves sank under wafer, but the
water remained calm for fifty-two springs. At the end of the
year, Nata and his wife Nena escaped in a hollow cypress
tree, when the waters had drawn near the sky. . . .

"It is said that the rocks that we see, actually, today, were
spread all over the land, and that the tetzontli boiled and bubbled
with a great noise, and that then there also rose up rocks of
vermilion colour. There were two repetitions of these terrible
celestial disturbances, which followed periods when the darkness
covered the face of the earth. One period lasted even unto
twenty-five years. . . ."

This volcanic rock tetzontli is a rock known to geologists
as "porous amygdaloid". It was used to build most of the houses
in Mexico City. Bustamente, the historian, who commented on the
Mexican history of Padre Bernard Sahagun, says that little volcanoes
surrounding the valley of Mexico to the south-east formed the
tetzontti. Native Indian traditions say that this lava-bed spread as
far as Acapulco, on the Pacific.

Another Aztec codex has a picture of the Great Catastrophe :

"Now, it was in the year Ce Tecpatl, which meaneth 'Flint', on
the day Nahui-Qyiahuitl (which signifieth Tour Rains'), that
men were lost and carried away to destruction in a rain of
fire, and were changed into birds. The sun was even burnt and
all was consumed with the houses . . . and all the lords perished."

Reminders of this rain of fire are seen near Mexico City, in the
great lava-bed, Pedregal de San Augustin. Under the bed are
ancient houses and ancient pottery.

The Qiiich (Guatemala) "legends", in the book of Popul
y paint a vivid picture of men lost in terrible floods and rising
waters . . .

"There came a great flood, followed by a thick rain of
bitumen and resin, when men ran, here and there, in despair and
madness. They tried, beside themselves with terror, to climb on
the roofs of houses, which crumbled and threw them to the
ground. Trees they tried to ascend, which threw them far away.
They sought to enter caves and grottoes and immediately they
were shut in from the exterior. The earth darkened and it rained
night and day. Thus was accomplished the ruin of the race of
man which was given up to destruction."

The effect on the survivors, rendered insane by such frightful
phenomena which naturally followed on the violent disturbance of

l6 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

the earth's orbit and the setting-up of an appalling centrifugal
force which drove our planet farther from the sun, is possibly sug-
gested in the curious myth of the Popul Vuh :

"The creators preserved a small number in memory of man-
kind, of men of wood. . . . These are the little monkeys which
today live in the woods. . . ."

Some of the Mexican myths repeat, in a different form, what is
said of pre-diluvian men and of the later eruption that destroyed
Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Biblical cities of the plain :

"They who came from the east beyond the sea could not
cause the savages of the land to work or worship, and so there
came a great deluge."

This is a remarkable reference to the coming of the civilised
Atlanteans of old Brazilian Atlantis : the men in black, missioners,
law-givers, teachers, such as the men, Quetzalcoatl, to Central
America; Bochicha, to old Colombia; Manco Capac and Vira-
cocha to old Per 6.

The Washoan Indians a small tribe on the eastern slopes
of the Sierra Nevada who speak a language quite different from
other California Indians have traditions about foreign invaders
landing from the sea, and making them into helots. This happened
long ago. (Later in this book we shall refer to similar prehistoric
invasions of the South American west coast.) These invaders would
appear to have been survivors from some great cataclysm; for,
says the myth, they made the ancestors of the Washoans pile up
stones for a great temple whereon these "great lords might take
refuge". It also appears that a great deluge rushed in from the sea,
before this temple or Babel-Tower had been erected, and drowned
many of the Washoans and their conquerors. A pharos (fire) burnt
night and day on top of this high tower. Then came a great heav-
ing of the earth and a second cataclysm which submerged the
Babel-Tower and drowned the lords who had fled to it. Only the
top'of this great erection remained above the waters. Another curious
variant of the same myth says that the Lord of the Universe flung
the men who survived the cataclysm on to the summit of a temple-
pyramid far away, "as if they were but pebbles".

The Piman, or Papagos Indians of Arizona and Sonora, Mexico,
say that a great or divine man, whom they call Montezuma,
escaped from some great drowned land beyond the sea and arrived
in a ship or ark on the mainland of ancient North America. Some
time passed and he built a refuge tower to reach the skies, whett
thunders from the god of cataclysm destroyed the partly built tower

OUR EARTH ' S ORE ATEST DISASTER 17

and the sun vanished into heaven along with the Great Spirit,
which, of course, may be rationalised as an eclipse,

The west coast Okinagan (Salishan) Indians, now in British
Columbia and the Colville Reservation in Washington, U.S.A,,
have a tradition that, ages ago, when the sun which may mean
the satellite that was to become our present Moon was no bigger
than a star, a female semi-divinity of a race of nephilim the giants
or demi-gods mentioned in Gen. vi, 4, and Num. xiii, 33, R.V. t
translated "giants", in the A.V. known as Scomalt, reigned over
a large island where her subjects rebelled. She drove them all into
a corner, broke off that corner and sank it and them into the sea.
(This sounds like a version of the catastrophe that befell the
Atlantis of the Plato-Solon story). Again, the Kutchins or Loucheux
Indians, an Athabascan Indian tribe of Central Alaska and North
West British America, speak of a great flood and the coming of a
divine or godlike man a culture hero, common in ancient myths
who came to them from the Moon and went back there after
he had imparted to their ancestors elements of culture.

Nor did other aboriginal Indians of far North America, British
Columbia and Alaska escape the catastrophe. The remote an-
cestors of the Taimshans of the region of Queen Charlotte Island,
British Columbia, say that, before the catastrophe and the terrible
deluge, "the earth was not as it now is: for there were neither
mountains nor trees".

In Alaska, the forefathers of the Tlingits took to their canoes,
which were ultimately stranded on the sides of high mountains.
Bears and wolves swam off to board the boats and were driven back
by clubs and spears. Then comes the story of a curious spectacle
witnessed by these ancient Indians, 12,000 or more years ago:

"Our folk landed right on the mountain- top and set to and
erected walls of great height to keep out the rising water.*"
Here, they docked their boats, and watched floating past great
trees torn up by the roots, and monstrous devil-fish and other
strange and terrible creatures of the land and sea swam and
floated past, dead or alive or dying. . . . When the tide went
out it tore past like a mill-race . . ."

In the region of the Upper Maranon, or Amazon, the ancient
Indians were terrified by a deluge of hot and steaming water which
poured down on the earth, burning and scalding it all up, and
destroying the great forests. "On earth all was dark as night for
many moons. The sun was completely hidden for days."

The Coroados, or tonsured Indians, also called the Kainganags,
who live in the country of the Rio Grande do Sul (South Brazil), have
the tradition of a great flood that covered the whole earth inhabited

B

l8 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

by their forefathers. Only the top of the coastal range of the Serra do
Mar the eastern coastal range of Brazil remained above water.
The Ipurina, of the Rio Purus, Upper Amazon territory, tell of a
deluge of hot water , . . apparently too hot to bring fried fish !
This scalding liquid poured down on earth, burning all up, includ-
ing the forests. On earth all was dark as night, and the sun and
moon hidden. Other tribes in the same region of the Amazon the
Parrarys and Abederys, and Kataushys tell a vivid story of
catastrophe, identical with that of Eastern Brazil, supra :

"Once on a time, folk heard a great rumbling above and
below ground. The sun and moon turned red, blue and yellow,
and the wild beasts mingled fearlessly with men. A month
passed and our forefathers heard a roar and saw darkness
ascending from the earth to the sky, accompanied by thunder
and heavy rain which blotted out the earth and made day into
night. Some people lost themselves ; others died without know-
ing why things were in so dreadful a state of confusion. The
waters rose very high, till the earth was sunk beneath them, and
only the branches of the highest trees stood out above the
flood. Thither people fled for refuge and perched high among the
boughs. They died of cold and hunger, and only Uassu and his
wife were saved. When they came down from the height they
found not a single corpse or even a heap of bleached bones."

Out in the Arctic sea, off Northern Siberia, are now desolate
islands with a vegetation of only stunted bushes and the hardiest
mosses. Before the Great Catastrophe these tundra islands were
merely mountain-tops rising over a warm and lush country^ where
great monsters, such as mammoths and mastodons, ranged round
feeding on the luxuriant grasses and vegetation of warm pasture-
grounds. Then, raging, rising floods drove vast herds of these
monsters on to the high grounds where they were trying vainly to
seek safety. But salvation there was none! They died by thousands,
of cold and starvation, bogged to the necks in marshes, where,
today, these huge beasts are found complete in carcases, even to the
hide ^nd hair. It is obvious that they were refrigerated before their.
bodies could decompose. . . . Signs of thick sediments around show
that a great and widespread flood came roaring on them from the
southwards.

The same thing happened on the slopes of Andean ranges far
lower than today. At almost the same height as are now the ruins of
mysterious Tiahuanacu*, the city of the dead, 12,000 feet up on a
Ueak paramo, at the elevation of Lake Titicaca, Peru, you can

* It is, of course, possible that two epochs and two widely sundered peoples were the
victims of these cataclysms on the site of Tiahuanacu.

OUR EARTH'S GREATEST DISASTER 19

today see, in a great plain near Bogotd, the capital city of modern
Colombia, South America, what are called "the Giants* Fields".
Th& strange flat is heaped with fossilised and petrified bones of
mastodons, overtaken by sudden catastrophe, which withered
their pasture-grounds, then near the sea and warm and lush. They
too died of cold and starvation and also of rarefaction of the air,
wherein they could not breathe. For their death was accompanied
by an appalling and sudden rising of their old plains right into the
clouds, more than two miles high! That brings us to the strange
fate of highly civilised Tiahuanacu and its astonishing megalithic
ruins, then located, like the pasture-grounds of the mastodons,
close to the shores of the Pacific. (Or it might, even ages before, have
been submerged under the waters of the ocean !)

That was a civilisation of a reddish-skinned race, with some
subjects who had, in some cases, prognathic features projecting
jaws and black skins, as objects of pottery and terra-cotta ware,
dug up from under the ruins, show. So far back is their time, that
the images found in the alluvium are fossilised and petrified. . . .
So suddenly came disaster on them that none but men who were
engaged on duties in ancient mines in the mountains not then so
high as the modern cordilleras and paramos of the Andes could
have escaped the cataclysm. And even so, the appalling raising of
the Andes, which certainly followed the great deluge and flooding
in of the sea over the land, and upheaved Tiahuanacu and the
nearby Lake Titicaca, more than two miles into the clouds and
rarefied air, very likely exterminated most or all of the survivors.

Says the most ancient legend current among the modern
Aymara Indians of Bolivia Perti:

"After a long night there dawned, standing upright to the
eyes of our forefathers, the great ruins you now see.**

More than 11,000 years later came the gold-hungry conquista-
dores of Don Francisco Pizarro, who smashed the giant monoliths
of ancient Tiahuanacu in order to get out the great silver bolts
which riveted the 2OO-ton stones, the silver itself in each bolt weighing
half a ton ! They also smashed up many fine and very ancient
statues of men, women with babes in their arms, "so real they
seemed alive", youths and fair maidens, sitting or standing in an
ancient colonnade by a stream once flowing under the great
walls.

Nor was this the only highly civilised, now dead city to vanish
as a dream in the night on these ancient shores of South America,
when megalithic Tiahuanacu fell. When I was at Santa F6 de
Bogotd, in Colombia, just before the present World War, I met on*
Sefior Mufioz, a haciendero who owns an estate on the seashore not

SO MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

far from Guayaquil, Ecuador. He set a diver to fish up statuettes
from a drowned and very ancient city lying under water just off
shore. (The age of this ancient civilisation is not known.) The diver
came up with artistic statuettes of men and of women whose hair
was dressed in very Egyptian fashion ! They had the same curiously
long slanted eyes as you find in frescoes in the tombs of the Pharaohs.
On their breasts were jewels carved in stone. The dead and ancient
civilisation must have been, even then, very, very old ; for some of
the statuettes are pornographic a sign that the makers are of a
race that has lapsed from a higher state of culture.

As said Mufioz to me : "Sefior Wilkins, it may amaze you to
hear that every race in the world is represented in these statuettes,
so incredibly ancient, found under water by my diver. There are
Aryans, Semites, Caucasians, and even a race remarkably like
the modern Japanese ! The race had seals like prisms, covered with
hieroglyphs. Also, I have found ancient convex lenses, under water,
there, and also reflectors. They were made of obsidian. . . . They
must have been scientific opticians, even astronomers."

Maybe, the drowned race, like their highly civilised con-
temporaries the Tiahuanacuans, were ancient American colonists
from the vast, sunken, highly civilised continent of the mid-Pacific,
called Rutas, in the pagoda traditions of old Hindostan, and which,
they say, was disrupted by a series of terrific earthquakes and a
deluge, sinking it far under the ocean, in a day, "before the Hima-
layas existed".

Sir James Jeans, F.R.S., the British physicist and astronomer,
tells us that, about 2,000 million years ago, a rare event happened
in our universe. A second star, unmoored, so to speak, came near the
vast incandescent and gaseous mass that was our proto-sun. At
perihelion, the pull of the star raised a huge tidal wave of glowing
gas on a zone of the sun. So terrific the pressure became, that the
sun threw off fragments of itself that ever since have been circulating
as planets round our Sun. Modern evolutionists and scientists say
such an event has happened only once in our universe and this
may be true in relation to the sun. But a modern scientific associ-
ation meeting in Vienna, some years ago, calculated that, in
9684 B.., our earth, spinning at the poles, sustained a collison with
the head of a tremendous comet. The terrible impact caused the
earth a spinning top or freely rotating gyroscope to lurch and
tilt violently at the axis. Followed a revolutionary change in world-
climate from lush, steamy warmth of a tropical forest, or marsh,
to the intense cold of the ice ages, with glaciers covering the north
and farther south hemispheres.

In polar Spitzbergen, for example, you find under the present
frozen surface of the beaches successive layers of fossilised plants,
ranging over the whole gamut from the tropical and equatorial

OUR EARTH S GREATEST DISASTER 1

to the temperate and arctic. It is difficult to suggest an explanation
unless you visualise our earth, tilted at the poles, under the impact
of sotne body from outer space and slowly swinging through an arc
of ninety degrees, so that equator and poles change place I

According to another extremely ancient tradition, about
9700 B.C. this date, as I said, is based on evidence once existing
(in the time of Solon, the legislator of Hellenic Athens) in the
temple archives of the old Egyptian temples of Heliopolis and Sais,
or Thais, on the Nile a great comet approached the earth. Per-
haps it may have been Halley's, which makes its periodic appearance
every seventy-six years in our skies, heading towards the sun.
Certain astronomic calculations appear to import as much, though
none can say with certainty. More likely, it may have been some
great, stellar body of a lost or dead world, from outside the galaxy
of our own Milky Way of an "island-universe", which approached
our sun on a parabolic, or hyperbolic course, and, having caused
a grave catastrophe to our earth, vanished, never again to reappear.
Or it may have been our present, dead Moon !

On earth, the times were disturbingly like the present. Dis-
harmony and disunity reigned over the planet. Live and let live
was an outmoded and despised principle. There was a great world
war raging. Psenophis, the old priest of Heliopolis, showed the secret
temple archives, concerning the story of this forgotten and ancient
world war, to Solon, the Greek, visiting the Nile about 573 B.C.
The old Egyptian priest said the catastrophe happened 9,000 years
before. A race of militarists had sailed out of the Atlantic and in-
vaded all Western Europe and Northern Africa, as far as Libya's
deserts. They had a large navy and army. Paying no heed to any
nations desiring, in that far-off day, to remain neutral, they over-
ran every country between Gibraltar and the moderij Levant,
till they finally confronted one army alone : That of an ancient
Attican race of probable Pelasgian origin. These ancient men of a
forlorn hope of freedom stood in much the same position as did
Britain, in 1940, at bay behind her moat, and defying the armies of
Hitler, who had also overrun most of Europe.

"The earth was corrupt and full of violence . . . the wickedness
of man was very great in the earth . . . every imagination of his
heart was only evil continually." (So Genesis, drawing on some
extremely ancient, pre-Babylonian source, long lost.)

Militarism and rage for conquest had made a hell both of
Atlantis and, according to the old Sansar legends, of the land in the
Pacific called Rutas (Lemuria), where black and yellow races
struggled perpetually. Aelianus Glaudus, the Roman rhetor, who
died A.D. 410, cites a very curious story about conditions in Atlantis
prior to the great cataclysm. It is taken from a vanished book of
the great Greek historian Theopompus, who flourished at Chios,

22 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

in 354 B.C. Only a few fragments of the histories of Theopompus
have survived, and in one of them there is a very curious talk
between a certain Silenus and Midas. (I give my own translation
from the Latin) :

"Europe and Asia and Libya (Africa), islands, are girdled
by the ocean. Beyond them are continents of infinite size,
which support great animals, and men double our size, and span
of years. In the same are great cities, with laws and customs of a
life wholly different from ours . . . this land possesses great
quantities of gold and silver, which are reckoned by these
people as of less value than iron is with us. ... Among these
cities are two greater than the rest : one named Machimus, the
other Eusebius. They are quite unlike. Machimus is warlike;
Eusebius is pious and peace-loving. The peace-loving people reap
the fruits of the earth without plows, or oxen. They have no
need to sow or till. As he said, they live free from sickness and
die laughing, and with great pleasure. They are so exactly
just that the gods many times vouchsafe to converse with them.
The other inhabitants are continually armed and fighting, and
subdue their neighbours. Sometimes, they die of sickness, but
this rarely happens. Most commonly they are killed in war, by
stones or wood; for they are invulnerable to steel. ..."

There follows a story of a great invasion of Europe by the war-
like race of this Atlantean continent, and two people, named Mar-
cellin and Avienus, make statements about this great island-con-
tinent.

Says Marcellin :

"In the Atlantic sea, in the European sphere, is a more
worthy island."

He is capped by Avienus, who seems to refer to America \

"Fruitful in the ocean stretch lands, and beyond, backwards,
other m shores stretch to another world. ..."

This battle of Atlantean warriors and "old Greeks" figured on
a peplos, or embroidered robe, which used to be carried round, in
Plato's own day, in the harbour streets of Athens, at a festival of the
goddess Athena. One old Greek writer, named Grantor, who lived
in 310 B.C., says he actually was shown pillars, in a temple by the
Nile, where the Egyptian priests said there was pictured, in hiero-
glyphics, the history of the drowned continent of Atlantis.

Naturally, however, had the pre-Diluvian-age man been good

OUR EARTH'S GREATEST DISASTER 23

or evil, man of a golden age or necromancer of a race of half-demons,
he could not have prevented the impact of that wandering, cosmic
body from outer space. "What had to be had to be"; for, as the
Greeks themselves said, not the gods on the high hill of violet-
crowned Olympus can deflect by a hair the decrees of death and
destiny.

It may be, as Mr. H. G. Wells contends, that history never re-
peats herself in an infinitely varied and incessant universe; but, on
this occasion, at least, as old Lord Palmerston might have said, she
"came damned near it".

Suddenly, without warning, as the two embattled armies con-
fronted each other, there came, as the ancient Egyptian records
said:

. . . "violent earthquakes and floods, and, in a single night
and day of misfortune, all the warlike men in a body sank into
the ground, and the island of Atlantis . . . disappeared* into the
depths of the sea."

The old priest Psonchis, of the Egyptian temple of Thais (or
Sais), made a further remarkable statement :

"There was a rain of fire from the skies . . . caused by a
declination of astronomical bodies moving round the sun and
in the heavens. The great conflagration recurs at long intervals
. . . and those who live on high mountains and lofty places are
more liable to destruction than people by rivers or seashore . . .* J< f

He also spoke of a boundless continent beyond the submerged
island continent, which can be nothing but North and South
America,

Here, as evidence in the shape of amazing ruins of dead cities
in the jungles and on the unexplored plateau between Goyaz and
the Rio Roosevelt of modern Brazil today attests to those who
have seen them there lived between 15,000 and 10,000 B.C.,
perhaps even earlier, a highly civilised race of handsome, intellectual
men and beautiful women with classic Greek features, and often
bright red hair like that of Berenice. (But they were not Greek in
origin, nor any colony from old Greece.) They lived in walled
cities walled not against savages, but the mighty gulf of the
Marafion, the older name of the Amazon. They had a gold coinage,
fleets, cities of shining white stone, with magnificent plazas, paved
with great flags, and exquisitely ornamented temples and great

*Vide Plato's Dialogues of Critias and Timaeus, apparently quoting Solon, or traditions
in Solon's family to whom Plato belonged. It is Plutarch who names the old
priests as Solon's instructors.

24 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

mansions, with fine fountains. Their coasts were lit by pharos or
lighthouses, for mariners. Lenses they had invented, and reflectors
they knew which are the elements of the astronomical telescope.
They built peculiar pyramids, rounded at the tops, and their ruins
seen still, today, deep in the jungle, for this is no fantasy of a lost
world of fiction bear many letters identical with those of the
Phoenician and Greek alphabet, as well as other forms of bizarre
and more archaic shape. Native traditions say they used a light
which seems akin to that of the electric bulb.

It is probable that their priest-astronomers had been perturbed
by the increasing frequency of violent earthquakes such as we, in
our modern world, have witnessed between A.D. 1938 and A.D. 1944.
They had kept a keen watch on the skies, night and day, and
sensed the approach of some cosmic disaster. Before this happened,
this mysterious race of Hy-Brazil* of prehistoric South America
sent forth bearded men in black, of gentle mien and high culture,
to civilise the savages and barbaric races of Central America and
the highlands of the Andes and Colombia. There is good reason to
suppose that the race, like the Carthaginians, hoped to find out
some more stable countries, to which they might flee from the
wrath they foresaw was at hand. One of these pioneers was named
Qjietzalcoatl, another, Bochicha and a third, Viracocha. They
were sun- worshippers. There was no temple to a moon. Head-dresses
of this amazing South American race of the pre-deluge are found,
today > on totem poles in British Columbia, and these Indians have a
garbled version of the name Qiietzalcoatl, associated with a legend
of an appalling deluge and great catastrophe that shook tiie earth.
They said he and his brother travelled round, working wonders
and were magicians of a powerful sort. All were in black robes or
tunics.

Probably, over the land-bridge linking Brazil with Atlantis,
the motherland, and North- West Africa and Europe, the same
Atlantean men in black travelled the vast way to Asia, bearing the
same warnings and carrying out the same civilising mission. Says a
Burmese tradition :

luxury prevails, fire consumes the world and water
washes it away. A thousand years before the destruction of the
world a certain Nat came from the superior abodes. His hair was
dishevelled, his face sad, his garments were black. He goes every-
where through the public ways and streets, with mournful voice,
warning men of the approaching cataclysm. " (Burma: Asiatic
Researches, Vol. VI, pp. 172-244.)

*Hy or Royal Brazil is the name given in the Old Irish legends to a lost * olden world.
As stated elsewhere in this book, the old Irish, nearest to the Keltic root-stock, maintained

, and in the Cordilleras

of the Argentine, today, there is actually an Indian tribe speaking Erse\ AUTHOR.

OUR EARTHS GREATEST DISASTER 85

It may be more than a coincidence that the name Nat, in the
form of Nata, is that borne by another Atlantean missioner, who is
the Noah in the Mexican Codex Chimalpopoca version of the Great
Catastrophe. (Vide pages 14-15 supra.}

Then came the Great Catastrophe which annihilated this strange
and mysterious civilisation of old Hy-Brazil, the royal colony or
empire of Atlantis.

The day of the world's judgment was also about to fall on a
strange island with a mausoleum* and temple where mighty rulers
and warriors with Caucasian features met in a sort of Valhalla with
the spirits of their dead. This eerie island, on which hardened
travellers of today, who are sceptical of most things under the moon,
say rests an aura or spirit of ancient evil, we know as Easter Island.
It lies 2,000 miles westwards into the eye of the sunset's fires from
the South American coast and the other mighty civilisation repre-
sented by Tiahuanacu, the mysterious. Here all round were tall
cliffs on the top of which ancient but very skilful architects and
engineers had designed and erected a colossal platform made of
megalithic stones, laid beautifully together without the bond of
any cement or mortar. The imperious race who made this strange
island-mausoleum were like the Egyptians of the old Pharoahs : they
conscripted, for the work of raising these mighty stone blocks into
position, slave-labour.

Right round the towering cliffs stretched these gallery-platforms.
They rise tier above tier, terrace on terrace. Each terrace, at dignified
intervals, was occupied by the towering figures of colossal men in
stone gazing in calm disdain, or frowning menace inland and not
out to sea where lay the Fatherland of their great Southern Sea
Empire. A queer "red top-hat" beetled over the great brows of
each colossal man. One figure is thirty feet high and so huge and
spreading that thirty of the English sailors of Captain Cook's day
easily dined in the shadow of its form, at noon !

The "wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command" on the faces of
these imperious colossi seems to menace anyone approaching the
great amphitheatre from inland. Behind the grand platforms of
cyclopean blocks the thunder of the great Pacific surges crashes on
the beach, while the rude bourdon of the music of the South Pacific
winds roars like an organ above the heads of these Ozymandiases,
kings of kings. There are no fewer than 550 of these tremendous
images of martial men and rulers, mostly without feet. Almost
every face is arrogant and masterful men of a race of world-con-

* But so obscure is the chronology that the cataclysm which destroyed the great Pacific
empire, of which Easter Island may have been an island-outpost, might have occurred
many thousands of years before the /fy-Brazilian-Atlantean disaster, and contemporaneously
with the cataclysm which, if it did not raise Tiahuanacu from the bed of the ocean into the
clouds, two or four miles above, assuredly, on geological evidence alone, raised it two miles
into the sky from the sea-shore of old South America! AUTHOR.

26 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

qucring imperialists and militarists. Yet every face is different and
individual. Indeed, it is obvious that they are portrait faces of
actual human beings, and not gods or nephilim. A few have a merci-
ful, or contemplative look philosophers, or physicians, or teachers,
or sages but in nearly all the jaw is big, and the chin juts out like
a rock.

This island is a Valhalla-graveyard of very strange sort. The
master-race does not live in it. No; their empire island-continent
lies far over the Pacific, and the slaves and skilled craftsmen of the
corvee, along with their task-masters and the supervising engineers
and architects, and the priests of the Valhalla-temples down the
majestic causeway, inland, are fed, clothed, munitioned and
supplied by food-ships arriving periodically from the Fatherland.

Inland from the giant megalithic platform goes a tramway,
supported on bags of leather-hide which are inflated, to act as ties
or sleepers, as the British call them, to the "railroad" track. Down
this tramway come those giant red toppers made of red tufa from a
volcanic crater, inland, to be fitted on to the brows of the colossal
images, on the sea cliffs, on which the crimson top-hats are wedged
with white stones ! Arriving at the feet of the images (represented
stylistically at the end of the great trunk), the toppers are rolled up
an inclined ramp, where slaves have the job of fitting them on the
cyclopean heads.

Four splendid stone causeways radiate inland from the plat-
forms. They are magnificently paved, and lined at intervals with
splendidly carved statues of men. They pass on to an open plaza of
great extent where towers up into the sky a domed temple, many-
sided and polygonal, with statues at every angle of the building.
The sign of the female vulva on some of the stones suggests that a
form of the oldest worship on earth is carried on by this strange
race : that of reproduction, of which this is one of the phallic sym-
bols. But another symbol, a circle, sometimes cleft with a rod, and
on some of the images themselves engraved in series on the necks or
backs, imports that they also worshipped the sun; perhaps, an
emblem of a central mystic sun : the unrevealed God.

Close by the cyclopean cliff-platforms are seen queer half-
pyranjids, with rounded tops ; but another even more amazing thing
is seen carved on the walls of strange catacombs hidden in the cliffs,
and whose pedestal stones were, with great difficulty, found 12,000
years later by American "gobs" of the U.S.S. Mohican. It took them
two days' hard work to force a way into these hidden catacombs.
They discovered niches with human remains in them and, on the
walls, frescoes or carvings of a queer animal of prehistoric sort, which
has a cafs head and the curved form of a man with a bent back and long thin
arms. Zoology and geology know of no such prehistoric monster; but
it was also found on pieces of very ancient pottery dug up on the

OUR EARTH'S GREATEST DISASTER 27

shores of South Peru by U.S. Paymaster Thomson who, in Easter
Island, directed the opening of the cunningly sealed and hidden
catacoftib. Nothing could more graphically testify to the great age of
this unknown race.

The menacing stare of these cold-lipped, stern-eyed colossi
of the cliff-platforms must have played some mysterious, if not
sinister part in whatever queer or occult rites, or ancestor-cults
were celebrated in this island graveyard. Else, why do they gaze inland
and not out to sea?

, A woman's cyclopean statue has also been found, lying face
downwards in a crater of the island. It was the last to be set up.
But mostly they are of men with oval faces, great eyes and a short
upper lip.

Drawings in the rocks suggest that the race sailed three-masted
ships, and knew of four-footed birds. In some cases, they have ears
with enormous lobes, singularly reminding us of the Orejones, or
long-eared warriors of the old Incas of Peru. How they moved these
mammoth blocks of stone, many tons in weight, often twenty feet
thick at the base and fifteen feet high, is still a problem unsolved
except for the suggestion of the ancient tramway. The foundation
stones of the colossal platform are of such hard basalt that even
modern tools, with specially tough alloys, would be blunted.

One day, while the slaves and slave-artisans, under the eyes of
their taskmasters, were putting the finishing touches to a number of
heads of great figures lying in a vast quarry-crater of a workshop
to which the avenues lead from the cliff-platforms there are 500
colossal human heads in carved stone lying on the sides of this great
amphitheatre, and more or less covered in grass or bush, today
a stern-faced supervisor, cracking a hide-whip, had just stepped for-
ward to flog the back of a craftsman who had been detected scamping
the work on the back of one of the images, where he believed it
would not be noticed. While the crack of the heavy thong still re-
sounded in the hot air of a windless day, a black cloud seemed sud-
denly to cover the face of the sun. It spread very rapidly to the
horizon. The ground heaved violently in tremendous tremors
that lasted many minutes. The whole island shook to the rim and
tops of the crater. Mountainous waves of an ocean infuriated and
maddened by some tremendous force swept right over the tall
cliffs and crashed on to the feet of the colossal images. The light of
day went out. The night of total eclipse had come. A heavy black
pall covered the vault of the heavens. Strange rains of blood-red
water and white ash, mingled, cascaded on to the causeways and
covered the dome of the great temple of ancestors and ghosts. The
terrified slaves in the quarry-workshop threw down their tools,
heeding not the whips and curses of the taskmasters, who, them-
selves, white to the very lips, began to stammer and to follow the

St8 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

headlong rush of the panic-stricken workers to the safety of caves
in a neighbouring hillside.

At the end of the tramway, a gang of many hundreds of slaves
had just hauled a cyclopean statue on to the platform where it was
to be set up, when the island shook and the vast tidal waves swept
right over the mighty balustrades. In the unearthly darkness, as of a
last day of earth, the terrified slaves cast off the hauling-ropes and
the great trunk and head of the statue crashed on to its face, with the
head looking out to the maddened ocean, raging as under the force
of a hundred typhoons. They fled, seeking safety and harbour, as
they raced, many being crushed under the weight of mighty
masonry and great carved stones, toppled over by the violent quakes.
The quarry was abandoned, the keeper of the sacred mausoleum-
temple fled with the rest, the architects, the officials, and the en-
gineers. May be, mephitic gases overtook them on their way to
shelter in the secret caves of the cliffs on that dreadful island night ;
but those who managed to survive the long days and nights of cos-
mic cataclysm ran out on the cliffs to wait for the relieving food-
ships that were never to come. (The master-race's policy did not
permit the slaves to grow food in the island.) For the mighty Pacific
island-continent of Rutas-Mu-Gondwanaland had toppled from
her foundations deep, deep down into the hell of the abyss, and the
boundless, heaving waters of the ocean now covered a whole vast
land where life, legend whispers, had been one long dream of
paradisiacal bliss, peace and prosperity, until one of its races, the
men of blood and brawls, had turned it into almost continual
fighting internally, with wars of ancient conquest abroad.

But who were these strange people who left the amazing number
of 550 colossal images in Easter Island, of whom not even the un-
quiet sea whispers tales of old, unhappy things and battles long
ago?

May be, the answer is to be found in the book of Genesis :

"There were giants on the earth in those days; mighty men
who were of old, men of renown . . . and God said the earth is
filled with violence through them, and behold I will destroy
them with the earth."

The old Goths, in one of the Eddas, say the giants were drowned
in the deluge. (I shall, later, in this chapter and others, refer to the
undoubted existence of giants in prehistoric South America.)
Eupolemus, who wrote a long lost history on the Jews of Assyria,
says the ancient Babylon was founded by giants saved from the
Deluge. It was they, he says, who built the celebrated Tower of
Babel which thunderbolts overthrew, and they were dispersed all
over the earth. (This is a Near East version of the famous storming of

OUR EARTH'S GREATEST DISASTER 29

the gods in Heaven by the Greek Titans.) Euhemerism, which
may be right or wrong, may suggest the story took its rise in the
invasion of all Western Europe by the old Atlantean militarists; for
the story of Eupolemus is that these giants were plunged into the
central abyss at the time of the great catastrophe. But it is curious
that Pedro de los Rios, Dominican missioner, in Nueva Espana,
in 1566, sets down an Aztec tradition that, before the Great Catas-
trophe and deluge, the land of Anahuac old Mexico was in-
habited by giants, one of whom escaped to build a great pyramid at
Cholula, made of bricks, passed from hand to hand by a file of men.
The gods in wrath at these Titans scaling the skies by the stair-
case circling their tower, sent down fire on it. As this tower-pyramid
of Babel was subsequently dedicated to Quetzalcoatl, if my theory
be correct, the giants must have invaded the land of Anahuac,
after that gentle man in black had returned to his eastern homeland
Atlantis, motherland, or imperial Atlantean Hy-Brazil from
which he said he would one day return.

Fragments of other astounding memories of the Great Cataclysm
are crystallised in Genesis, such as the Deluge story derived from lost
and very ancient books, older by far than the Babylonian legend of
Gilgamesh on brick cuneiform tablets. It is found, too, in the old
Aztec codices of Mexico. The Indians of the high savanas of Colombia,
South America, say the Great Catastrophe befell the Earth before
the Moon shone in the skies \ And this part about the Moon is no
childish myth of a primitive race. The old Arcadians, a Pelasgian
race of the Mediterranean, also said a great Deluge overwhelmed
their ancient land the Deluge of Ogyges before the Moon accom-
panied the Earth ! Their ancestors were thus called, by the Greeks,
pre-Selenites, which means what it says arid is not a corruption of pre-
Syllani, or pre-Hellenes, as a too ingenious nineteenth-century com-
mentator made out. It is curious that the ancient Mexicans spoke
of the planet Venus as lighting the eastern skies, and not the Moon.
May it be that these stories, so widely sundered by the oceans,
commemorate the strange fact that 12,000 years ago our present
Moon wandered into the Earth's gravitational field and was made
captive?

Beyond much doubt, the Moon played an immense, but not
the only part in causing die Great Catastrophe.

But what is even more remarkable is the insistence in the
Genesis story of the Bible, the Babylonian legend on the Gilgamesh
tablets from Nineveh, and in the traditions of very ancient date,
current in Peni of the Incas, that, after the Great Catastrophe,
something was seen in earth's skies that was not there before: the
Rainbow \

If rainbows were not seen in the ancient Earth it is obvious that
rain must have fallen in the night hours, when the sun's light was

30 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERI C A

not there to give the prismatic effect of rays in water-drops. If you
had a planet as near the Sun as Venus is, you would fold, as in
Venus, that rain, in torrents, falls only in the night. When our
Earth was hit by a wandering comet, or other cosmic body, 12,000
years ago and one admits the heavy mathematical odds against
such a collision there was, probably, a terrific force exerted that
tore it from its old orbit, far nearer the Sun, and drove it outwards
into space ! If that happened, the year would be lengthened from,
say, 250 days to the present 365 days, and this may account for the
incredible years of the patriarch Methuselah which make a modern
compiler of mortality tables smile in his beard or those of the
Kings of ancient Sumeria, which so puzzled the late Sir E. Wallis
Budge, of the British Museum. (He was an Egyptologist and
Assyriologist.)

Fantastic as the theory sounds, in the ears of the more crusted
sort of astronomers, it is very curious that both the ancient Mexicans
and the old Roman writer, Varro, between whom there can have
been no contact, say that, at the time of the Great Catastrophe,
an amazing sign appeared in the skies :

". . . the star of Venus . . . changed in colour, size, form, shape
and course, and never before or after was the like seen."

What had really changed was not the shape or course of Venus,
but the orbit of the Earth reeling backwards into space, as the axis
at the poles tilted and lurched with extreme violence. It would have
driven survivors mad, and might have been responsible for the
horrible cults of human sacrifice, and propitiation of harvest-gods,
found in ancient races after the Catastrophe, and reaching a degree
of aberration that approached paranoia among the Aztecs and
Mayans of Central America.

The ancient Chinese annalists record startlingly similar pheno-
mena of this same cataclysm. A learned late seventeenth-century
Jesuit missioner, Padre Martin Martinius, in a very rare volume of
his History of China in black letter Latin and not in the great library
of the British Museum says that the ancient Chinese say that,
before the Great Catastrophe to the Earth, there was a golden age :

"Four seasons succeeded each other regularly and without
confusion. There were no impetuous winds, nor excessive rains.
The sun and moon, without ever being clouded, furnished a
light purer and brighter than now. The five planets kept on their
course without any inequality. Nothing harmed man, nor did
he harm anything. There was universal concord and amity
reigned all over the earth. . . . Then the second heaven be-
gan * . ."

OUR EARTH'S GREATEST DISASTER 31

The word "heaven" seems to be the equivalent to the "sun" of
the Mexican codices . . .

4

"... The pillars of heaven were broken. The earth shook to
its foundations. The sky sank lower towards the north. The sun, moon
and stars changed their motions. The earth fell to pieces, and the
waters in its bosom uprushed with violence and overflowed. . . .
The system of the universe was totally disordered. Man had re-
belled against the high gods. The sun went into eclipse, the
plawts altered their courses, and the grand harmony of nature was
disturbed." (Hist. Sin. lib. L, p. 12.)

Another Chinese myth says that at the Great Catastrophe the
whole Earth tilted violently and sank into the sea off the China coast.
It adds, what sounds like eye-witnesses 5 testimony, or ancestral
memories, that the waters of the Great Deluge streamed off south-
eastwards \

The Jews, too, a race of world- wide wandering, have a curious,
and in this cosmic connection, significant myth that the Great
Deluge was "caused by the Lord God changing the places of two
stars in a constellation," (Vide Josippa Micha ben Gorion: Sagen
Juden.}

North American Indians have rites, celebrated today, which
show that their ancestors, ages ago, knew of a time when rainbows in
Earth's skies were not. The Acoma-Pueblo Indians of New Mexico
yearly perform a play in which they climb a ladder to reach the
rainbow. It is a play created round a Deluge myth. Again, in the
highlands of modern Colombia, South America, there existed in the
time of the Spanish conquistadores a native myth of the Chibcha
race I shall refer to this again, later in this book according to
which Bochicha, the pioneer from Atlantean Brazil, as I call him
infra, suddenly appeared on the plateau of Cundina-Marca when
there was no moon in the sky, and mountain walls hemmed in the
tableland. He was tall, white-skinned and bearded, and bore a
golden sceptre. After his time, Chia the Moon-goddess rode in
skies of earth. A variant of the same myth says that another evil
god caused a Flood, and that Bochicha, appearing in a rainbow,
ended the Flood.

The ancient Mexicans had a feast, celebrated as late as the day
of Cortes, the Spanish conquistador, commemorating changes in
the condition of several of the constellations including the planet
Venus after the time of the Great Catastrophe. . . .

(Venus) caused death to the world, and is one of the six
constellations that fell from the sky at the time of the Great
Deluge."

33 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

These "six stars" that fell from the sky may have been disrupted
parts of some large asteroid or giant aerolite (meteor). They had,
perhaps, been broken up by the pull of the earth's gravitational
field. On the other hand, Mr. H. S. Bellamy, an authority on Myths
of the Moon in the ancient world, supposes that the book of the
Revelation of St. John the Divine is really a history of the Great
Cataclysm, and enshrines, in mystic and cryptic language, some
ancient story of an earlier, pre-Lunar satellite of the earth ap-
proaching close to the earth and being destroyed by it. He cites the
theory of an Austrian engineer, Hans Horbiger, of Vienna, about
the ultimate destruction of satellites by the parent planet. When
the satellite drew near the earth, it shone with a brilliant light re-
flected from the sun, falling on a thick coating of ice the glacio-
sphere. This split and fell on the earth, exposing a layer of red earth,
which, in turn, fell on the earth in a rain like blood. Then the
metallic core stood bared. It split into tremendous slabs, crashed on
the earth, in the Pacific and Atlantic and submerged two great
island-continents. The slabs shivered the earth's crust and penetrated
to the magma under it. This appalling impact of these cosmic
"bolts" knocked out the supports from the continents, and so
Atlantis and the Pacific continent of Mu-Rutas-Gondwanaland
were engulfed in a terrible abyss into and over which the maddened
ocean poured its water, mountains high!

In the ancient world, the priests and prophets had a saying:
"As above so below. What has been shall be again." Gensorinus, the
Roman chronologist of the third century A.D., said that, at the end
of every great year of six Babylonian sars (a period of 21,600 years),
our planet undergoes a complete revolution. Polar and equatorial
regions gradually change place, the tropical vegetation and swarm-
ing animal life moving towards the forbidding wastes of the icy
poles. . . .

"Catastrophes attend the change, with great earthquakes
and cosmical throes."

The old Greeks had a saying that every world was a transcript
of a* former world, and the same persons reappeared and played
once more the same part they had played in each successive cycle.

The ancient Greeks also said that, at the end of every 12,000
years, the beds of the oceans are displaced, and a semi-universal
deluge takes place. Their priests of the sanctuaries kept in strict
secrecy any notions of how long such a catastrophe might last, and
all about its details. They called the period the Great or Heliacal
Year, the "winter" of which was called the Cataclysm or Great
Deluge, and the summer, the Ecpyrosis. So, by turns, the world was
to be drowned and burnt !

Reputed tomb of last Aztec Prince-Emperor Guatemotzin, where great
treasure is said to have been cached, on frontier of Ghiappas Province, Mexico.

OUR EARTH'S GREATEST DISASTER 33

These traditions seem to have come from the sky-towers of the
ancient Babylonians who said that ancient Babylon was founded by
giants who escaped the Deluge. These giants were great astrologers
who had received from their ancestors secret learning, which they
imparted to the high priests of Babylon, along with all records that
dated before the Great Catastrophe. And before dismissing these
stories of giants as moonshine and fairy stories of the childhood of
our race, be it remembered that ancient Peril was invaded by
giants who built cities and sank wells, that their skeletons have been
found in a cave near the railroad at Manta, Ecuador, and that
skeletons with headbones of monstrous size and a lower jaw twice
the size of civilised man were found in conical mounds on bluffs in
Western Missouri (by Judge West), as long ago as 1875. Indeed,
ancient Mexican records, reversing the story, in Genesis, of the Tower
of Babel, says that Giants escaped the cataclysm and built a Tower
of Babel, whose site was to be seen in Cortes' day. (One of the South
Sea islands has also a cyclopean tower built by "giants who were
curious to peep into the moon".)

These ancient predictions, by the way, are no more fantastic
than the statement made by Dr. H. Norris Russell, director of Prince-
ton University Observatory, in February 1939. He says our earth
will grow hotter as the sun grows colder. Earth is warmed up by
one degree each 100,000,000 years. Eventually, he says, the climate
and temperature at the equator of the earth will be like a blast from
an open furnace door, and a mass migration of humanity will
start out for the poles.

Since it is now round 12,000 years after the last Great Catas-
trophe, what may be the fate of the earth at the end of this cycle?
Are we on the eve of another Giant Disaster?

No longer ago then October 25-30, 1937, our Earth was in
grave danger of collison with a small planet astray in the solar
system. In that month, we were very near a Great Disaster :

"There was great excitement . . . the planet was rushing
towards the Earth almost in a straight line. Had it hit us, the
international system might have been altered. . . . The planet
missed us by only five and a half hours. It is the narrowest
escape the world has ever had in the period of astronomical
observations.' ' (Dr. H. E. Wood, astronomer at Cape Town Obser-
vatory.)

Meantime, it may be recalled that the late Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, who died in 1930, sent round to friends in England (in 1928)
a remarkable letter based on certain mystic revelations 'received by
his wife, Lady Conan Doyle, at a family stance, in 1923. These
automatic writings, it is said, foretold the rise of the Nazis in Ger-

c

34 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

many, the coming of raging fires by night over Britain, and an
attempted invasion, but they were but the prelude to tremendous
happenings no man may control. Gonan Doyle said that the pre-
dictions "from beyond" foretold that "soon" a great disaster would
come on the earth, following on Armageddon. It would happen
very suddenly, without warning, and the general upheaval of
civilised life would be of appalling character. The catastrophes a
series would last three years, during which a number of countries
(five) in the Mediterranean basin would be swallowed up in the
convulsions of the earth and sea. The bed of the Atlantic would rise
and tremendous tidal waves would surge on to the American, the
British, and the Irish low-lying shores, causing great disasters to
people living near the shores. Apparently, the disaster would be
brought about by some cosmic body in collision with our polar axis
and causing it to tilt violently.

Of course, it has been said you may refuse to argue with a prophet
but may disbelieve him.

"But when is the next cataclysm due?" the shuddering or
scoffing reader may ask me. I can but return the famous answer of
the late Premier Asquith, on another occasion, my own prophetic
soul exercising its vaticinatory powers on occasions of which my
conscious mind is unaware.

The answer, indeed, is one that would be more congenial to
"Woe, Woe", Signor Ansaldo, the mouthpiece of Mussolini's radio,
than to any of us. It has even been predicted, in other mystic
quarters, that the final Armageddon will be followed by the emer-
gence from the bed of the South Atlantic of the drowned continent
and cities of Atlantis.

Be that as it may, never has a more graphic forecast of the
end of the solar system not merely of the earth been made than
by the ancient Brahmans of the temples of Hindostan, thousands of
years ago :

"Strange noises are heard proceeding from every point.
They are die forerunners of the Night of Brahma. Dusk rises at
the horizon and the Sun passes away behind the thirtieth degree
of the Zodiacal sign of Macara and will no more reach the sign
of Pisces (Minas). The gurus (watcher-disciples) of the gopa-
rams (pagodas) appointed to watch the ras-chakr (Zodiac) may
now break their circles and instruments, for they will need them
no more. . . . Gradually the light shall diminish and pale. Heat
shall get less, and uninhabitable spots multiply in the earth.
Air become more rarefied. Springs of water dry up. Great rivers
see their waves exhaust themselves, the ocean now shows her
sandy bottom and plants die. Daily, men and animal decrease
in size. Life and motion lose their force. Planets hardly can

DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL 35

gravitate round the Sun in space. One by one they go out as a
lamp which the hand of the chokra (servant) has not replenished
with oil. Sourya (the Sun) flickers and goes out. Matter falls into
dissolution. Brahma, the demiourgos, merges back into Dyaus
(Deus, the unrevealed God), and, his task accomplished, falls
asleep. Another day of 4,320,000,000 human years is past.
Night sets in and lasts till the next dawn. All germs (souls) are
re-absorbed into the Infinite which sleeps till dawn."

My reader has thus a sketch of the final act in one of our old
Earth's most appalling dramas, which formed my mental back-
ground when I stepped off the liner in Rio de Janeiro's wonderful
harbour. I started in that city of colour, warmth and beauty to try
to recreate the earlier scenes of this ancient civilisation of Atlantean
South America. For, in this, reconstruction of a prehistoric world,
it is useless to bury one's self in European, or even American libraries
and university schools or museums, wherein South American life
and proto-history are subjects as remote as if they were happening
in the planet Mars, away beyond the ken of radio and airships.
The dogmatic arrogance of so many modern archaeologists is due
for a severe shaking; for they, like some of our modern medical
scientists, are apt to forget what real scientists and inventors well
know : that the bounds of knowledge are often advanced not by
professionals or savants in learned societies and associations, but by
the less dogmatic and generally undistinguished amateur and lay
and modest or humble investigator. Nous verrons ce gue nous verrons
perhaps, before this chequered twentieth century ends, in the
revolution of world history which will come from discoveries in the
now buried jungle cities of dangerous South America.

CHAPTER II

DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL

"And the land shall become burning pitch. They shall call the nobles thereof,
but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing. From generation
to generation it shall be waste. None shall pass through for ever and ever. A
possession for the bittern and pools of water . . . swept up in the besom of destruc-
tion . . . and thorns shall come up in her palaces ... a habitation of wild dogs
and bats. ... He hath utterly destroyed them."

IN modern Brazil, I did not find any great enthusiasm about the
mysteries of the remote past in a great land which some American

36 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

observers believe is destined to outshadow Western Europe, at the
close of the Second World War.

"There are no ancient ruins in the serras and sertdo of Brazil,
senhor. No vestiges of ancient culture, no ruins such as you have in
Mayan Yucatan, or the jungles of Honduras and Guatemala. All
that was here, when Dom Pedro Gabral sighted what is now Rio de
Janeiro, in the year A.D. 1 500, all that we have here now are primitive
Indians at the fishing and hunting stage. They live in huts and
clearings in the jungle and matas, on the banks of the rivers, in
Amazonas and the Matto Grosso. In our sertdo are scrub, heath,
wilderness, but no monuments like those of Perti."

That was the reply to me, when I asked about the ancient
Brazilian ruins, of a professor of economics and geography who
holds a chair in a famous Brazilian university.

I met another charming gentleman whose father had been one
of ihefazendeiros, or patriarchal landowners of the older Southern
type of the colourful days of the Brazilian Empire. He sat in a cane
chair, on his verandah, bathed in the light of the bright moon, while
fireflies flashed across the velvety darkness cast by tall trees under a
brilliantly starry sky. Waving his beringed, white hands towards the
gently plashing waters of Rio Bay, he deprecated the foolish waste of
energy by restless, inquisitive people who will not take the gifts of
the gods as they find them. He smiled at the freaks of estrangeiros
Englishmen or Americans who must needs push their noses into
the mata and sertdo of interior Brazil, with their sabre-toothed in-
sects, horrible ticks, malignant fevers, clicking mandibles of hideous
tarantulas, pathogenic-germed probes of os barbeiros (the barber-
surgeon beetles of wooden shacks in the Goyaz), the fierce oncas,
the snakes, and the unpacifiable Indians sometimes anthropo-
phagous, often head-hunters who resent and visit with sudden
death, if the intruder persist, any penetration of their jungles.

I found the same lack of interest in the south. It has gone so
far that men who concern themselves in recreating the ancient world
of Brazil are, with slight contempt, styled Indianistas. True, they are
often of Indian descent. There was, for example, Senhor Bernardo
da Silva Ramos, native of Amazonas, with traits of Tapuyo origin.
He sold a collection of rare and ancient coins in order to raise funds
to embark on travels all over North and South America, and to
Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He became keenly interested
in the ancient mysteries of Brazil in prehistoria, which has a litera-
ture of its own in Brazil. Comparing die ancient inscriptions in the
lands of the "Old World" with those he found in Central and South
America, Senhor Ramos filled large folio volumes. The central
authorities of Brazil have examined those works, and expressed
polite appreciation and interest. In 1928, they voted public ^
money to have one volume published. B.oth he and Senhor Frot

DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL 37

have found in the Matto Grosso many inscriptions in the Phoenician,
Egyptian, and even Sumerian scripts and hieroglyphics. Senhor
Ramos points out that his Indian forefathers had many traditions
of ancient date about a very ancient culture and advanced civilisa-
tion, flourishing thousands of years ago, to the north and west of the
Central Highlands of Brazil.*

Now, in the archives of the great public library of Rio, which
embodies the large and valuable libraries of the old Kings of
Portugal and the emperors of Brazil, and also the records of genera-
tions of Lusitanian viceroys, I have found a strange MS. written in
Portuguese, and scarcely 200 years old, but bitten by the copim
and badly mutilated in some most fascinating and enthralling
passages, which holds a secret that, in some day not far distant,
will revolutionise the fixed and settled theories of college professors
of ethnology and archaeology, and the field museum workers of
New York, Chicago, London, Paris, Rome and Berlin. Especially
will it make hay of their cherished theory that writing was unknown
in pre-Columbian South America. For, if the story of strange
adventures of hardy and uncultured men which it tells, be true
and I think it is what we call the old world of Asia and Europe
is a mere parvenu by the side of this New World of South America.
Our professors and archaeological historians are one day going to be
forced to call in this New World to redress the balance of the
Old!

I stress the lack of culture of these men who were the well-known
bandeiristas land-pirates of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
Brazil because they could and would not have invented the story
they tell. Their one object was the hunt for gold and virgin mines of
silver. Under the banner of a leader called the bandeirante, they
started out from the province of Sao Paulo, in Southern Brazil,
abandoning the trading-channels of the rivers and the most outlying
settlements, and heading straight into the forbidden territories of
the bad Indians (Indids malos) of the mata (dense forest) and chapada
(wilderness). The leader of these bandeiristas was usually a man of
that older Portuguese stock which had made Lisboa (Lisbon) and
the Motherland in Lusitanian Portugal a fine sea-power, from Goa,
in India, and the Moluccas and Spice Islands, off the waters of far
Cathay, across the unknown seas to Rio de Janeiro and Bahia.

Far north and west wandered these hardy bandeiristas, pushing
the frontier ever forward into the unknown. They reached places
in the Brazilian sertao, 400 years ago, that white men, even today,
have not penetrated and returned alive to tell the tale. Age

In August 1944, by courtesy of the British Foreign Office, I received a letter from
H.M. Ambassador in Rio de Janeiro informing me that Senhor Bernardo da Silva Ramos
had died. It it to be hoped that learned circles in Rio or Sao Paulo will see to it that his
workt and records of strange researches into the pre-history of Brazil and South America
do not perish utterly, either by the teeth of the copim insects, or neglect. AUTHOR.

38 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

after age went by, and the bandeiristas made themselves a power
dreaded by the colonial governors in Rio, Sao Paulo and old Bahia.

Came the year 1591, and a galleon from Lisboa crossed the bar
of the roadstead of Bahia, then called sonorously and most religiously :
Bahia de Sao Salvador de todos os Santos (Bahia of our Holy Saviour
of all the Saints). The galleon from Portugal brought the new
governor and captain-general, Dom Francisco de Souza, who
carried with him, in his trunks, a title, conferred by the court in
Lisboa (Lisbon), of Marques das Minos (Marquis of the Mines). It
was to be conferred if certain very rich mines of silver were dis-
covered to the Portuguese colonial authorities, as promised by one
Roberio Bias, one of the oldest and richest inhabitants of Bahia.
A bauble for a billion !

Rumour ran in Bahia that this Roberio Bias had silver plate for
his own tables, and that the vessels on the altar of his private family
chapel were of the same metal of the very finest and purest quality.
Folk in the province of Bahia said that this silver came from secret
mines located in lands, held in the interior, or sertdo of Brazil, by this
same Roberio Bias, a grim and determined man. Now, Roberio was
rich ; but not satisfied. He was a commoner. He wanted the titles of
nobility and an emblazoned shield with quarterings that he could
affix to the stone walls of his mans do in the countryside of Bahia.
Some time before, folk whispered, Roberio Bias had actually taken
ship and crossed the Atlantic to Cadiz, in old Spain. There, he had
journeyed to the Escurial palace of the King of Spain, in old
Madrid, who then governed both Spain and Portugal.

Said Bias to our Lord, el Rey Bon Felipe : "I offer your Majesty
all the riches of splendid, but secret mines. There is more silver in
those mines I know of than you have of iron in the mines of Bilbao in
your Spanish province of Biscaya. All I want, in return, from your
Majesty, is the title of Marquis of the Mines."

But, now here, newly arrived from Lisboa, in old Portugal, was
this governor and court popinjay, Bom Francisco. He, this governor,
was to have this title of Marquis of the Mines, while the promised
one, Roberio Bias, the finder of those mines, was merely to have the
place and title and honour of administrador das minas (the superin-
tendent of mines) his own mines ! with other promises, which
meant precious little to a man who had been tricked with a promise
of ennoblement.

Bias was in the city of Bahia when the governor stepped ashore
on the quays. The governor sent for him. Bom Francisco was
haughty and arrogant in manner, and Bias, in a rage he had
difficulty in dissembling, agreed to show the governor where these
mines lay. However, what he did was to lead de Souza, a true
exemplar of the Lusitanian viceroys, on a wild-goose chase into the
interior. The mines always seemed to elude the hunters. At last, the

DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL 39

suspicious de Souza put spies on the trail of the guileful Roberio
Dias, who had led the hunters on every track except the one that
led 'to the mines. The governor's spies were spied on by Dias's
men, and still the mines lay lost ! Then governor Dom Francisco
de Souza showed his teeth. He clapped Roberio Dias into a foul
dungeon in the bowels of the old castello and fort on the bay of
Bahia. He kept him there, two years, rotting among all the bugs and
fleas and toads and lizards, and the worse, dripping damp; but
Roberio Dias was of the bandeirista type. He might be broken ; bent,
he would not be. He refused to say where were the rich silver mines.
The governor complained home to old Spain, and the King, our
Lord, Don Felipe, sent an order for the punishment by death of the
contumacious and evasive commoner, Roberio Dias. The galleon
duly arrived in the harbour of Bahia; but on the very day that the
seneschal of the castello came to unbar the massive iron-bolt-
studded door of the dungeon, and read out the royal cedula to
Roberio Dias, he found him lying dead on the stone floor. A grim
smile clenched the dead man's strong, white teeth. He had left the
secret to his heirs, who would not speak, under pain of a dying
father's powerful curse.

These mines became known as the "Lost Silver Mines of the
Moribeca".

In the next 150 years, many hardy and unscrupulous Portuguese
adventurers set out on dangerous trails with the avowed purpose
of locating these lost mines of the Moribeca. These bandeiristas
wandered through dense forests, camped in clearings on the banks
of unknown rivers, with fierce Indians lurking in the shades to send
forth showers of poisoned arrows. They defied every danger of man,
fever and insects, the jungle devils, and the famine and demon
ticks of the catinga\ but the mystery of the lost mines remained un-
solved.

Now, came the year 1743, and a native of Minas Geraes whose
name has perished started with other bandeiristas (five of them
Portuguese), two samboes (negro slaves), and 300 Indians on the
trail of these lost mines of the Moribeca. What cared they if a
buffoon and jogral in Rio, by name of P. Silverio da Paraopeba,
had gibed at them, in a little poem about the adventures of crazy
bandeirantes and bandeiristas, "bitten by gold bugs"? Anyhow, they
never read poems, even if they could read at all. So, let him and his
japing fellow-scribblers take a Brazilian cdbaga of yerba-mat^,
and go to Hades !

This mid-eighteenth century expedition was well armed, and in-
tended to live on the country. No pack animals, or even the toughest
and most leathery-stomached of mules could be taken into the
Brazilian sertao. It was, as it is today, land of snakes and cougars
and of the snarling, prowling el tigre, with water for fever-stric

4O MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

men only to be found in the depths of the sandstone gorges through
which turbulent rivers, cluttered with fallen boulders, flowed to
dash and foam over catadupas, or cataracts.

This expedition was away for ten long years, enduring incredible
hardships and braving great perils. Their very memory had been for-
gotten by the most caustic- tongued of satirical scribblers in Rio and
Bahia, when, one day, in the year 1753, an emaciated remnant of
the band staggered in from the unknown and halted at a J "agenda
in some little and obscure povoofao in the province of Bahia. They
were almost dead with hunger, fatigue and misery. Reduced to
rags and bones ! There, in the cool of the evening of a hot day, one
of these bandeiristas, sitting under the eaves of the verandah, wrote
an astonishing story of their travels and adventures. The implica-
tions of his story were too amazing to have been realised or per-
ceived by so unlettered a man, though he had a picturesque style
of writing. Nor may one wonder at that ; for only in very recent
years have they become known to historians or scholars, few or
none of whom are native Brazilians, or even North Americans.

When this soldier of fortune and man of action took up the quill
pen in his stiffened fingers in the backwoods of old Bahia, he never
dreamt that he was drawing aside a veil from a Lost World, drowned
in the waters of the ocean, split, rocked and exploded by titanic
earthquakes and tellurian and submarine convulsions, many thou-
sands of years before the ancient Egyptians were building their
very early and most ancient step pyramids, at Sakkarah, on the
Nile, more than 6,800 miles over the South Atlantic Ocean, east-
wards.

This manuscript of an old bandeirista eventually reached the
Portuguese viceroy in Rio de Janeiro. He clearly thought it held the
secret of great riches, and some long-lost mines; for someone in the
entourage hid it in the official archives and steadfastly denied that it
had ever existed, or had been received. They hoped to make a great
and exclusive discovery, aided by this derrotero, as the old Spanish
treasure hunters called such documents in Quito (Ecuador) and other
parts of the old Spanish South American Empire. The manuscript
became lost to sight and memory, and all trace of it vanished, from
the year 1760 until 1841, when a Brazilian historian and archivist,
Senhor Lagos, found it hidden in the archives of the old royal public
library in Rio de Janeiro, where I, myself, saw it in 1938-9.

It is unfortunate that the insect called the copim has attacked the
old parchment, so that many valuable leaves, significant words and
parts of words are missing; but enough is left to indicate the startling
nature of the discoveries and the fascinating and rather eerie adven-
tures of these bandeiristas of 1743-1753.

In the autumn of 1939 I obtained a transcript of the document,
thanks to the courtesy of Mr. W. G. tiurdett, American Consul-

DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL 41

General in Rio. Thereafter, I spent many weeks translating from the
Portuguese and studying this amazing document, and also others,
not Known to American archivists and historians, but found in
official archives in the provinces of SSo Paulo or Rio, and concerned
with these stories of abandoned cities of unknown date and history.
Herewith, for the first time in the English language, I set down
this remarkable story of men who, unknown to themselves, were
peering into a dead world of the most ancient civilisation we know.

"Rela$ao historica de huma occulta, e grande povoagoe
antiguissima sem moradores, que se descubrio no anno de

(Historical Relation of a hidden and great city of ancient date,
without inhabitants, that was discovered in the year 1753).

Em a America (in America) ..............................

nos interiores (we inland) ....................................

contiguous aos (next to the) ................................

Mestre de Can (Master of Can) ..............................

and his band (commitiva), having for ten years journeyed in the wilds
(sertoes) to see if we could locate the famous silver mines of the
Great Moribeca (who, by the wickedness \culpa\ of a Governor, was
not granted letters patent, because the Governor wanted to take the
silver mines for himself and the glory thereof, and he, the Moribeca,
was kept prisoner in Bahia, till he died, which was done to worm out
of him the location of the silver mines. This account came to Rio
de Janeiro, in the beginning of the year 1754 . . ."

(The blanks in the introduction and the text, following, are, as
I stated, caused by the gnawing of the copim insect. In both West
Indies and South America, archives and old newspapers are anni-
hilated by insects.)

"After long and wearisome wanderings, incited by the insatiable
lust for gold, and almost lost in the many years we wandered, in
these wilds of Brazil, we discovered a cordillera of mountains, so
high that they drew near the ethereal region (chegaoSo a regido
etherea), and served as a throne of the winds, under the stars; their
lustre, from afar, excited our wonder and admiration, principally
when the sun shining on them turned to fires the crystals of which
the rocks were composed. The view was so beautiful that none could
take their eyes from the reflections. It began to rain before we came
near enough to take note of these crystalline marvels, and we saw
above. .The spectacle was bare and sterile rocks, the waters pre-
cipitated themselves from the heights, foaming white, like snow,
struck and turned to fire by the rays of the sun, like thunderbolts.
Delighted by the pleasing vistas of that ........ blended ........

shone and glistered * ....... of the waters and the tranquillity ......

42 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

,'

of the day or weather (do tempo), we determined to investigate
these prodigious marvels of nature, spread out before us, at the foot
of the mountains, without hindrance of forests or rivers that would
make it difficult for us to cross them. But when we walked round
the foot of the cordillera we found no open way or pass into the
recesses of these Alps and Pyrenees of Brazil. So there resulted for
us, from this disappointment, an inexplicable sadness.

"We grew weary and intended to retrace our steps, the next day,
when it came to pass that one of our negroes, gathering dried sticks,
saw a white deer (hum veado branco), and, by that accident, as it
fled away, he discovered a road between two sierras, that appeared
to have been made by man and not the work of Nature. We were
made joyful by this discovery and we started to ascend the road, but
found a great boulder that had fallen and broken all to pieces at a
spot where, we judged, a paved way (calfadd) had been violently
upheaved in some far-off day. We spent a good three hours in the
ascent of that ancient road, being fascinated by the crystals, at
which we marvelled, as they blazed and scintillated in many flash-
ing colours from the rocks. On the summit of the pass through the
mountain, we came to a halt.

"Thence, spread out before our eyes, we saw in the open plain
(campo raso) greater spectacles (demonstrafdes) for our vision of
admiration and wonder. At the distance of about a league, as we
judged, we saw a great city (povoafdo grande), and we estimated, by
the extent and sight of it, that it must be some city of the court of
Brazil ; we at once descended the road towards the valley, but with

great caution would be, in like case, ordered to explore

by quality and if so well as they had noticed

smokes (famines]?])^ that being one of the evident signs or

vestiges of the place (povoafdo).

"Two days we waited, wondering whether to send out scouts,
for the end we longed for, and all alone, we waited till daybreak,
in great doubt and confused perplexity of mind, trying to guess if
the city had any people in it. But it became clear to us there were no
inhabitants. An Indian of our bandeirantes determined, after two days
of hesitation, to risk his life in scouting by way of precaution ; but
he returned, amazing us by affirming he had met no one ; nor could
discover footsteps or traces of any person whatever. This so con-
founded us that we could not believe we saw dwellings or buildings,
and so, all the scouts (os exploradores) in a body, followed in the steps
of the Indian. . . ."

"They now saw for themselves that it was true the great city was
uninhabited. We, all, therefore* now decided to enter the place,
our arms ready for instant use, at daybreak. At our entry we met
none to bar our way, and we encountered no other road except
the one which led to the dead city. This, we entered under three

DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL 4$

arches (arcos) of great height, the middle arch being the greatest,
and the two of the sides being but small ; under the great and prin-
cipal arch we made out letters, which we could not copy, owing to
their great height above the ground.

"Behind, was a street as wide as the three arches, with, here
and there, houses of very large size, whose facades of sculptured

stone, already blackened with age; alone inscriptions,

all open to the day (todos abertas) decreases of

observing, by the regularity and symmetry with which they were
made, that they appeared to have one owner only, being, in reality,
very numerous, so that [they stood] with their terraces open to the
day, without one tile ; for the houses had, some of them, burnt
floors; others, large flagstones.

"We went, with fear and trembling, into some of the houses,
and in none did we find vestiges of furniture, or moveable objects
by which, or whose use, we might guess at the sort of people who had
dwelt therein. The houses were all dark, in the interior, and hardly
could the light of day penetrate, even at its dimmest, and, as the
vaults gave back the echoes of our speech, the sound of our voices
terrified us. We went on into the strange city and we came on a
road (street : rua) of great length, and a well set-out plaza (urna
praga regular) , besides, in it, and in the middle of the plaza a column
of black stone of extraordinary grandeur, on whose summit was a
statue of a man (homen ordinario : not a god, or demi-god) with a
hand on the left hip and right arm out-stretched, pointing with the
index finger to the north pole ; and each corner of the said plaza is
an obelisk like those among the Romans, but now badly damaged,
and cleft as by thunderbolts.

"On the right side of the plaza is a superb building, as it were the
principal town-house of some great lord of the land; there is a great
hall (salao) at the entrance, but still being awed and afraid, not all

of us entered in the hou being so many and the retre

ed to form some ed we encounter a mass of extra-

ordin it was difficult for him to lift it, .......

"The bats were so numerous that they fluttered in swarms
round the faces of our people, and made so much noise that it was
astonishing. Above the principal portico of the street is a figure in
half-relief, cut out of the same stone, and naked from the waist
upward, crowned with laurel, representing a person of youthful
years, without beard, with a girdle (banda) around him, and an under-
garment (urn fraldelim) open in front at the waist, underneath the
shield (escudo) of this figure are certain characters, now badly
defaced by time, but we made out the following :

44 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

"On the left side of the plaza is another totally ruined building,
and the vestiges remaining well show that it was a temple, because
of the still standing side of its magnificent fagade, and certain naves
of stone, standing entire. It covers much ground, and in the ruined
halls are seen works of beauty, with other statues of portraits inlaid
in the stone, with crosses of various shapes, curves (arches[?] corvos)
and many other figures that would take too long to describe here.

"Beyond this building a great part of the city lies completely
in ruins, and buried under great masses of earth, and frightful
crevasses in the ground, and in all this expanse of utter desolation
there is seen no grass, herb, tree, or plant produced by nature, but
only mountainous heaps of stone, some raw (that is, unworked),

others worked and carved, whereby we understood they

because again among of corpses that

and part of this unhappy and overthrown, perhaps, by

some earthquake.

"Opposite this plaza, there runs very swiftly a most deep
(cauddosd) and wide river, with spacious banks, that were very
pleasing to the eye : it was eleven to twelve fathoms in width, with-
out reckoning the windings, clear and bared at its banks of groves,
as of trees and of the trunks that are often brought down in floods.
We sounded its depths and found the deepest parts to be fifteen or
sixteen fathoms. The country beyond consists wholly of very green
and flourishing fields, and so blooming with a variety of flowers
that it seemed as if Nature, more attentive to these parts, had laid
herself out to create the most beautiful gardens of Flora : we gazed,
too, in admiration and astonishment at certain lakes covered with
wild rice plants from which we profited, and also at the innumerable
flocks of geese that bred in these fertile plains (compos) ; but it would
have been difficult to sound their depths with the hand, in the
absence of a sounding-rod.

"Three days we journeyed down the river, and we stumbled
on a cataract (uma catadupa) of such roaring noise and commotion
of foaming waters, that we supposed the mouths of the much talked
of Nile could not have made more trouble or booming, or offered
more resistance to our further progress. Afterwards, the river spreads
out so much from this cascade that it appears to be a great Ocean
(que parece o grande Oceano). It is all full of peninsulas, covered with

green grass, with groves of trees, here and there, that make

pleas Here, we find

for want of it, we the

variety of game many created brings without hunters

to hunt and chase them.

"On the eastern side of this cataract, we found various sub-
terranean hollows (subcavoes] and frightful holes, and made trial of
their depths with manv rot>es : but, after manv attempts we were

DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL 45

never able to plumb their depths* We found, besides, certain broken
stones,, and [lying] on the surface of the ground, thrown down, with
bars of silver (crevadas de prata) that may have been extracted from
the mines, abandoned at the time.

" Among these caverns (fwnas) we saw some covered with a great
flagstone, with the following figures cut into it, that suggest a great
mystery. They are as follows:

"Over the portico of the temple, we saw, besides, the following
forms:

f

"Distant a cannon-shot from the abandoned city is a building
like a country house (casa de campo), with a frontage of 250 feet. It
is approached by a great portico, from which a stairway built with
stones of various colours is seen to be leading into a great chamber
(sala) y and from that there lead out fifteen small rooms, each with
a door communicating with the said great chamber. Each room
has its waterspout (or fountain : bica de agua) ....................

the which water meets ...................... in the exterior

courtyard .................................. colonnades in the

sur .................................... squared and fashioned

by hand, overhung with the characters following :

"Thence, leaving that marvel, we went down to the banks of the
river to see whether we could find gold, and without difficulty, we
saw, on the surface of the soil, a fine trail promising great riches,
as well of gold, as of silver : we marvelled that this place had been
abandoned by those who had formerly inhabited it; for, with all
our careful investigations and great diligence we had met no per-
son, in this wilderness, who might tell us of this deplorable marvel
of an abandoned city, whose ruins, statues and grandeur, attested its
former populousness, wealth, and its flourishing in the centuries
past; whereas, today, it is inhabited by swallows, bats, rats and
foxes, that, fed on the innumerable swarms of hens and geese, have
become bigger than a pointer dog. The rats have the tails so short
that they leap like fleas and do not run or walk, as they do in other
places.

46 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

"At this place, the band separated, and one company, joined
by others, journeyed forward, and, after nine days' long marchings,
saw, at a distance, on the bank of a great bay (enseada) into which
the river spreads, a canoe with some white persons, with long, flow-
ing, black hair, dressed like Europeans

a gunshot fired as a signal to

for they escaped. They had

shaggy and wild their

hair is plaited and they wear clothes.

"One of our company, named Joao Antonio, found in the ruins
of a house a piece of gold money, of spherical shape, greater than
our Brazilian coin of 6,400 reis : on one side was an image, or figure
of a kneeling youth ; on the other, a bow, a crown, and an arrow
(setta), of which coins we doubted not to have found many in the
abandoned city; since it was overthrown by an eathquake, which
gave no time, so sudden was its onset, to take away precious objects ;
but it needs a very powerful arm to turn over the rubbish, accumu-
lated in so many long years, as we saw.

"This news is sent to your Honour from the interior of the
province of Bahia and from the rivers Pard-oacu and Una, and
assuring you that we shall give information to no person, whatso-
ever; for we judge the villages are empty of people and boat owners.
But I have given to your Honour the mine we have discovered,
reminded of the great deal that is owed to you.

"Supposing that from our band, one of our company went
forth, at this time, with a different pretence .... he may, with great
harm to your Honour, abandon his poverty and come to use these
great things for his own benefit, taking great care to bribe that
Indian [therefore], so as to spoil his purpose and lead your Honour
to these great treasures, etc

would find, in the entrances .

flagstones

Here are found, in the Portuguese MS., the strange, unknown
characters following. They appear to have been engraved on the
great stones, sealing the vault of treasure, or the mausolea (?),
whose apertures and fastenings the bandeiristas, using all their
strength, could not force wider, or open :

DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL 47

So ends the strange story of the bandeiristas of Minas Geraes.

It ipay strike the reader, as it did myself, when I saw this docu-
ment, that, out of these forty-one characters, no fewer than twenty
are almost identical in form with the letters of the Greek alphabet ;
kappa, upsilon, zeta, phi, iota, gamma, beta, omicron, sigma>
omega, lambda, chi, epsilon, psi (?), theta, nu, while two of the
signs are remarkably like Arabic numerals. The startling signifi-
cances of these amazing identities are, I propose to show, not
accidental in their relationship to the Phoenician-Greek alphabet.
These strange inscriptions on the flagstones of the vaults (?),
found so far apart as Ceylon and the Brazilian highlands (as
will be seen, infra), must be the oldest existing in the whole
world.

Thirty years later on March 23, 1773 the archives of the
governor of the Southern Brazilian province of Sao Paulo record
another accidental discovery of a dead Brazilian city of unknown
age. It was found in the sertao, or unknown wilds, of the Rio Pequery.
The commandant of the fort of Iguatemy reported to the governor
in Sao Paulo that a fisherman, jumping ashore on a sandbank in
the Rio Pequ&y, in order to plunder a grove of wild limes and sweet
oranges, found a curiously shaped stone of large diameter. He said
it was like a mos de moinhos (grindstone of a mill-wheel). Near by
were the ruins of a house and an ancient stone wall. The com-
mandant of the fort sent out from the garrison a canoa y manned by
a sergeant and two ensigns, or soldiers, who penetrated the thick
and unexplored forest and found vestiges of a city of unknown date.

"This ancient city is regularly laid out, and is of large size.
It had a street that is half a league long. The city stood on the
banks of two rivers and had a walled suburb. Moats stood
between the city and the suburb ... we unearthed two more
of the strange mill-wheels, while we were making a stockade.
All round are dense forests . . . die old men of the countryside
have traditions that a city stood on this spot which was called
Guayra." (Moats are said to be a feature of cities of Atlaritian
origin. Author.}

This report will be found filed in the archives of the governor of
Sao Paulo. The soldiers tried to break a way through the dense
forests in order to find if any descendants of the people, who once
lived in the dead city, survived. What luck they had does not
transpire ; but it may be said that btarded white Indians of the sort
testified to in the above story of the year 1753 not albinoes were
seen, as recently as 1932, by a German missionary who was wander-
ing along the edge of the unexplored forests in Eastern Peru.

48 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

More than once, Jesuit missioners, as Father Juan Lucero, reported
meeting white Indians on the banks of the Rio Huallagua, a head-
waters' tributary of the mighty Rio Marafion, or Amazon. The
German missionary, in 1932, found he could not approach the
strange "white Indians". They were shy, timid and furtive and met
the forest Indians at the edge of a lake deep in the forests, where
they bartered. Fray Juan Lucero, who heard of them in 1681,
called them die Gurveros, and said they had for King a descendant
of the Inca Tupac Amaru, who, with 40,000 Inca Peruvians, fled
far away, eastwards of Cuzco, through the unexplored woods, away
from the cruel Spanish conquistadores. He the friar seems to
identify them with the other mysterious white race of El Gran
Paytiti, who were ruled by a "Tiger-King" (Paytiti meaning jaguar),
in a "white house" by a great lake. This is a very moot point, and
I shall say more of this Paytiti mystery, in a following book. Tupac
took with him a rich treasure which two rival bands of GastiUan
banditti, in Peni, got wind of and decided to pursue Tupac and his
Inca Indians. The bands met and fought to the death in the forests,
the survivors being finished off by die savage Ghuncho Indians.
Father Lucero says he had himself seen plates, half-moons and ear-
rings of gold brought from this mysterious nation.

It is curious and may be a more than accidental coincidence,
that this sign of a half-moon figures among the inscriptions on the
monuments in the abandoned Brazilian prehistoric city.

A colony of these white and bearded Indians, long before the
time of the Inca empire, fortified an island in Lake Titicaca, where
they were exterminated by the pre-Inca chief Gari of the Golloas,
which had migrated to Peril from old Mexico.

Another of these old Adantean cities was visited by Fray Pedro
Gieza de Leon, Spanish soldier-monk, who died in A.D. 1560. It
was called Guamanaga, and is and was located on the great cordillera
in lat. 12 59' S., long. 73 59' W. Gieza was tremendously im-
pressed by the great edifices he saw there, all in ruins.

"Who built them?" he asked the natives.

"A bearded, white people, like you Spaniards/' said a cacique.

"They came to these parts many ages before the Incas began
to reign and formed a setdement here. . . . They do not seem to
, me Inca buildings ; for they are square, not long and narrow. It
is also reported that certain letters were found on a tile in these
buildings. . . . The Indians also speak of bearded white men in
the island of Titicaca.'' (Cicza de Leon.)

As travellers know, the native and aboriginal races of South
America are a beardless race! It is remarkable that one of die

in th mvsterious dead citv of Tiahuanacu

78
- 8

*-H
CJ Tf

O

DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL 4$

wore a beard always the mark of a very ancient race in South
America, until the coming of the Spanish conquistadores.
Says Cieza de Leon :

"in the greater island that was swampy (palude), in Lake
Titicaca, the Colloa chieftain came across ^rtiite people with
beards (or whiskers), whom he fought in such a manner that
he killed them all."

That extermination of a South American, pre-Columbian,
white race occurred many centuries before the first Inca emperor
of the Sun held sway in old Quito and Guzco. It is probable that
descendants of this white empire exist, today > in more than one part
of unexplored Brazil, and among the Andean outliers, in regions
ridh with gold, on the confines of the Amazon's headwaters. A chance
encounter if it be chance that guides, seekers towards a solution of
ancient mysteries! made in what used to be the "yellow-jack"
port of Ecuador, threw (for the author of this book) the first light
on this riddle of a very old world of America.

In 1932 I was waiting for a steamer of the Grace Line, calling
at the port of Guayaquil, Ecuador, when I met a Colombian,
native of Medellin, who told me a very strange story about a lost
world of this kind. He shook with malaria, and his body was badly
emaciated, but what most impressed me about this sallow man was
the fixed gaze from his dark bloodshot eyes the stare of one who
had seen a vision of the unknown and was mastered by the awe and
mystery of what he had seen. According to my informant he had
been a member of an expedition led by a mysterious German doctor
of science or philosophy, who hailed from Hamburg. In the year
1926, or 1927, this expedition had quitted Obidos, in Brazil, bound
for an unknown country in the Brazilian sertao. After many days,
they found themselves in canoes well up a tributary of the Rio Negro,
on the way to an Amazon tributary's headwaters territory. I gathered
that this expedition was somewhere on the unknown borders of
North- Western Brazil and Southern Venezuela, or the upper Orinoco
country.

The man of Medellin was purposely vague in his topo-
graphy, and for a good reason : gold had been found, and a lot of
gold) too! He mentioned various tribes of Indids bravos (wild and
unpacifiable Indians) whose territories they touched. Tribes such
as the Uapes, Guaipunyos, Metas, the Cirecois, the Eperemenos,
and the redoubtable Garibs whom not even the early conquistadores
were able to subdue; and my own knowledge of certain dark by*
ways of South American history made me suspect that he had
somehow got into a mysterious country once traversed by an Inca
Way, leading through territories of pygmies and "white Indians'*

5O MYSTERIES OP ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

towards Quito. (It may be still used, today, and by the same
mysterious, white "Indians'* mentioned in this book*) It was in this
very region that the far from mythical women warriors of South
America the white and beautiful Amazons, women of the oldest
race of European and Mediterranean navigators, the Carians
had one of their colonial empires, as late as Sir Walter Raleigh's day.
But the Colombian said nothing of them.

"After we quitted the rivers, seflor Inglese, the landscape
changed. No more green hells of verdure and lofty forest aisles
where gloom and death lie waiting at the feet of giant trees.
We left that inferno verde behind, and the country began to
ascend. In a land of dry scrub, with few brooks or springs, we
left far behind us, too, the booming drums of the wild Indians
we never saw, who were signalling our passing through their
territories. I noticed, one day, that all deer and wild animals
we met fled from us at sight. It looked as if they feared some-
thing in this mysterious country something unknown. This was
many days after the last vestiges of the forest had faded into the
dim, blue distance far back towards the Amazon. Then,
one day, we came on a strange, stone object shrouded in
bush and creepers. It was a stone monument, looking like
this, senor . . ."

The Colombian dipped his finger in his glass of aguardiente and
drew a diagram on the dirty table in the wharf bodega. The shape
was like a cut through the shorter axis of an ellipse.

"Our leader, the German doctor, said it was an ancient
pyramid, and began to look around for inscriptions, ancient
writing, or what he called hieroglificos. . . . Some weeks later,
I remember, we stood in a deep gorge through which raced a
tumultuous current of deep, crystal waters, pure as though
newly born from the snows of the giant Andes. Looking up,
our leader, glancing through his Zeiss binoculars, pointed out
to us, where, far up on the farther wall of the cafion, an ancient
paved road ran. It cleft a wall of the upper cliff, from which it
issued, and then it came to an abrupt end on the shelf of a pre-
cipice, as if, in a far day, some giant earthquake had toppled
the rest of the road into boulders of the stream bed we stood
gazing at.

"We camped in the gorge and spent some days explor-
ing, A week later, we built a bridge across the gorge, by felling
a tree growing on our side, and passed over to explore the
ancient road. It was well paved with finely masoned and
squared blocks of a stone, hard as granite. We followed the road

DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL 5!

into a long tunnel cut through the cliff-walls, and, once in the
sunlight, found ourselves on the hither side of a tremendous
gulf, on the dim floor of which, far below, we faintly discerned
some strange objects like queer buildings of no sort we had ever
seen before. The paved way went ever climbing up the side of
the precipices and, at last, brought us to where we could look
down into another tremendous gorge or ravine. What we saw
here took our breath away. ... A dead city of towering palaces,
splendid ruins, temples, with more of the carved pillars and
strange pyramids, mostly covered up with ages of trees and
jungle. There were magnificent gardens where stood broken
and agid fountains which once must have spouted with cool
waters. Below us was an ancient wall, so high up, that trees of
the forests below barely reached its summit. We walked further
along the ancient way and came to where two queer thin

towers, one shaped like the " (he meant the virile member)

"the other .had a top like a pear very rounded at the base.
Close by, at the foot of two other walls were many small stone
houses. . . .

"Here we ambushed and caught a dwarfish man, about
four feet tall, with very red eyes. He had a thick bushy
beard that reached below his waist, but his arm muscles were
fat and big. Round his waist was a queer leather belt with gold
* pure gold buckles of some sort. Otherwise, he was nearly nude.
We met others of these pygmy men, and all had a most sickly
sort of white skin. . . . Yes, seKor, white as yours, and not like an
Indian's or a greaser's ! It was the white of old yellowed ivory.
. . . We found they had women and they with beautiful faces,
long hair, and either red or bluish eyes. They, too, were nude
and their hair reached almost to their feet. The German said
they were Greek in type ancient Greek. They wore gold brace-
lets on their arms, and gold necklets. But their strange red
eyes shone like a jaguar's in the firelight. What scared them
were the reports of our guns. They'd never seen such things
before."

The man of Medellin and you may believe his story, or not
told me that he and the others explored a great pyramid-temple
whose interior fairly blazed with gold. It sheathed the pillars, the
roofs and the walls. Strange letters were engraved on the gold plates.
Some parts of the dead city were inaccessible. In fact, it would seem
that only the suburbs of the dead city were entered by the roamers.
The white men with the red eyes had become degenerate like
Mr. H. G. Wells' Morlocks in the Time Machine. If they were not
merely degenerate descendants of some very ancient and civilised
South American race, then may be, said the German leader to my

52 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

Colombian informant, they were the remains of a helot class of
the same race. They lived on goat's flesh, cheese and milk. Qy,ien
sabe? said my informant.*

"In some of the pyramid-temples we entered, we saw deep,
blue-veined marble altars (?) stained with ancient blood, or
rust (?). Perhaps of ancient sacrifices, or, may be, of some
horrible cult of the decayed remnants of this very ancient civilisa-
tion. . . . But the gold, seHor, not even the Incas had so much to
hide when Don Francisco Pizarro killed the Emperor Atahu-
alpha. High overhead, there were alcoves or galleries actually
stuffed with splendid gold objects, vessels, chains, chalices, in-
signia, and shields and plates engraved with the strange hiero-
glifoos. Some of these plates were three or four inches thick all
solid gold, tons kilogrammes of it, sefior. I took one of the
gold knives in one of the temples. Eight or ten of them had been
attached to one of the pillars. The hilts and the blades were
marvellously chased and engraved, as by the finest goldsmiths
ever known. Looking up, in another splendid ruined stone
building, which cut into the side of a hill, I staggered with
amazement to see eight glorious suns, of pure, shining, blazing
gold from which rays were made to shine out like stars. Groups
of handsome men, beautiful women, naked youths and maidens
were carved on the walls of this mausoleum, and over their
heads and shoulders, like the halo or nimbus round the head of the
Virgin, and the Saints or God, shone stars or moons of pure,
shining gold. Chains hung down from the alcoves and pillars,
and friezes were inscribed with the strange signs in rows. . . .
Did I tell you, senor, that each of the dwarfs in the outskirts of
this dead city, living either in tunnels, or rooms in the rock, or
the little stone houses we saw, carried a long curved knife of
pure gold? It was not valued here. I could tell you a lot more
. . . especially about a queer sort of lock, like a stick with 9 rings,
each ring forming one of the queer letters or hieroglificos, which
we found on a gold chain in one of the queer pyramids. Appar-
ently, you turned it to form a combination to open or lock the

fetters "

s

* A little-known race of white "Indians'*, styled los Paria, live in a village significantly
called Atlan, somewhere in the virgin forests between the Rio Apure and the Orinoco. They
have traditions about a cataclysm which destroyed their ancient Fatherland, in Brazil, and
also of a large island in the eastern ocean where dwelt a rich and civilised race (Atlantis?).
They have never mingled with the Venezuelan Indians, but their women being white and
beautiful, were often seized by surrounding caciques and taken into harems ! The Spanish
chroniclers of old Santa Fe* de Bogota, where was located the audicncia governing these
vast territories, say that these women were kept in a strict purdah of half -darkness, all
their lives, and, like Welsh pit ponies, became blind. Sefior H. B. Nunez, the well-known
archaeologist of Caracas, says great monoliths, incised with hieroglyphics, and carved
pillars of ruins, are found in the forests of the little-known Orinoco headwaters of Venezuela.
One day, I may repeat, these ruins wiB be explored and startling and revolutionary facts
about the great white race of ancient niters of South America will coma to light.

DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL 53

I gathered that the members of the expedition took as much
gold as they could when they quitted the Lost World city ; and that,
on their way out this heavy burden led to the death, at the hands of
hostile, North Brazilian Indids, of more than three-quarters of the
members.

So much for the stories of the existence of strange white people,
today handsome bearded men and beautiful white, nude women
with symmetrical Greek features in the unknown sertSo of the
central Matto Grosso and the Brazilian highlands, and northwards
and north-westwards in the mountains beyond the headwaters of
the Amazon and its tributaries.

One must now return to the strange story told by the A.D. 1743-
1753 bandeiristas of Minas Geraes and Bahia.

A few months after the remarkable Manuscript of their Relatorio
had again come to light, in 1841, in the former royal archives in
Rio de Janeiro, a certain Senhor Conego Benigno Jos6 de Garvalho
e Cunha, a canon and professor of a theological college in Bahia,
conceived the idea of using his three months' annual vacation to
seek this abandoned city of the bandeiristas of A.D. 1750. Whether or
not the canon's motives were purely archaeological does not really
matter. He was destined to experience the hardships that have
usually attended the exertions of men seeking to advance the bounds
of knowledge and receiving little more than tepid encouragement
and fine, florid words from governmental and administrative
authorities.

Benigno carefully studied the bandeiristas Relatorio, and about
this time he met a seventy-three-year-old man, in a village in a
remote part of the province of Minas Geraes, who had journeyed
into the wild and unknown region of the Brazilian sertdo.

Scoffers abounded in the canon's day, as they do now. Says he,
with justice:

"There have not been wanting people who have ridiculed
my diligence in this affair. They say the Relatorio of 1753 is fabul-
ous; but I find it impossible to discover any reason of self-glori-
fication and self-interest that could stimulate the invention of
such a piece of fiction. The story has been written by rude,
unlettered men, without order or sequence, just as it came back
to their memory.'*

Benigno comments on the caracteres gregos ou runnos (Greek
letters, or "runes", copied, about A.D. 1750, by these bandeiristas,
from the stone walls and vaults of the dead city. I shall state my
conclusions about these remarkable inscriptions later in this book.)
But what puzzled the canon is the mystery which has led to the
loss of many lives including, perhaps, three well-known Eaglisfc

54 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

explorers in the year 1926. . . . Just where does this abandoned city
of gold and mystery lie? It is the Brazilian Golden Manoa of 1944!
Says the canon :

"I note that the 1753 adventurers descended a river that
runs in front of the abandoned city, and, in nine days of hard
marching, reached a cataract. They wrote their story immedi-
ately after their coming down the rios Paraguassti and Unna,
in the province of Bahia."

He arrived at the conclusion that the dead city of gold and
mystery lay behind the unknown Serra do Cincord in the sertdo
of the province of Bahia. . . .

"That is the highest and most inaccessible range in the
interior of the province of Bahia. It burns with crystals set in.
great rocks of the cliffs. Always, a thick mist covers it until noont
On the northern side, a zigzag tromba (a paved way of ancien.
date) climbs to the summit, and one can reach it in three hours
That way has been hewn by force of human arms, and not by
Nature. Today (the year 1841), the people of this village of
Cincora have neither resolution nor vigour enough to explore
the unknown country of this serra. On the left bank of a river,
called the Brago da* X, a league and a half from the tromba,
must be located desta antiga cidade (this ancient city of the dead).
I need money to hire men and mules, for a forced march of
io~ii leagues, from a little village to the road of the tromba,
at whose summit I hope to sight the walls of the abandoned
city."

The rains, however, came on, and made all tracks impassable.
So the canon had to content himself with interviewing the people
in a little village, called Valena, located on the edge of die unknown
Serra do Cincord. A cattle-dealer told the canon that he had once
penetrated to the cataract called the Bra$o da X:*

"but according to this statement I knew that, to the east
the dead city was hidden in woods, and that he did not dare
to penetrate the wilds. When he climbed above the waterfalls,

* AUTHOR'S NOTE : I have made a slight elision in place-names in this narrative for
reasons that I deem sufficient. The bandeirista of 2743-53 does not mention the name of
the cataract in this connection. In his Rdatorio, he says his comrades reached the catadupa, '
or cataract, in three days' journey down the river. Toe nine days' journey seems to have
taken place on a different occasion; when the baiukiristas split up and made an overland
trip, till they reached the wide lagoon, where they saw the ''white Indians" in a canoe. A
Hp, like this, would cause an appreciable error in replotting the ba*d*4n*tas' probable
course and distance from a known river.

DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL 55

*

to the Brago da X river, he found that the Brago da X water-
fall dashes tumultuously down from that high cataract by
different channels (boccas), with great roaring of waters, and
spreads out into various peninsulas, which are covered with
verdure ; and that, on its eastern bank are many and very deep
mines, some with gaping openings in the rocks of the mountains
(abtrtas em penhas), that formed an arched vault (or arched
roofs : abobada) underneath which he travelled to the beginning
of the plain (piano) ; and then came to a stop, at an unfathom-
able cavern (furna) or pit. He told me of a phenomenon he saw
in those workings (socavoes) : a horrible noise is emitted from its
mouths. He attributed it to the presence of a great quantity of
gold and silver that it contains. And the reason for this pheno-
menon is very clear : these gold mines stretch under the bed of
the river, and have been broken down and caused to subside, in
the lapse of time, weight and the movement of the waters. The
water enters by the cavernous holes that the river forms in all
that extensive basin, after its tranquil flowing, and suddenly
impels the air with violence. It shoots out from these caves by
the mouths of the mine- workings, roaring like a tremendous
cannon-shot."

The canon adds that he has been told that, through the un-
explored forests, hiding the city of the dead from the summit of the
mountains, there have been cut ancient lanes (picadas antigas),
"opposite to the paved road found by the bandeiristas, and which
led them to the ancient city of the dead". The cattle-dealer said
he estimated it would take the canon fifty days to go arid fifty to
return, with pack-mules. "If I hire mules and a guide, the cattle-
dealer is ready to accompany me, about November I, 1841."

Old men, in villages of this part of the sertdo of Bahia, had told
the canon of traditions about an ancient city, under a mountain,
that had been overwhelmed by an earthquake, and a flood. "He
who went there never returned ... a long and perilous journey,
beset with serpents and jaguars (oncas) . . ."

"And there are savages, not wild (mansos), who went with
me, two days above the rapids of the river which runs in front
of the city of the dead, and they told me of all this. I resolved to
raise a troop of armed Indians, in the village of San Fidelis,
who will remain with me on that road."

But money was wanted to finance the canon's search, and, at
that day, money flowed to, not from the Royal and Imperial Govern-
ment in BJo ! A scientific institute in Rio de Janeiro appealed to the
General Assembly to provide the canon with a subvention, but all

56 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

they seat him were the most charming good wishes and promises
to operate matlana.

Nevertheless, the canon was a man of courage and energy. In
his veins, ecclesiastic as he might be by social accident, ran the blood
of the older Lusitanian stock of the great age of Henry the Navi-
gator, and not a spirit engendered by canna. His ancestors had not
mixed their European blood with the rather timid or docile strain of
Tupi, or Guarani.

On December 23, 1841, after the rains had ended, the worthy
canon, on his vacation, started out from Bahia city, on the trail for
the dead city of the bandeirantes of 1753. A month later, he hitched
the bridle-rein of his horse to a post of afaztnda whose owner knew
the region of forest, scrub and chapada and serra for which the canon
was bound. The fa&ndeiro, it was true, owned that he had never
heard of this abandoned city of the dead ; but somebody else told
the canon about a colony of runaway blacks escaped slaves or
samboes in that region, who might be reckoned on to bar any gold
seekers' way to the dead city. But something else now arose to bar
the canon's way to riches and renown.

The procrastinating Government sent no funds for the canon's
exploration trip, and the local governor refused his aid . . .

"I hired a horse to ascend to the barra of the rio Parassusinho.
I had them burn the scrub and the catingas (undergrowth) so as
to kill off the horrible ticks who plague travellers in these wilds.
I hired a guide and was about to ride towards the catadupa
(cataract), and, thence, go on to the coquUombo (log hut) of the
fugitive blacks, when a malignant fever seized me and brought
me to death's door."

The luckless canon lay ill for five months. Fevers developed into
pleurisies. As soon as he could sit up in his room, at the/0#wfo, or
manor-house of the farm, he sent out two negroes with orders to
explore the wilderness; and, in fifteen days, they returned with a
story about an abyss (sumidouro) from which the river gushed forth.
But they had seen no cataract such as the cattle-dealer had found.
(This cataract was one of the landmarks of the banddristas of 1743-

1753)-

All round was dense forest. The blacks went on to a place called
Timbo, on the Rio Grande, where they met travellers who told an
odd story about the sert&o (interior) of the Cincor country.

"These men, bound for a wedding, had opened a new horse,
or mule track by which they came to Cincord. Last March 1841,
they had reached the Geraes, where there is an old highway from
the interior, and they lodged on the slopes of the hills (nwros),

DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL 57

leaving their baggage, horses and mules, below, and saw a good
road by which they might ascend the hills, noting the crystals
* on the face of the rocks. They went on foot to the top, and
observed that the road was furnished with snares for wild beasts
(murdtos). Arrived at the summit, they saw, in the distance, about
a league away, a great city, in which a drum beat, and in the
hour of the Ave Maria, they saw ascend from it many fireworks
(or rockets \foguetes) ; they withdrew, and when they arrived at
the rancho, alone, they met the packhorses, and the negroes
had burnt all their clothes and provisions. They again took the
road and did not come near any game when they reached the
Gincord; so that, in truth, they had died of hunger if they had
not reached that place."

The canon gathered, from what these men told him, that the
fugitive blacks had made themselves "lords of the abandoned city",
behind the mountain-tops, and kept all others away from it. He made
one more appeal for financial help from a learned society in Rio de
Janeiro. There were good Samaritans who had helped him when he
lay sick in the remote fa&nda. He wanted to pay them back. "I
plan/ 5 he added, "to set off, again, on September 15, 1842," but
feared that the blacks in the coquilombo would prevent his own
negroes from penetrating beyond the serra, and would prevent him
from examining the ancient monuments in the abandoned city. . . .
He ends with a piteous plea. The aura of misfortune, blasting the
bodies and withering the hopes of seekers long before and long after
the canon's day, had emanated from the dead city of mystery and
gold. It had lighted on the canon of Bahia, even as it had descended
and would descend on many others long before and after that day,
August 20, 1842:

"I beg the authorities for a loan to satisfy my worthy creditors,
seeing that, out of my slender income, I have already spent over
200,000 reis. I want only to bring the affair to an end. I used the
money of the Institute in Rio almost entirely for the purchase of
saddle and pack-horses, two of which were of no use to me ; for
the horse died of plague and the mule broke its back. God keep
you for many years !"

However, the worthy canon was not to reach the dead city. The
old gods of the land had spoken. The fevers and the pleurisies wasted
him away to a skeleton, and for many weeks he lay at death's
door in the room at \htfazenda on the edge of the trackless forests.
When he recovered, he was overwhelmed by financial difficulties,
and to his appeal for help the authorities in Rio, as before, returned
only promises.

58 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

Yet was the canon luckier than many others in this adventure.
For they lost life as well as treasure.

And that is the last one hears of the canon of Bahia and his un-
lucky attempt to locate and penetrate to the lost city of the ban-
deiristas. Today, in 1945, the Serra do Sincord, wherein the canon
believed the dead city, which might have been 60,000 years old,
was located, is surrounded by dense forests through which picadas,
or tracks, lead to open glades. Sincord, which may be reached on a
branch of the Bahia South- Western Railway, is a place of weeds,
dirt and decay. Like one of the ghost towns of Nevada and Cali-
fornia, it once hummed with wickedness and colourful black-
guardism and activities which was when it was the centre of
diamond diggings.

It does not seem ever to have struck the canon that it was a pro-
blem like unto the riddle of the Children of Israel wandering for
forty years in a peninsula the size of New Jersey, to account for the
fact that the bandeiristas, starting out in 1743, contrived to end up,
ten years later, in a place so comparatively near their starting-point
as the interior of Bahia province. Might not the bandeirantes have
struck the dead city at a place farther to the west, or south-west,
in the unknown sertdo of Brazil?

That was certainly the opinion of expeditions in the more
scientific nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There was the famous
Krupps of Essen German armament makers for example. They
supposed that it was in the western province of the Matto Grosso
that tfce dead city lay. In the igoos, they organised a large expedi-
tion of armed men, guides, Indians, pack-animals, transport
financed to the tune of 100,000. It was one of the finest expedi-
tions ever started into the unknown of Brazil ; but, at its approach,
the wild Indians vanished into thin air, reappearing only at night,
and revealing their dangerous presence by showers of poisoned
arrows, discharged from the dense bush. By day, the distant drums
of the "bush telegraph" beat, smoke signals announced afar the
presence of white strangers. Many of these Indi6s bravos of the Matto
Grosso arc cannibals and head-hunters, some of whom see better in
the dark than a prowling feline. Bleak foothills of the chapada and
the barren scrub of the catinga, and miles of marsh and swamp bar
the way to the "White Mountains", where, say the Indians, live a
race of superior white beings. The geologist Troussart says this wild
region was one of the first to emerge from the primaeval floods of the
Miocene Age, of the Tertiary epoch. It is about the oldest land on
the globe.

However, what beat the Krupp expedition was not the Indians,
or the bush dangers ; but the fact that their men and animals could
not live on the country. Commissariat beat them !

My friend, Admiral Bertram Chambers, C.B., who spent many

DEAD CITIES OF ANCIENT BRAZIL 59

years on the South American station, in the British Navy, and has
travelled extensively in South America, raises a point that I had
better deal with here. He writes me that, when he was in Perii,
he was shown, by a physician, photographs of Indians of that state,
and of the Andean regions, who were white albinoes. May not these
elusive white Indians of Brazil and the Amazon headwaters' territory
be albinoes, he asks?

The answer is JVO !

The old British buccaneers of Sawkins' and Barty Sharp's day
knew of white Indians with blue eyes and auburn hair. They said
they were "moon-eyed" and could see in the dark. I here cite a
curious passage from an unpublished MS. except in a book of
mine, here quoted of the late seventeenth century, which MS. is
in my possession. It was written in 1683 by an unknown buccaneer :

"They have among them (the Panama Indians) them they
call Doctors, that can raise the Divill at their Pleasure; they
knew of our comeing, and att what time we should be their".
(Extract from the MS. of an unnamed lower-deck man aboard
the buccaneering ship of Captain Coxon, in the Spanish Main,
and off the coast of "Castillo del Oro," in the years 1680-2.
It is cited from a MS. published in my book : Panorama of (South
and Central American) Treasure Hunting, published by E. P. Duttoii
and Co., Inc., of New York City, in 1940. It is the earliest
reported case of the existence of the "bush telegraph" in unknown
Panama. Author.)

Short, in his North Americans of Antiquity, says that among the
Menominee, Dakota, Mandan, and Zuni (North American Indians)
were many with auburn hair and blue eyes, and with a prevailing
white tint of skin. The queer, Lancandones Indids, on the borders of
Western Guatemala and the bush of Chiappas, Mexico's frontier
state, are also white, though degenerate and dwarfish. May be, they,
too, are survivors of a once ruling white race of South and Central
America. I here subjoin a passage from a monograph of mine on
American "white Indiaas" :

Theories are various about these "white Indians" of unknown
Darien. The buccaneers of Wafer's day spoke of their milk-white
skins covered with short down. They said they saw best in the
moonlight, and ran skipping round like wild bucks. Among the
Cunos Indians live Indians with reddish hair and grey eyes . . .
"Entre ellos los albinos no son raros, y algunos hombres de piel
casi blanca y cabello rojo dan testimonio del paso frecuente y
larga permanencia de los piratas por aquellos lugeres". (So,
Ramon M. Valdes). ("And among them albinoes are not rare,

60 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

arid some men of skin nearly white and red hair give testimony
to the frequent passage and long sojourn of pirates in those
places".)

But suppose these degenerate white men are the survivors of
a lost colony of old Atlantean Hy-Brazil? A colony established
near Palenque, by the wise man Quetzalcoatl of Hy-Brazil,
whom a catastrophe of nature may have prevented returning
from Brazil? Qyien sabe, senores?

CHAPTER III

JUNGLK LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF

"The dead also look on and help."

D. H. LAWRENCE.

Now, as we peer into this mysterious ancient world of South America,
let us once more consider the strange "runic" set of inscriptions
as the worthy conego (canon) of Bahia would have called them, quite
erroneously which the bandeiristas of A.D. 1750 found engraved on
the great sealed flagstone, sealed with the cement of immemorial
time and weathering. As we see, they could not, using all their
strength and the tools and weapons at their command, lever up one
inch even of the end of the flagstones sealing vaults of what they
believed to be either strange talismans, or treasures. Here, again,
are these bizarre and incredibly ancient signs, at least 30,000 and
probably even 60,000 years old, so incredibly ancient is South
American civilisation and so far are men, posing as authorities
thereon, from realising the truth, instead of maintaining hoary
fallacies :*

Signs in the dead city of Brazil.
I have been able to find only two ancient Asiatic letters in any

* See Chapter V for comparative study of the unknown, South American Atlantean
inscriptions.

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 6l

way corresponding to two, only, of these strange signs. They
arc:

KANHBRI INSCRIPTIO
TIBETAN (India, c. 877 B.C.)

Value : ta. Value : da. Value : tt.

What is the origin of these queer signs? What is their meaning?
Let us see how far we can cast a ray of light into the dark mystery
of thousands of years. (Why I say Asiatic will soon appear.) The
light will come from a youthful experience in the life of a famous
Englishman who has recently himself become a mystery of Brazil's
unknown wilds.

One morning, in the year 1893, a young British officer a
gunner-lieutenant stationed at Trincomalee, Ceylon, was taking
his annual leave, starting out, accompanied only by a jungle- wallah,
on a trip into a wild and little-known part of this mysterious and
romantic island of strange secrets. Its jungles and mountains are as
mysterious, today, as in the time of M. Annaeus Seneca, the Roman
rhetor, father of the more famous Seneca, the philosopher, who
wrote: "Beyond India is the island of Taprobane, the end of the
world; after which begins eternal night."

The young officer was keenly interested in archaeology, and
accustomed to long tramps and solitary journeys into places remote
even from native jungle tracks. Two days later, while he was en-
gaged in researches of an ethnological and botanical character, he
was overtaken, deep in the forest, by a storm of such violence and
tropical downpour, that he soon saw that he and the wallah would
have to spend the whole night under the trees. The terrific intensity
of the lightning flashes, searing the black darkness in which not
even a bird rustled or monkey chattered, served merely to show that
he had completely lost his way. All night, he and the scared jungle-
wallah cowered in the shelter of trees and bushes, drenched to the
skin, while the incessant thunder rolled in crashing reverberations
which made the silence of the forest even more eerie. Towards dawn,
the tempest began to let up, and the tattered clouds wisped across
the sky; but a hot, white and clammy ground mist hid the sur-
roundings. Slowly it cleared away, and then the officer started in
astonishment and some awe. Here, deep in the old home of the
mysterious gods of ancient Seleidiva, the unknown was unveiling

62 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

itself* He found himself confronting an immense rock, covered with
parasites and lianas. A tendril of one of the creepers had fallen aside
and disclosed what looked to be some very ancient inscriptions of
quite unknown character and meaning. The wallah started to cut
away the clinging vines and then the young officer saw that the
ancient rock was indeed covered with unknown inscriptions, in
very large characters, which seemed to be letters of an alphabet,
or a syllabary, or glyphs, more than half as old as Time himself.

He took a copy of the inscriptions, and when he got back to
civilisation, again, eagerly questioned a learned Sinhalese priest,
who said that the writing was a form of Asoka, of the old Asoka-
Buddhists, and in a cypher which only those ancient priests under-
stood. This assertion, ten years and more later, was repeated by a
Sinhalese scholar in the Oriental Institute at Oxford, who added the
not very comprehensible statement, that he, the scholar, was the
only man living who could read the strange inscriptions, but that
even so, he would need to visit the rock himself, and take a careful
rubbing, because "the meaning of the characters would be changed
in accord with the incidence of the sun's rays, at certain times of the
day". Even after reading, die cypher would need to be decoded,
said the palaeographer.

(In actual fact, or what the Sinhalese palaeographer averred
was the case, the bizarre inscriptions record the cacheing, in a time
of great dearth, or famine, of an immense treasure laid under the
great, mossy, time-worn boulder. The cache must be thousands of
years old.)

Twenty-two years passed by, and the young gunner-officer had
become a distinguished colonel and D.S.O. Colonel P. H. Fawcett
well known all over South America for his services in the cause
of science and his expert work in the very difficult task of delimiting
frontiers in the wilds of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil. In 1925
Colonel Fawcett, accompanied by his son Jack, and a young camera-
man, Raleigh Rimell, the son of a retired British naval officer, set
out from Guyaba, the frontier town in the province of Rondonia,
of the Matto Grosso (Great Woods) of Brazil, on the trail of a dead "
city, of unknown age, in the mountains of Brazil, on whose walls
and pillars and porticoes had been found inscriptions, fourteen out of
twenty-four characters of which are identical with those he had
accidentally discovered, more than thirty years before, in the jungle-
forest of Ceylon.

From that time, in April and May 1925, there have come out of
these unexplored jungles and chapadas of Brazil little more than ru-
mours and legends about the unknown fate of the Fawcett expedition.
True, they are rumours that rustle among the leaves of the Brazilian
forests like ghostly whispers heard beneath and among the trees of a
"haunted wood'' on All Hallowe'en, but now and again, at rare

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 63

intervals, the careful listener hears an authentic echo of the sound of
o a living voice.

The Sinhalese priests and the Orientalist at Oxford spoke of
a "secret Asoka cypher" ; but this chapter tries to prove that those
strange writings syllabary rather than hieroglyphs, and assuredly
not Amero-Indian pictographs are something far more remarkable
than even hieratic cypher-script if it be that of an esoteric,
Hindu cult.

The next person known to have reached the dead city of the old
bandeiristas if we except the ubiquitous and often courageous and
devoted mission priests and monks of the Jesuit order was a
British officer, former British Consul-General in Rio. He was Lieuten-
ant-Colonel O'Sullivan (referred to infra),, and had acquired old
Portuguese documents, either from the Biblioteca Nacional, the
repository of the former Lusitanian viceroys' archives, or from Faw-
cett direct. O'Sullivan,* accompanied by a Brazilian-Indian guide,
set out for the unknown serra, but in order to put inquisitive trackers
off his trail, gave out that he was merely a garimpeiro, or diamond-
digger bound for some old diamond- workings. That was in 1913,
and O'Sullivan had been given, by Colonel Fawcett, a nearly blank
map in which he was to fill in his route through this part of the
Bahian sertdo, where our worthy canon came to grief, in 1840. In
1921 Fawcett used his route map and it was so accurate that, alone
without even a guide, he penetrated to this dead city. He subse-
quently wrote to a friend in Rio :

"I went alone; for I knew I should have much less need to
fear the Indians, who will not attack a man alone who meets
them fairly. I reached the catinga in the serra, northwards of
Bahia . . . and in the midst of primaeval woods, stood before a
mass of jumbled ruins. The city had been a walled one of
ancient date. Here, wreathed in jungle and bush there stood a
giant monolith crowned by a weather-worn figure, carved in
stone . . ."

Colonel Fawcett, however, never indicated its location, as I
have done here, and said very little about what he saw. It would
also appear that Fawcett did not identify this dead city with the one
he was seeking when, in 1925, he set out into the unknown wilds of
the Matto Grosso, and was lost about the region between the Rios
Xingu and Tapajos. He makes some very interesting remarks about
these dead cities which must indicate their tremendous age. He
says: !

* O'Sullivan died in hospital at Belem, of cancer. He was a healthy man. Others who
have gone on the trail of these dead cities have died of mysterious diseases, or been stricken
with inexplicable blindness, or met dire misfortune. May be, it would be a case of post hoc
ergo propUr hoc to suggest anything more.

64 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

"There was no jungle against which the walls of these ancient
cities served as defence. Those walls must have acted as break-
waters in a far-off day when the sea reached far inland. The
openings in their walls are arched, filled in with masonry
and have no doors. So they feared no attack from any jungle,
but from encroachments of the sea. Each city was destroyed
by an earthquake. . . . All the Indian tribes in South America
have traditions of their ancestors being ruled by men of a
white race, very far advanced in the arts of civilisation."

The amazing, possible age of these dead cities of the Brazilian
highlands is suggested in what the German geologist, Friedrich
Katzer, says:

"The old highlands of Brazil must once have extended east-
wards into the Atlantic, and were largely built of materials
derived from the destruction of a drowned Atlantic land. ..."

Professor J. W. Gregory, the distinguished geographer who
was drowned in the rapids of the Upper Urubamba river, in 1932,
when he was putting the seal to his life-long work : the discovery of
the age at which the Andes uprose from the bed of the Pacific, said,
years ago, though he was not referring to these lost- world theories :

"The wide, lowland plains, in S. America, were doubtless
once occupied by the sea, which then divided this continent into
two distinct parts, or lands. These lowland plains hold the basins
of the Amazon, the Orinoco, and the La Plata." (Vide: Geo-
graphy : Structure, Physical and Comparative.)

I have mentioned above the two attempts of the Germans to
find these dead cities of Hy-Brazil. The first, sponsored by Krupps
of Essen, lost many animals and much transport at the hands of the
wild Indians of die Matto Grosso ; but it was, as I said, commissariat,
in a land where white men and mules, or tough burros in a large
expedition cannot live on the country, that really beat them and
their characteristically thorough organisation. Doktor Eckener also
proposed to by-pass the difficulties by flying over the appalling
territory in his Graf %eppelin previously used, it is now admitted,
to photograph military details of London's defences.

Colonel Fawcett believed he might succeed where a highly
organised expedition would fail. He had good reasons for thinking
so ; for no man knew and had greater personal experiences of the
dangerous tribes who bar the road to these dead cities of Brazil.
Fawcett had also pioneering visions of a new Kenya colony type of
pastoral state being set up on these highlands of the Matto Grosso.

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 65

He had a remarkable knowledge of the arcana of South American
, pre-bistory. Books of wonderfully executed hieroglyphic paintings,
he said ^quoting von Humboldt's story of Narcissus Gilbar, the
white friar), were found among naked savages in the Peruvian
montana, at Ucayle, near the Amazon headwaters. The ancient
Peruvians, as Jesuit missioners discovered, used both painting and
characters ; and all over South and Central America are traditions
of white-bearded men who, in the persons of Quetzalcoatl and
Bochicha, taught laws, agriculture and religion to primitive races,
who said these men came from the east.* The dresses pictured on
bas-reliefs in the dead cities in Brazil were, he said, found on totem-
poles in British Columbia, and in unknown parts of Amazonas
there were tribes actually worshipping Wodan, or Odin, god of
magic and war and no archaeologist can explain why this is so !
(I have offered a solution of these enigmas, in a chapter following.)
But as Colonel Fawcett more than once pointed out, in his lecture
given, in 1911, before the Royal Geographical Society in London,
nothing will ever be found out by pottering about among debased
savages (contaminated by white men's vices) in the known rivers.
To solve these riddles and effect a revolution in our ideas of whence
arose civilisation perhaps, in the so-called New World, in the
highlands of Brazil, thousands of years ago, rather than in the Old
World, so-called, of Europe and Asia the explorer must follow the
hard path of the pioneer, live on the country, eschew luxuries,
emulate the hardy Portuguese bandeiristas. He believed that English-
men, "perhaps the race most respected of any in South America",
would lead the way in this new advance of the human spirit. (The
late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, present at this lecture, gained from it
the inspiration for his entertaining novel: The Lost World: the
Adventures of Professor Challenger.}

It is pointed out in Brazil that an aura of evil fate today, as in
that of the conego of Bahia, in 1841 ( Vide pages 57, 63 supra] , or much
earlier, has seemed to hang over all expeditions, whether organised
by scientists or explorers, or the missionary journeys of Jesuit or
Franciscan monks from the sixteenth century to our own day, which
have made personal contact with these dead cities in old Brazil.
So many of those who have returned and more have perished
without trace have died untimely, or of lingering and painful
diseases. It was in 1926, when Colonel P. H. Fawcett, D.S.O.,

* AUTHOR'S NOTE: Quetzalcoatl, the civiliser of pre-Mayan Yucatan, Mexico, and Central
America, was not a god. He was, as my researches show, one of the race of Hy-Brazil, some
30,000, or fewer, years ago, before the time of the great cataclysm that upheaved the Andes
and sank Atlantis, When portents threatened the existence of Hy^Brazilian civilisation in
South America, Quetzalcoatl was one of the band of wise men in black, including Viracocha
and Bochicha, who went out to find lands not so menaced by vulcanisrn and quakes. How
far Quetzalcoatl's own missioners went, some 30,000 or 20,000 years ago, is shown by my
own curious discovery that the Thompson Indians of British Columbia have a story of the
Great Deluge-Cataclysm in which Quetzalcoatl actually figures, under the name of
as a "man who, with two others, worked miracles and transformed things",

66 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

and his son Jack, and their friend, Raleigh Rimell, of English descent,
left the frontier township of Guyabd, in the Western Matto Grosso,
to try to penetrate to the lost world of these Atlantean dead cities*
Fawcett was sponsored by British and American learned societies
and museums, including the Royal Geographical Society of London.
He took a radio instrument, and at one time planned to use a hydro-
plane to help him descend from the headwaters of one of the rivers
flowing to the mighty Amazon from this land of the unknown.
Indians had told him of dead cities in the Brazilian mountains,
behind ramparts of forest and marsh, and of a strange fixed light,
burning night and day, on ancient pillars. "It never goes out," said
the Indians.

Just before he went aboard the liner for Rio, Fawcett had a
talk with Dr. Clark Wissler of the New York Historical Museum.
The Colonel seems to have told Dr. Wissler that he (Fawcett) had
been told by a dying man of the location of one dead city in the
"White Mountains". No one else knew anything about it.

Says Wissler :

"Nobody can say what may, or may not be found in the Matto
Grosso. Colonel Fawcett was convinced that he knew what was
there, and where to look for it ; but he told us no more than he
has told the public."

Coming from a scientist of the calibre of Dr. Clark Wissler of
New York, this warning about the mysteries of the Matto Grosso
deserves marked attention. About the last persons on earth to know,
or even care about these mysteries are, with rare exceptions, the
Brazilian professors and scientists in Rio, Bahia and Sao Paulo.

Fawcett's friends speak of other strange tales brought to the
Colonel by wandering Indians, whose tribal lore he had so thoroughly
studied in the Matto Grosso and on the borders of Brazil and Bolivia,
Perii and Ecuador. Few people knew more than he of the ways of
the untamed Indians. There were cities in the Brazilian wilds and
Amazonian headwaters, he said, dating back to 50,000 and 60,000
B.C.! White Indians with beards and blue eyes; a light burning
without smoke or fire in jungle cities; words akin to Sanscrit;
legends of the worship of the old Norse god Odin, in Brazilian wilds ;
of the existence, today, of the famous woman soldiers called the
Amazons who fought against the Spanish conquistadores, under
Don Francisco de Orellana, in 1542 ; and of a "tremendous hoard of
gold and jewels" made "by Qjietzalcoatl (?)" the Mexican god-
man of the Aztecs and Toltecs.* (Quetzalcoatl, say old Mayan

* Quetzalcoatl, the ancient Central American missionary from Atlantean Brazil, would
hardly have relished these (our) days of the 20th century! He stoppsd his ears with cotton*
wool, when there was talk of war and warriors. His imagss show him enhalosd with th
disc, or half-disc, of the sun.

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 67

traditions and Mexican legends, was a white man with a flowing
beard, who came from the east across the ocean originated letters,
taught arts of civilisation, and sailed away again, to the east, in a
canoe of serpent skins!) (Vide: also Author's note, page 65 supra.)

No one knows what happened to the Fawcetts father and son
and young Mr. Rimell. In fact, the Matto Grosso swamps and
jungles are such queer places, with records of white men detained
by Indian tribes for twenty-five or thirty years and then returning
to civilisation, that one would not deem it impossible, if improbable,
that Colonel Fawcett himself is still alive, perhaps in the recesses of
the mystic White Mountains, or the hinterland of the Serra do
Roncador, even, today, 1945.

No doubt some English or American folk will say that it is a
thousand pities that the British Government, or some authoritative
body, or learned society has made no effort to send out a special
expedition, ad hoc, to solve this mystery of the vanishing of the
Fawcett party into the unknown, especially as they are, or were, all
of British origin. These people may say that it is regrettable that such
a task was left to private enterprise where, necessarily, the questions
of finance and recoupment have had to be made subsidiary to the
main task one difficult enough in all conscience ! the acting of
the H. M. Stanley to this Brazilian Livingstone.

However, that would not have been the view of Colonel Fawcett
himself, for, on the authority of one close to him, I am informed he
said, just before leaving for the unknown :

"If there is any attempt to send an expedition after us, to
discover our fate or fortune and we expect to be right away
from civilisation for two or more years for God's sake, stop
them ! England has nothing to do with this quest. It is a matter
for Brazil, entirely."

I have said that out of all the dark clouds of rumours
that have, in the last fifteen and more years, drifted out of the
unknown wilds into the frontier settlement town of Cuyabd, in
Rondonia, at the other end of the Brazilian overland telegraph line,
very rarely has one heard come the echo of an authentic living voice.
Most of these stories are not worthy of credence or examination, but,
in April 1933, the silence of the dead was broken. A missioner of the
Dominican friars told the Italian embassy in Rio that an Indian
woman had said :

"The Fawcett party are held prisoners in a camp between
the Rios Kuluesene, Kuluene, and Das Mortes. Colonel Fawcett
has been forced to marry a daughter of an Indian chief (so said
the Indian woman)."

68 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

About this time a curious story reached the Royal Geographical
Society, in London, from Monsignor Coutouran of the Salesian
Mission Fathers of Lageado, in Matto Grosso. The ecclesiastic en-
closed a statement from Signor Virginio Pessione, who said that on
July 30, 1933 he had visited an estate on the Rio Sao Manoel,
north of the Rio Paranatinga, which lay many miles to the north-
west of Dead Horse Camp, Fawcett's last camp on the edge of the
unknown. Here, the owners said :

"An Indian woman of the Nafucua tribe of the Cuycuni
captaincy had been living for a year. She had learnt a few words
of Portuguese and conveyed the news of white men living for
several years with the Aruvudus. Helped by a Bakairi Indian,
who spoke Portuguese, Pessione got a statement from the
Indian woman, made partly in sign language. She said : 'When
my son was still at the breast, there arrived in my village three
white men and Indians, descending the Kuluene in a large canoe.
One white man was tall, old, and blue-eyed, also bearded and
bald. Another was a youth, said to be the son of the first ; the
third was of greater age. The elder wore a felt hat and colonial
helmet. . . . About a year ago, I saw them last. They were well
and spoke the Aruvudu tongue. The man with the long, white
beard was now chief of the tribe; his son had married the
daughter of the chief, Jeruata. They had a plot of land, but
moved from village to village, continually watched by the Indians,
who would have killed them had they tried to escape. The white
men had no bullets to their guns and were very near to such wild
tribes as the Suyas and Cayapos,' "

Pessione said the Indian woman's son must now be 9-10 years,
the white men having arrived in 1925-26.

However, it must be pointed out that there is no proof that these
detained whites were the Fawcett party > despite the story of the American
missionary, Paul W. Guiley, of the Inland South American Mission,
who says that, in September 1934, in a village of the Kuikuris
(or Cuycurus) he was shown a young boy with a white and not
brown skin, blue eyes and close-cropped hair, whom an old chief
said was a son of one of the Fawcett party and an Indian girl, a
daughter having died. The Kuikuru Indians told the missionary
that Colonel Fawcett stayed with them a year, and left in the direc-
tion of the Rio das Mortes.*

* A similar story is told by Miss Marthe L. Moennich, an American woman missionary
She, in a book published at Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1942 (?), says she is convinced that
"Providence has enabled her to solve the mystery of Colonel Fawcett's 'vanished party*.
The half-caste boy (who she thinks is Jack Fawcett's son by an Indian woman) is named
Dulipe. The Indians 'killed the Fawcett party, out of pity', shooting great arrows at them
to save them from the worse fate of pushing into a country of the unknown where lingering
death inevitably awaited them/' However, here again, one is forced to bring in a verdict

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 69

It is known that Colonel Fawcett took great care to destroy all
traces of camp-fires in the woods of the catinga, so as to leave no
trail to be followed up by adventurers and reckless garimpeiros
(diamond-diggers). He also, I was told in Rio de Janeiro, took
with him an old Jesuit chart and a written account of one of the
missioners who penetrated to a dead city in the central Brazilian
highlands.

Then came a remarkable discovery. The Brazilian deputy of the
state of Matto Grosso, Colonel Aniceto Botelho, found in the jungle
of the Matto Grosso, near the camp of the Bacaari Indians about
the region where the Fawcett party disappeared into the unknown
Colonel Fawcett's theodolite compass, in perfect condition,
with no sign of mildew on the glass. The Colonel might almost have
laid it down in the bush on the day when it was found in April
1933! At this stage, I cannot refrain from quoting from a remark-
able letter written to me in February 1940 by the Colonel's devoted
wife, Mrs. Nina Fawcett his constant assistant in his scientific
undertakings. Mrs. Fawcett, then in her seventieth year, is (or was
recently) living in Peru where she had gone, partly in order to be
within aeroplane flight of Brazil when and who knows how soon
that may be? authentic tidings of Colonel Fawcett comes out of
the unknown jungle of the Matto Grosso:

"To me that (the discovery of the theodolite-compass) is
reason to believe that Colonel Fawcett was alive and working with his
surveying instruments in the Matto Grosso jungle as recently
as April 1933. My husband was then alive and working, and
probably had a certain amount of freedom, though under con-
stant surveillance of the Indian tribe which, I believe, captured
them about 1926 or 1927, and with whose people they were
obliged to remain. This tallies with information received by a
party of Italian surveyors, working for the government. That
information came from native Indian sources and was sent to the
president of the Royal Geographical Society in London, with a
letter from the head of the Salesian Mission, who had good
reason to believe the story as I do also!"

Mrs. Fawcett told me (in 1940) that she was ready at any
moment to fly to Brazil by air, in order to investigate what she
would deem to be authentic tidings of the Fawcett party :

"I came to Peni two years ago, to spend the rest of my life
... I firmly believe that, at any time, someone may find one or

of non-proven, as to the identity of this party. Things may perhaps have happened, as the
Indian told Miss Moennich; but the mystery is still unsolved; albeit Miss Moennich's story
has been given a picturesque and pathetic **twist" by some Indian in a Xingu jungle. N.B.
I quote merely from a review of Miss M.'s book, in the London Timts Literary Supplement,
August i, 1942. AUTHOR.

7O MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

other of the watertight aluminium cases containing Colonel Fawcett' s
diaries, or the watertight metal tubes containing his maps. The
diary cases would be about six by four inches, and the region
where I believe all three men, the two Fawcetts and Raleigh
Rimell, spent many years, was on the Kuluene river, between or
near the points where several affluents meet and join the Rio
Xingu. According to an Indian story, which sounds true to me,
the tribe with whom they stayed during many years are known
as the Aruvudus, and the woman who gave the story to the
Italian surveyors in the interior belonged to the Cuicurus, the
tribe nearest in locality to the Aruvudus. I tell you this in case
you might be making another journey into the interior of the
Matto Grosso, when it would be well worth while your making
inquiries and keeping eyes and ears open for traces of the lost
diaries or maps in metal cases to say nothing of traces of the
lost men themselves. Of course, I should be anxious to hear any
news ... or, if I am no longer alive, you could communicate
with my son . . ."

The last message sent to London by Colonel Fawcett contained
the warning that he might not be heard of for two or more years.
The approaches to the dead city in the mountains, were, he said,
guarded by a strange race of troglodytes small, squat negroes of
ferocious disposition who were cannibals. They lived in holes and
caves in the swamp country on the edge of the unknown land, some
100 miles' distant from the dead city. This race of aborigines were
contemporary, perhaps, with the mysterious white people who
built the dead cities of Brazil. May be they were the autochthones of the
old Brazilian island. Though armed only with clubs, they were
extremely dangerous, said Colonel Fawcett, and contact with them
might prove out of the question.

This race of troglo4ytic aboriginals may be identical with, or
akin to, the short, squat, hairy and negroid people who live in holes
in cliffs and caves in the still unexplored and unknown region of the
Rio Uapes, on the north-western frontiers of Brazil and the south-
eastern borders of Colombia. Jesuit missioners are said to have en-
countered them in the 19205 in this very region. That they arc
dangerous and savage is certainly true, and very little, indeed, seems
known about them among savants in Rio and Sao Paulo. Mr, Lewis
Spence cites a letter he had from Colonel Fawcett, in 1924, when
Fawcett says these cave-men intermarried with the Tupis and
Caribs, their progeny being the negroid Botocudos of Brazil and the
Aymara Indians of Bolivia.

Fawcett seems to have told no one where he located the dead
city for which he was making. I have met people in Brazil who
assert that the location was the Sena do Roncador (Snorer's or

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 71

Blusterer's range), which is marked, on some, but not all, maps as
running in a northerly direction from the Rio Kuluesene towards
' the country of the Gorotird and Tapirape Indians an unknown
and dangerous territory inhabited by savage tribes. The Serra
do Roncador which maybe the snowy, or "White Cordillera" of the
tradition of the Indians, would certainly have Iain along the
route taken by the Fawcett party, in April and May 1925; but the
serra's actual location is very uncertain. No one, I have been told, in
Cuyabd "ever returns alive from these serras. The approaches are
guarded by Indids malos, who beat drums and use the bush telegraph
to signal the coming of intruders."

Few white men knew more than Fawcett about the habits and
ways of strange Indian tribes living in unexplored forests and on the
edge of primaeval marshes, months away from the remotest outpost.
These tribes, he said, are not "the debased types of savages, found
on the Andean slopes, contaminated with the white man's vices".
He told the Royal Geographical Society, in a lecture, in London, in
May 1910, about the Morcegos, or "bats", who sleep in great hollows
in the ground, closed by wickerwork lids. All day they sleep, and
emerge to hunt by night; but they can scent the stranger from afar.
All bush through which he has passed will be burnt to the ground.

"Fire they know," he said on another occasion, talking to a
friend in Paris (the late Dr. Arthur Lynch, soldier for freedom and
Philosopher), "and they are armed with enormous bludgeons.
Their keenness of vision is intense, but they cannot endure the rays
of the sun. As for their powers of scent, the finest bloodhound falls
below them." From another source in South America, the writer of
this book heard of a remarkable adventure which Fawcett had with
these "bats", who, resembling the curious troglodytes mentioned
above, are about the lowest of the human race, and live in the wild
country of forests, bush, scrub and marsh guarding the approaches to
the strange White Mountains, where, perhaps, he had been told the
dead city lay :

"One day, we suddenly and unexpectedly found ourselves
right in the middle of one of the bush villages of the bats. There
were about two hundred of them sleeping in their holes, closed
in by the basket lids ; but our sudden approach had been made
known. Our situation was extremely perilous. I kept as calm
as possible, my face and bearing appearing as unmoved as I could
make them. Tearing branches from trees in the forest, I soaked
them in a spirit made from certain other trees. Then I set a
light to the torch and danced towards the bats, shouting, at the
top of my voice, a chorus from a famous music-hall song of the
late 1890$: Ta-ra-ra boom-de-qy! The effect was almost magical.
The Indians came out of their holes in the ground, and, regarding

72 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

me as a strange white god, bowed low to the ground. That hap-
pened in the morning. Before the fall of night, and the coming
of the time when the bats hunt under thick boughs of the virgin
forest, we had put the greatest distance we could between them
and us ... I had, not long before, met a man who had fallen
among a Matto Grosso tribe a little less degenerate than the
bats. This Brazilian was hunting for nuggets and gold dust.
One day, on the bank of a forest river, he was rushed by a horde
of these Indians, who had laid an ambush in the jungle. They
trussed him up and tied him to poles laid across men's shoulders.
His fate had no element of doubt in it. The Indians smacked
their mouths and rubbed their naked stomachs, as they eyed him
gloatingly. Arrived at the forest village, a woman of the tribe,
who had lost her husband and whose charms had become a little
faded, so that she could not secure another matrimonial partner,
took a fancy to the whiter-skinned man. He was adopted as her
paramour and taken into her hut ; but he was so keenly watched
he could not escape into the forest. His captors hunted at night,
and slept in the day. They, too, had a sense of smell keener than
a bloodhound, and could track men and animals by it. Months
passed, and the shades of the tribal cooking pot loomed peri-
lously near. His dulcinea had grown tired of him. What could
he do? If he fled on foot, through the forest, unless he kept it
up night and day, with no halt for food or sleep, these night-
hunters would surely recapture him. A plan came into his
mind.

"In the middle of the morning, when the Indians were fast
asleep, the captive stole out of his hut, unseen and unnoticed by
the bored fair one, and slung himself into the branches of a tree
on the edge of the forests which stretched endlessly into the far
distance. From tree to tree he went, like a monkey, until he had
put about a mile between him and the camp. That was all he
could manage in a day's strenuous work. Came night, and he
lodged himself in the fork of a tall tree in the forest. The howlings
of the monkeys and shrill noises of the insects, could not drown
out another sinister sound below him : the Indians were on his
trail. Next day, he resumed his flight through the tree tops,
living on what fruit and nuts he could gather on the way. When
darkness fell, he ensconced himself again in a tree top, and once
more heard the Indians in full pursuit after him. For ten days he
stayed in the tree tops, till he could safely put foot to the ground.
Yet he spent two months wandering in the virgin forests before
he met our party.**

On his projected expedition to locate the dead city of the
bandeiristas, Fawcett well knew that mules, carrying maize, would not

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 73

N

get far into the chapada and the catinga of the Matto Grosso. There
was little fodder in the forests around, and soon the men of the ex-
pedition would have to carry their own baggage, and jettison all that
was not absolutely needed. (That jettisoning probably accounts for
the instruments, gear and odd objects in the hands of Indians on the
trail followed by Fawcett into the sertdo of the Matto Grosso.)
About food Fawcett was not too fastidious :

"There are plenty of snakes, and when your backbone hits
against your ribs, a plate of snake-meat, under your famishing
jaws, is not to be despised. Three miles a day are all we can
cover in this wild country, until we reach more open landscape
in the highlands of Brazil. After that, I hope we may find a
stream which will take us to the Amazon. I find I can't take a
radio transmitter, so shall have to be content with a receiver.
It will help us establish our longitude in the unknown. Next
time we come here, I'll take a hydroplane with me to travel the
streams."

The Colonel and his son and friend, Rimell, passed away like a
leaf on a stream, and concerning their fate, only rumours from the
whispering gallery of one of the world's strangest lands have since
been borne on the winds and waters of this unknown and dangerous
wilderness.

The American explorer, Commander George Dyott, attempted to
solve the mystery of the fate of the Fawcett party; but apart from the
fact that Dyott's main purpose had necessarily to be concerned with
securing literary and cinematographic material to pay for the cost
of his trip, he could not play the part of H. M. Stanley to this Living-
stone. For one thing, there was no Gordon Bennett, of the New Tofk
Herald, to finance him, and, for another, disgracefully little support
and no financial aid has come from the British Government, in an
affair of real exploration which a British national, Fawcett, had
undertaken. Perhaps Fawcett was right, when he told the British
Royal Geographical Society, in London, in March 1910:

"Exploration is a matter of fashion, and South America is
not in fashion. Here, however, in these days of luxurious equip-
ment and perfection of organisation, the explorer of unmapped
corners must return to pioneer methods and be content with his
hammock and his rifle and what a kindly Providence will send
him for food. I hope it will be Englishmen . . . who will follow
the traditions and show the way."

Dyott, too, was gravely handicapped by entire lack of knowledge
of Indian tongues in the Matto Grosso; so that he was not in a good

74 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

position to check the stories told by chiefs of tribes through whose
lands the Fawcett party may have passed on their way to the un-
known.

After Dyott's expedition, other stories filtered through to the
station of the Brazilian telegraph line crossing the Great Divide,
south of the Matto Grosso.

For some reason, the British Foreign Office made a great mys-
tery of the report of the Fawcett party's detention by the Aruvudu
tribes on the Rio Kulusene, and hushed it up. In March 1934, a
native Brazilian dog taken by Fawcett into the wilds to give warning
of the nocturnal approach of wild animals, or prowling Indians,
returned to the fazendeiro who owned him. The dog carried no
message, but was emaciated and worn out, indicating lengthy
travels. (But is it necessary to say that other reasons than the death
of Colonel Fawcett might have caused the dog's return?)

About this time, a film actor, Albert de Winton, who had spent
nine months in the Matto Grosso, trying to trail Colonel Fawcett,
came back to Los Angeles, Cal., with only vague Indian stories
about the Englishman. "But my belief is that he is still alive," said
de Winton. Next, some fantaisiste in Moscow, who, perhaps, had
grown tired of the Italian fable about the late Colonel Lawrence of
Arabia accused of doing secret service work for the British Govern-
ment in Arabia, Afghanistan, and Abyssinia, made an absurd state-
ment about Colonel Fawcett :

"He is a British secret agent in Brazil, and regularly sends
radio reports to the Foreign Office, in London." (Moscow Radio.}

Later, reports were cabled and radioed to London and New
York about a Spanish expedition with machine-guns, bombs, aero-
planes and dynamite, all set to solve the famous Brazilian mystery;
but the Brazilian Government nervously demanded "safeguards"
from that expedition. That year (1934) closed with newspaper
stories about the well-known German, Doktor Eckener, planning to
fly the Graf %eppelin airship over the Matto Grosso from a base in
Rio. He meant to survey the Rios Xingu and Tapajos, a colonel of
the Brazilian General Staff accompanying him in the gondola.
Unfortunately, that piece of romantic Jules Verne did not "come
off" for, as contemporary history records, lightning fired the
hydrogen in her hull and destroyed her on U.S. territory.

Then General Rondon, the well-known champion of the Indians
of the Matto Grosso he is a Brazilian of pure Indian blood told
the press of Rio, in April 1939, that a chief of the Bacairy Indians
told him that Colonel Fawcett had been killed in 1926 by the Anaqua
Indians who had ambushed him in the region of the jungle of Rio
Kulusene.

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 75

Were the mysterious mountains, called the Sena do Roncador
* which, as I have said, above, I was told in Cuyubd, were the
hidden objective of Colonel Fawcett also the grave of his hopes
and his party?

At this time, none can say.

The brothers Ulyatt, however, tell a curious story which pur-
ports that Colonel Fawcett's quest lay not on a hill-top, or bleak
plateau, but in a valley. The story seems to be based on authority,
and whether accurate or not, must mean that there are more than
one of these dead Atlantean city ruins in unknown Brazil. These two
brothers came in from the north-west, in the direction of the mys-
terious Rio Roosevelt. They avoided the other, western route into
the Matto Grosso, which strikes over the Cordillera de Parecis,
from Bolivia. Deep in the forest round the headwaters of the Rio
Roosevelt and the Rio Branco, the brothers were one day startled
by the growling of a dog they had with them. When they looked
out of their tent, they found they were hemmed in by powerfully
built Indians, armed with long bows and arrows. There was no
mistaking the mien of these Indians. It was unfriendly. The chief
clearly meant that the brothers Ulyatt were not to stand on the
order of their going, but to make themselves scarce at once. By signs,
it was indicated to them that if they were found to have returned,
the Indians would kill them at sight in the dense forests. Everything
they had was taken by the Indians, and the Ulyatts at once broke
camp and got out of the region.

Said one of them (at a house in Rio de Janeiro) : "The legend of
this long-lost city of an Atlantean white race is that it lies on top of
a hill ; but really it is under water in the bed of a turbulent river,
strewn with boulders that have fallen into it from towering cliffs.
Mrs. Fawcett very kindly helped us with details of the Colonel's
plans. I am sure the only practicable way of reaching the territory,
where I believe Colonel Fawcett and his party still are, and where is
the lost city, is by the route we came : from the north-west. We met
Brazilian bushmen in the forests who are not in good odour with the
Brazilian authorities. These bushmen are rubber-gatherers, but they
never quit the rubber camps. They know about the missing Colonel ;
but not who he is."

With the Ulyatt story may be contrasted that of Signor Vialine.
It is one more singular token of what a whispering gallery of rumours,
seeming fantasy, strange romance, or myth is in the great South
American cathedral of mystery. (Vialine's story was told in summer
1938) :

"Signor Vialine, an Italian explorer, trying to locate the
Serra do Roncador, which some folk say is the site of a dead
city sought for in the Brazilian Highlands, by el Coronel Fawcett,

76 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

says he saw skeletons of three white men, whom he supposes

to be the Fawcett party Mua Indians, says a

Dominican missioner, at a station on the Rio Araguaya, killed
Coronel Fawcett."

Mrs. Nina Fawcett, the Colonel's wife, is, I think, not only in-
tuitively, but factually justified in holding that this seventeen-year-
old mystery is still unsolved. As late as 1934, it was said that she had
received telepathic messages from her husband, who, she thinks,
was then still alive, but in captivity. The fate of the son of Colonel
Fawcett and the young Raleigh Rimell has not been indicated in
these messages, so far as one knows.

What was Fawcett's main purpose in taking this dangerous trip
into the unknown?

Nothing less, as this narrative should have shown, than the dis-
covery of an outpost of the drowned continent of Atlantis, in the
wilds of unknown Brazil !

"Atlantis?" queries the scoffing and orthodox historian or
archaeologist, with a sceptical lift of his eyebrows.

"It sounds like a fantasy by Mr. H. G. Wells, set in Brazil."

Well, let us see what is the evidence.

The reader may have noted that about half of the amazing
inscriptions copied by the bandeiristas from ruins in the abandoned
city of the Brazilian highlands, are identical with letters in the
Greco-Phoenician alphabet. Nor can that resemblance, or identity,
be merely accidental, or a coincidence. Unless the robust sceptic be
prepared to take the hazardous step of suggesting that the Brazilian
bandeiristas of 1753 who, after all, were rough, hardy, scarcely
scholarly men whose object was the finding of gold and silver
were liars and forgers, for no conceivable purpose connected with
self or any other interest, he will find it difficult to explain away
these strange inscriptions. (The evidence rules out that the dead
cities were Phoenician.) He has done his best to ignore them, ever
since they were re-discovered by a Brazilian historian, burrowing
in the royal archives at Rio de Janeiro, in 1841 ; but the time for
tacit contempt or a conspiracy of silence has gone by, or will be, by
the time this narrative appears in print. It will, and I ask my reader
to pardon me for repeating this, make hay of his cherished illusion
that writing was unknown in South America, before the arrival of
the Spanish conquistadores and the Portuguese navigators, in the
early sixteenth century.

The writer of this book has found some very curious links between
the so-called "Old World" of Europe and Africa and the "New
World" of Brazil. Some of these links may have been known to
Colonel Fawcett, but at least one of them surprised so well known
an authority on the "pre-history" of South and Central America as

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF JJ

Miles Poindexter, the Virginian senator and one-time American
^mbassador in Lima, to whom I showed it and them in the autumn
of 1939-

The first link occurs in one of the books of the Sicilian geographer
and historian, Diodorus Siculus, who flourished about 44 B.C.
Diodorus, who is known to have visited Egypt, Carthage and the
Near East, with which lands his histories deal, tells us how, thou-
sands of years ago, Phoenician traders of the Mediterranean found
a large island in the Atlantic Ocean, several days' sail beyond the
Pillars of Hercules (neighbourhood of Jebel Musa (Abyla), North
Morocco, and (Calpe) modern Gibraltar, Spain), and the western
country of Africa. It was/rom this continental island that the Phoenicians
obtained the elements of their phonetic alphabet, used, later, by the Greeks
of Athens. Some thousands of years earlier still, and long before
the Nilotic dynasties were recorded by the priests of Egyptian Helio-
polis, Manetho the Mendesian (about 261 B.C.) said the Egyptians
derived, from this now drowned continent, the elements of their
hieratic hieroglyphics. May be, survivors had travelled overland to
the Nile from North Africa, or the ancient Egyptians had had direct
contact with the Atlanteans, said to have been a white, black and
red-skinned people. It is more than likely that the lost books of
Manetho, written largely from records and journals preserved in the
temples of Egypt, would have thrown some light on the nature of
this contact. (Since Manetho asserts that all the gods of Egypt had
once been mortals and lived on earth, one may guess that the loss
of his great and rationalist history is irreparable. And the like
applies to the twenty-five lost books of Diodorus, which took him
forty years to write and were partly based on vanished records of the
priests of old Carthage and Egypt.) Diodorus says that he heard, in
old Carthage (?), that the Phoenician traders founded a trading city
at Gadeira* (modern Agadir, at the coastal end of the Great Atlas
range in French Morocco), and while they were explor/
outside the pillars of Hercules, they were driven "
great distance over the ocean, "and, after many
on the island (of Atlantis?)".

Diodorus adds (Lib. V., p. 74) :

"Men tell us ... that the Phoenicians vRE*iot wfenrsi 10
make the discovery of letters; but that theyAdmW frOGe lAftn
change the forms of the letters ; whereupon twkm&j&rity of man^
kind made use of the way of writing them astahrLfeteeniciaffs
devised. 9 '

* The place-names Cadiz, Agadir, and Gadeira are probably eponymous. Some colony
from Atlantis to the mainland of old Europe and Africa therein commemorated the name
of an old king of Atlantis a man. not a god whose name was Gades. (Vide: Diodorus
Siculut.) .

78 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

Since the walls and monuments of one of the dead cities, of un-
known age, in the Brazilian highlands, bear letters, many, but not
all 9 of which are so strikingly Greco-Phoenician in form, it is, per-
haps, permissible to ask whether it was by the ocean-route that these
same forms were carried, on the one side, to Brazil ; on the other (by
Phoenician traders) to the Mediterranean?

Diodorus, speaking of Atlantis, says:

". . . it is an island of considerable size, a number of days'
voyage to the west . . . the dwelling-place of a race of gods, not
men. In ancient times this island remained undiscovered, be-
cause of its distance from the other inhabitants of the world. . . ."

Then, Ammianus Marcellinus, a Greek geographer contemporary
with the Roman emperors Julian and Valens (fourth century A.D.),
while enumerating the different sorts of vulcanism, says :

"It was by a chasmaties (in which the force of the commotion
opens gulfs in the earth and swallows a whole country) that
there was engulfed, in the profound night of Erebus, an isle in
the Atlantic sea that was more spacious than all Europe. ..."

Elian, the Roman sophist and compiler (died A.D. 140), quotes
from Theopompus, a Greek historian of Chios, of the fourth cen-
tury B.C. who, says Elian,

"speaks of a continent, infinite and immeasurable, which
the ocean circumscribes. The men who dwell there have more
than twice our stature and days. . . . Two cities are there, one
peaceful, the other warlike. The warlike city sent ten million
men to invade Europe."

Both the pious city and the warlike had plenty of gold, which
"is of less value than among us".

Theopompus was a contemporary of Plato and may have drawn
on some lost source wherein legend and folk-lore is intermixed with
some vanished truth of pre-history : the fly caught in sea-amber.

But something saved from what has been lost about the history
of Atlantis, as well as the ancient continents of South and North
America, is found in what the Greek Plato tells of the travels of
Solon, the legislator of Athens, and of whose family Plato was a
member. (Solon wrote a poem about Atlantis, which was preserved
for many years in Plato's family papers, but has long been lost.)
Solon visited Egypt about 548 years before the Christian era. In the
dialogues of Plato (especially in Timaeus), it is said that the island-
continent of Atlantis was greater than both Libya and all the Near

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 79

East "It was easy to pass from Atlantis to those islands, and thence
, to all the countries bordering on the Atlantic Ocean." The dialogue
tells how Sonchis, an ag&d Egyptian priest of Sais, or Thais, in the
Nile delta, deplores to Solon that when the Greeks and other
nations began to have letters and the elements of civilisation,

"after the usual interval the stream from Heaven like a
pestilence comes down and leaves only those of you who are
destitute of letters and education and know nothing of what
happened in past times."

The old priest went on to say that the sacred registers in Egypt
had been founded 8,000 years before, and the early Athenians',
9,000 years before Solon. The Egyptian sacred registers, perhaps
kept by the priest Psenophis, at Heliopolis, told of a great navy
sailing out from Atlantis, transporting an immense army of Atlan-
teans on an expedition which was planned to achieve a world-em-
pire. This militarist expedition from the Atlantic ocean continent
reached as far east as Egypt, and as far north-east as the coast of
ancient Italy, in Etruria. One nation alone finally opposed these
ambitions of world-domination : the "ancestors of the Athenians".
. . . Then there occurred "violent earthquakes and floods, and in a
single day and night of misfortune, all your warlike men, in a body,
sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner dis-
appeared into the depths of the sea".

The old priest of Sais, or Thais, referred to those sun-stone
people of heliolithic culture which the late Professor Sir Grafton
Eliott-Smith speaks of as existing about 15,000 B.C., in regions of the
Mediterranean valley, long since submerged. The ancient Egyptian
priest adds these remarkable words, which must point to the exist-
ence of South and North America as recorded in the sacred registers
of the old priests of Egypt :

"That other sea beyond what you call the straits of Heracles
is the real ocean, and the surrounding land may truly be called
the boundless continent."

Remember that these words were spoken by an old priest of
Pharaoh's Egypt, some 2,530 years ago ; and that the catastrophic
events he describes had happened about 9,000-10,000 years before
that ! All this, as one hopes to show, has its bearing on what these
bandeiristas of the year A.D. 1 753 found in the sertao of modern Brazil.
It has, also, one hazards, some connection with the traditions of
the Toltecs (Anato/ians), the ancestors of the Aztecs, that they came
from Atlan, or Aztlan. The great storehouse of Mayan and Central
American legend and mythical history, the Popul Vuh, tells of a

80 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

happy land of the golden age where ancestors lived in great peace
and happiness, speaking the same tongue, till they migrated east
and west. The Popul Vuh also tells of three sons of the King of the
Quiches, of old Yucatan-Guatemala, who visited

"a land in the east, on the shores of the sea whence their
fathers had come, and whence they brought back, among other
things, a system of writing. . . ."

One of the South American colonies of Atlantis may, probably,
have been the land called Brazil, and Brazil, indeed, was actually
the ancient name of the land and one borne thousands of years
before the arrival at Rio de Janeiro of old Pedro Gabral, the
Portuguese navigator. That occurred in A.D. 1500 and has given rise
to the sheer legend that King Emanuel of Portugal named the land
Brazil, because the dye-wood, brazil-wood (Biancaea sappan) was
found there. As a matter of very curious fact, the name Brazil was
known to the old Irish Kelts,* and an Irish saint, of the year A.D.
780, told Pope Zacharius who demanded his excommunication for
the "impious" statement that the old Irish (the oldest split-off
from the original Keltic race-stock) habitually communicated with
a transatlantic world! Brazil, also spelt Bracie, Berzil, or Brasil,
appears in maps of the Middle Ages as an island west of Corvo,
in the Azores. The famous Medicean/>0rfa0/aw0 of A.D. 1351, and the
charts of Picignano (A.D. 1367) and Andrea Bianco and Fra Mauro
record it. There is, too, a Brazil rock, some degrees west of the
southern extremity of Ireland, and this brings us to an experience
of the author of this book.

A few years before the World War No. 2, I was in a southern
county of Eire, of Ireland of the former Irish Free State, when I
heard the story of the old Irish myth of Breasal, or Hy-Brazil the
paradise of the Gael, the land far in the direction of the sunset, over
the Western Ocean from the Arran Isles. That legend dates back
to the days of the roamings of the old Irish, who, I repeat, are the

* It is an amazing fact, one not known to archaeologists or the conventional South
American historians of British or American, or European nationality, that, in a remote
mountain valley lying in the Southern Andean cordiueras, somewhere west of Miraflores
and San Rosario, in North- Western Argentina, is a tribe of "Indians" speaking pure Gaelic
or Erse! They are emphatically not emigrants from modern Ireland or Scotland, for their
ancestors were in that region ages before the arrival of Spanish conquistadores. I met
a colleague in a Civil Defence wardens' post, in 1943, whose Irish uncle, while on the pampas
of Argentina, in 1910, met and talked with these Indians who are called Patanian Indians
(Indios Patanios), or Patanian Irish, The uncle spoke Erse well, and for some time lived
and worked on the Pampas Enthral, near Miraflores. Some members of this tribe of Patanian
Indians have the blue eyes and reddish hair of the Irish Kelt. Others are nigrescent. It
is known that Indians in the region of modern Maryland had traditions of a strange people,
living in their territories, who spoke the old Irish tongue, and worked metalsTrity tnat
the Irish cleriche was Fergil, or Ferghil, or Vergile, Bishop of Salzburg did not indicate
the source of his information about the far voyages of the old Irish, or sketch in the details
of a 'picture which must now remain forever a rare and fascinating glimpse of a world of
very ancient date from which a small corner of the veil has thus been lifted and dropped.
AUTHOR

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 8l

earliest branch to separate from the Keltic root stock, in Europe.
On a forbidding mountain called Callan noted for its "hideous
moory height" used to stand what is known as the Ogham stones,
cut with old Irish, or ancient British letters. The peasants in the
cabins and bogs, round about Callan mountain, have a legend
about a tomb, in the mountain, containing the bones of an Irish
king, Gonane. Find the tomb, say the bog-trotters, and you will
discover in it a key which will cause to rise out of the Atlantic
Ocean a great city, sunken there. The city was named Hy-Brazil, or
the Royal Island. I found, too, that the Arranmore islanders, off the
coast of Galway Bay, have a legend that, on a clear day, this island
Paradise of the ancient Irish can be seen afar on the horizon, glitter-
ing on the Atlantic waters. . . . Says one of the Irish bards :

"it is the meadow of the Dead, the land of happiness and
peace which you must pass the sea to reach ... a beautiful land
where a happy race, free from care and sickness and death,
bask in eternal sunshine".

About 1,500 years ago, the old Irish Saint Brendan set out from
the Abbey of Clonfert to find Hy-Brazil, in a ship with fifty monks,
sailing over the western ocean. They found it, after a seven-years'
voyage,

"the fairest country a man might see, clear and bright, neither
hot by day, nor cold by night, the trees laden with fruit, the
herbage glorious with blooms and gay flowers. ..."

And still the search went on for this happy land of Hy-Brazil,
which figured on the early English charts. Even as late as A.D. 1650,
General Ludlow, one of the regicides of Charles I., and Cromwell's
general in Ireland, heard about this paradise of Hy-Brazil, and
actually chartered a ship to look for it ! The ship was chartered at
Limerick, not far from the very place where the legendary vision
was seen. Columbus had heard of it, under the name of the Isles of
the Blessed, and it started him off on his voyage to the West Indies.

Who knows whether the old Irish Kelts came into contact with
the people of Brazil, in South America, at a time when the jungle
city found by the bandeiristas was in its prime or far gone in old age
and decline?

Colonel Fawcett's theory seems to have been that old Brazil
was probably the cradle of our world's culture and civilisation; but
it must remain, for the present, a moot point whether the torch was
not, indeed, taken from the drowned island-continent of old Atlantis
to her continental colony of Brazil. (On the basis of our present dim
knowledge, the truth cannot yet be known.) Assuredly, the name

F

82 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

Brazil is far older than Cabral and the finding of the dye-wood,
called brasileiro.

The naturalist Buffon believed that Ireland, the Azores and
America were once part of the great lost island-continent of
Plato, a belief, as to America, shared by the famous Brasseur-de-
Bourbourg, and it is curious that the old Irish myth of fly-Brazil the
royal land, or island enshrines a story of a Paradise of the Gael, far
across the western ocean.

How came it, too, that Fawcett found the mysterious writing
incised in a rock in Ceylon's jungles?

Had some vanished race in that strange and beautiful island a
contact with old Brazil or Atlantis, or some other drowned or
vanished continent, and is this stone, in the Sinhalese jungle, a
record of lost history, and not a mere cypher-script of a vanished
Oriental priesthood? It may be so; for the ancient Egyptian
priests can hardly have been alone in inscribing pillars, or rocks,
with records of lost history. There is, indeed, an ancient tradition
that Ceylon, or the Taprobane of Ptolemy, the geographer, is a
fragment of a drowned continent. Pliny said that ancient Taprobane
"is considered as the commencement of another world". There is
also a forgotten Byzantine historian who said :

"Taprobane is the island nearest located to the continent
where was the former terrestrial paradise."

Possibly, these strange Brazilian ancients had carried the torch
of civilisation and culture westwards across the Pacific, when there
may have existed a land-bridge* with Ceylon. However the
orthodox archaeologist may frown or smile at these theories, I should
ask him or her to explain how such forms, obviously similar to
Greco-Phoenician letters, could have been found by these rude
Brazilian bandeiristas of A.D, 1750. They were hardly classic scholars.
Indeed, as the old canon of Bahia noted, they did not seem to have
had the ghost of an idea of the significance of these strange letters.

Ben Jowett, with his mid- Victorian dogmatism and positiveness,
slandered Plato by talking of the "noble lie of Plato", about this lost
world; but the more scientific attitude one nearer the modern
spirit, which, in our day, does not scoff at old traditions and deride
them as total and childish legends is that of Alexander von Hum-
boldt, who wrote, more than a century ago :

* Was that long-lost land-bridge the Rutas of the Brahminical traditions of old Hindo*
stan? This goparam tradition says that, hundreds of thousands of years ago, an immense
continent in the Pacific was destroyed by volcanic upheaval, and that the displacement of
the ocean-waters converted the then great islands of Hindostan adjacent to a central Asian
divide, into the modern peninsular, sub-continent of India, Rutas, the lost continent, was
the home of a highly civilised race who gave their alphabet to the old Hindus. Rutas to
distinguished, in this very ancient tradition, from Atlantis, existing, as the tradition says,
in the northern portion of the tropics in the Atlantic.

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 83

"Des mythes de Pancienne limite occidentale du monde
connu peuvent, done, avoir eu quelque fondement historique.
Une migration de peuples de 1'ouest a Test, dont le souvenir,
conserv6 en Egypte, & etc report^ & Ath^nes, et celebre par des
fStes religieuses, peut appartenir a des temps bien ant&ieur &
1'invasion des Perses en Mauritanie, dont Salluste a reconnu les
traces . . . et que, galement pour nous, est envelopp6e des tenfc-
bres."

("Some of the myths of the ancient bounds of the known
world of the west may, then, have had some foundation in
history. A migration of peoples from the west to the east,
whose memory, preserved in Egypt, has been transmitted to
Athens, and celebrated there by religious festivals, may belong
to a time much anterior to the invasion by the Persians of
Mauritania (Morocco), of which Sallust recognised the traces . . .
and which, also for us, is shrouded in darkness." Translation.)

In 1839, when these words were written, the world knew nothing
about this lost MS. in the royal and imperial archives of Portuguese
Rio de Janeiro!

I have left to the last my comments on one very eerie feature
about these dead jungle cities in the highlands of Brazil. Just before
Colonel Fawcett left Cuyaba, the frontier town of the Matto Grosso,
an Indian approached him, and told him that the churches in that
town were nothing in comparison with the far bigger and better
buildings he, the Indian, had seen, with his own eyes, in the dead
cities of his remote forest-home.

Said he :

"These buildings in my forests are of great age, Seftor. They
are loftier by far than these" (nodding at the town), "and they
have doors and windows of stone. Their interior is lit up by a
great square crystal on a pillar. So brightly does it shine, Seftor
Fawcett, that it makes the eyes blink and dazzle. It is a light
that never goes out. My forefathers knew it of old. Always it has
burnt undimmed."

Fawcett proposed to turn a little off his trail in order to
visit such a light-pillar: "It is a tower-like building, says the Indian,
which has partly fallen down, from the doors and windows of
which always shines a light."

Now, light-pillars, as in the famous Pillars of Heracles, at the
ancient bounds of the known sea- world, are a mark of sun- worship-
ping race. I have seen such a pillar, inscribed with Phoenician and
other more mysterious characters, standing on a bleak down in the
Ootswold Hills, dose to Bisley, Glosterslure, where, .down below,

84 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

in a lovely wooded combe, anciently stood a sun-temple, known to
the Romans, but built by the Silurian-Basques. One Brutus, the
Pauch, or Phoenician Pauch, being the Hindu for Phoenician, the
latter being not a Semitic, but an Aryan race came there and
stamped out devil-worshipping which had sway in the Stroud
Valley around 2000 B.C.* Of course, the ancient pillar bore no light
when I saw it; nor is anything left of the sun-temple save a red
finial, I have handled, and ruins built into a farmhouse wall. But
that it did bear such a light, night and day, thousands of years back
on those Glostershire uplands, there can be little doubt. Similar
lights, guides to wayfarers by day, and sea marks for mariners at
night, anciently burnt on the lofty Furetana pillars of the Macares
(Garians, with Melcarth for a god of the sun and fire), which stood,
some thousand or more years ago, in the Colombia Highlands of
South America. This ancient Brazilian white race of sun-wor-
shippers may have known some way of eternalising a "cold" form
of light. Whatever it is, or was, the method is unknown to modern
science. It is believed by some people that the ancient Egyptians
knew of such a form of physical energy and applied it to light their
pyramid interiors. Whether or not Ezekiel had this in mind when he
spoke of that "terrible crystal" of the Nile and old Egypt, who shall
say?

Occult testimony, derived both from psychometric means and
from traditions still current among certain mysterious brotherhoods
in the East and in Egypt, is that the great central temple-cathedral
of the capital of Atlantis called, by some, Sardegon which was
engirdled by seven great mountain ranges, was built of a white,
shining stone common in Atlantis. We may, therefore, surmise that
the same stone was used by her imperial pioneers, or that its repute
had so impressed men in her colonial outposts that the ancestors of
the old Quiches, who may have had personal contact with the
Atlantean pioneer-civiliser, Quetzalcoatl, the man in black, in Central
America, associated the motherland, and, perhaps, her great im-
perial colony, Hy- (or Royal) Brazil, known to the old Irish Kelts,
with great cities and imperial palaces and majestic temples shining
in the sun, as its rays poured down on the glistening fagades and
colonnades. May be, or may be not quien sabe? we may have a
chance to verify the truth of these traditions of extreme and shadowy
antiquity, when, or if, as certain mystics say, Atlantis will emerge
from the bed of the Atlantic, after 10-12,000 years of submersion,
in the coming one hundred years, an event which, it is forecast, will

* This statement is, in part, based on the curious fact that the site of this ancient temple
of the sun-worshippers of ancient Britain Silurian and perhaps pre-Silurian is close to a
very pretty hamlet called Customs Scrubs. Now, the word Customs has nothing to do with
manorial affairs of Anglo-Saxon or Norman times; for, some miles away, is a place called
Customs Mede, near Standish, Glos. In each case, the first element in the name relates to an
ancient custom, or rite, related to burning fire on sun-pillars, or the ancient bealtiru.
AUTXOE.

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 85

coincide with the final war named Armageddon. Certainly, if the
Second World War be not this Armageddon, it is a very close
approach to its horrors !

It is significant that Quetzalcoatl a man in black, not a god nor
a nephilem, exactly as was the man Osiris deified later as an ancient
Egyptian saviour-god who came from the east, the land of Hy-
Brazil, or perhaps Atlantis, the motherland, to give laws and the
elements of civilisation to the savages and barbarians of pre-cataclys-
mic Central South America, is said, in a very ancient Quich6 MS.
and in the Popul Vuh the Mayan bible to have come from the
other side of the sea from the place called "Camuhibal". Camuhibal,
says the ancient MS., is the place of the white or shining lights or life.
(Quichf : zak gazlem: zak = a white thing). It was also the place
of the shadow of colonnades, or, in Low Latin, the obumbraculum, or a
colonnade, or covered stone way with adjacent buildings, suitable
for a promenade in the heat of the day.

There is no need to smile at Colonel Fawcett and call this story
a mystical fantasy of his. The Brazilian forest Indians are not really
accustomed to flights of imagination of this sort. If one of them told
Fawcett he had seen such a fixed, strange light burning in a ruined
building in the deep jungle, why, he probably did\ Besides, if we are
to believe St. Augustine and Cedrenus, the old Byzantine chronicler,
"perpetual lamps", or lights, were by no means unknown to the
ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks. St. Augustine says that
such a lamp was in a fane of Venus in Africa. Old Memphis had
many of these perpetual lamps, burning in the mausolea of the
mighty dead. It was a symbol of the immortal soul, and ancient
Egyptians are said to have believed that the astral soul of a mummy,
hovering round a sepulchre for 2-3,000 years, might, at the sight of
such a lamp, be induced to break the magnetic chain binding it to
the dead body, and unite with the spirit. Plutarch says he saw a
lamp of the sort in a temple of Jupiter Ammon, where, said the
priests, it burnt, in all winds and rain, for years and could not be
extinguished. In the time of Pope Paul III, of Rome, it was said that
a tomb, opened in the Appian Way, was found to have in it the
body of a beautiful girl swimming in a bright

"liquor that preserved the lovely limbs and face, life-like. As
the tomb opened, there was seen a lamp, which at once ex-
tinguished itself. It was said to be the body of Tulliola, daughter
of Cicero/'

I leave modern physicists to make their own comments about
the theory of the old alchemists that such lamps could be created by
reducing gold to an oily fluid, whereon in a properly made lamp, the
gold re-absorbed its oily fluid and gave it out again. Of course, the

86 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

word "perpetual" must not be taken too literally, and interpreted as
conflicting with the law of conservation of energy. Allah and the
prophet forbid that any scientific gentleman, whose eyes should
scan these lines, perchance, should charge me with such scientific
impiety! Yet, in a day when radio has become a commonplace,
and the ends of the earth speak war and blood and foolishness,
B.B.C. "humour", bawdiness and propaganda to each other, would
a shining light, like this in the Brazilian jungle, be more wonderful
than the unknown life-ray, which, in 1930, I saw functioning in a
lonely house close to Doom, Holland, and whereby meat, eggs, cut
flowers, milk could be kept fresh and the bacteria of putrefaction
eradicated, for months on end so long as the ray was emitted from
the transformer?

God is great. The world hath in it many wonders, which are not
all known to scientists or even the archaeologists. The day may
come, sooner than one may now suppose, when some English-speak-
ing explorer will come across one of these strange, fixed lights in an
ancient Brazilian dead city of the jungle, and doubtless be re-
minded, for his pains when he reports home, of the life and trials of
Baron von Munchausen and poor Louis de Rougemont.

It seems clear that the catastrophe that overtook these dead but
once shining cities of ancient Brazil was of such an appalling nature
that it drove everyone forth from them. Everything was left behind.
Bars of silver and gold were thrown to the ground, in panic haste,
by men thinking only of how to save their lives. It may be that the
catastrophe was accompanied by terrific tidal waves, and vulcanism
of a frightful character, general not local, such as might be caused
by the approach to the earth of a body from outer space. Indeed, a
lost book of Varro (referred to in Chapter I) confirms the strange
tradition of the Aztecan "legends" that the planet Venus was seen
to be changing her colour, shape and course hourly. This really
indicates that some violent change in the orbit of the earth had taken
place such a change that, whereas, before, all rain fell in the night,
and so rainbows were never seen, after it, the rainbow was taken as a
new symbol of the intervention of gods and goddesses appalled by the
horrors that had been brought on the earth, by their master, the
Demi-ourgos. (Of course, as I have already said, were the men,
before the Deluge, saints or devils, and the ancient myths hint that
they had become degenerate, that would not have halted the
catastrophe of natural forces by an ell or an inch. What would be
would be !)

Was this cosmic body, adrift in space, our Moon? It may be;
because a tribe of Indians met in Guiana, by Humboldt about 1820,
said their ancestors existed before the Moon like the Arcadians
and this may mean what it imported in ancient Arcadia, and not a
too ingenious interpretation of an old Greek text alleged to confuse

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 87

Selene (the Moon) with the Greek word meaning pre-HeUenes.
(Vide page 29, supra). It is also significant that Diodorus Siculus,
the first-century B.C. historian who drew on archives in the old
temples of Carthage, which probably recorded traditions and pre-
history derived by the Phoenician and their close kinsmen the
Carthaginian mariners voyaging the Atlantic, after the destruction
of Atlantis, tells us of Basilea, sister of Atlas, one of the Atlantean
kings a man not a god, as she was a woman and not a goddess
who married her brother Hyperion, the sun or Lucifer, in the
fashion of the later ancient Egyptian Pharoahs, and bore him Helio
(the sun) and Selene (the moon). Basilea's brothers of Atlas slew
Hyperion and drowned the child Helio (the sun), lest Hyperion
might take the throne of Atlantis. Maddened by these murders,
Selene cast herself from the top of a mountain and perished, while
Basilea lost her reason, and when her Atlantean subjects tried to
restrain her, a frightful hurricane, with lightning and thunder, arose
and she vanished.

If we euhemerise these myths, we might say that what they im-
port is that some cosmic body, whether or no Selene, the Moon,
approached our own planet, the Earth, after the Sun (Helio) had
vanished behind vast clouds into a night of blackness, and brought
on an appalling cataclysm the Great Deluge of the Old World
myths and Genesis in which Queen Basilea, symbolising the great
island-continent of Atlantis, was seen no more of men.

In the imperial continental colony of Hy-Brazil, of the pre-
cataclysmic Brazilian highlands, it is probable that many of the
people of the dead cities were swallowed up in the frightful crevasses
of the ground produced by violent quakes such as the bandeiristas
of A.D. 1743 saw. May be, too, many were asphyxiated by poisonous
gases arising from eruptions and smoking craters. Some of these
ancient cities must now lie below the level of the Maranon- Amazon
basin. If no or few artifacts have been found in the ancient houses, or
palaces, Time may long ago have rotted them away. Who knows,
too, what later roamers plundered these dead cities and left memories
of what they saw in ancient petroglyphs and rock-pictures found in
wild cattons and cliff-faces from Oregon to old Peru?

In any case, these dead cities of old Brazil must be of incredible
age, and destructive of theories that South America, in the era before
the Christian, had no civilisation. Many of the riddles of their empti-
ness and utter desolation cannot be solved until we know far more
about them than the 1750 story tells. After all, the Relatorio deals
with only one dead city, while there are known to exist others.
Fawcett kept what he knew to himself; but Time, that reveals
many things and destroys others, may yet roll up the veil from the
mysteries of a wonderful civilisation that cannot have been far
behind our own not that we have much to boast of when we have

88 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

to record the glories of two World Wars in less than half a normal
healthy man's or woman's lifetime ! And it is a disturbing coincidence
that ancient "myths" stress that the catastrophes of thousands of
years ago were preceded by gigantic wars, and that men wandered
forth warning of the wrath to come, of which these wars were the
premonitions. But for the World War No. 2 it is likely that far more
attention would have been devoted by scientists, now obsessed with
and pre-occupied by war work and research, to the world-wide
quakes, year after year since 1939, stretching from the Mediterranean
to Peru and Los Angeles. It is already suspected that German sub-
marines, caught on the bed of the South Atlantic in one of these
volcanic convulsions, failed to make any port in 1940-41 . Let us hope
that the law of averages will fail to rule in this present year 1944-5.

Mr. Lewis Spence tells us that Colonel Fawcett wrote him:
"I have good reason to know that these original (white Atlantean)
people still remain in a degenerate state. . . . They use script and
also llamas, an animal associated with Andean heights above 10,000
feet, but in origin a low country, hybrid animal. Their still existing
remains show the use of different coloured stones in the steps leading
to temple buildings and a great deal of sculpture in demi-relief."

It is exceedingly curious, one may say in passing, that the Amazon
white women of South America, of whom I shall speak at large in a
subsequent book to be published by Messrs. Rider and Company,
are, in unpublished sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish MSS.
I shall there cite, also associated with similar architectural remains,
and with a mysterious animal, not found elsewhere, reminding us of
the llama, which Colonel Fawcett says the degenerate descendants of
this ancient white and highly civilised South American still use today !*

Mr. Richard Oglesby Marsh, a distinguished engineer and
scientist, former U.S. Secretary of Legation and charge d'affaires at
Panama, who has made scientific explorations from Bolivia and over
the Andes into the headwaters territory of the Brazilian Amazon,
has arrived at conclusions similar to my own about this very ancient
Matto Grosso civilisation. He thinks that it was from this ancient
Atlantean type of Brazilian civilisation of bearded men and beauti-
ful women that the Mayans, and, later, the Incas, derived their
cultures. He has found that this ancient Hy-Brazilian race used the
same names for the zodiacal constellations that are used today. There
are South American geologists, too, who point out that the Roosevelt
tableland, on which this ancient civilisation founded their dead cities,
has been above sea-level probably long before the Glacial periods.

Mr. Marsh believes that this ancient race, traditions of which
and their mighty empire ranged from the Atlantic to the Pacific

* We owe to this great race the cultivated banana, which has no seeds, but is propagated
from suckers. It is alone found wild, with seeds, in Brazil, and is called the pacoba. The
Atlantean Brazilians introduced it into old Atlantis and what are now the Canaries.

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 89

shores, are today crystallised in the folk-lore of Brazilian Indian
tribes. When the cosmic convulsion rendered these great stone cities
uninhabitable and its mephitic nature is clearly indicated by the
bottomless crevasses found in the plazas and among the ruins of the
shivered dead city found by the bandeiristas, in A.D. 1750 the
climatic conditions were such that great reptiles, extinct elsewhere
on the earth, moved in, making the places as Isaiah's home for the
"hairy dragon". Before long, the green forest covered all of the old
Brazilian highlands.

In fact, if the modern Indians be believed, this great plateau,
more than 1,500,000 square miles in area, one of the largest and most
dangerous unexplored regions of the globe, has rivers and great
swamps where dinosaur types still wallow and leap on their gar-
gantuan prey, much as is depicted in the late Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle's novel, Lost World referred to in a later chapter of this book.
The same Indians, between the Rio Araguaya and the Rio Roose-
velt, and Amazonas and the Goyaz plateau, an extension of the
Roosevelt tableland, even assert that the forests of this unknown
region are the home of other giant mammals, of monsters of fear-
some character ! All of which, of course, suggests that in this very
ancient Atlantean-BraziHan world giants and monsters of the slime
wallowed on its tropical fringes !

It is certainly not without significance that the sertdo, or hinter-
land of the Brazilian state of Bahia, wherein, as I have said, the
bandeiristas of the year A.D. 1750 found one of these Atlantean dead
cities is, in parts, covered with the remains of monstrous, extinct
animals overtaken by some great catastrophe. And the duration,
too, of the great civilisation represented and connoted by these
extremely ancient and splendid ruins, which, as Fawcett himself
said, are something very much more than merely megalithic struc-
tures of some Pelasgian race of Ogyges, is suggested in the significant
fact that in the same region will be found, either apart or in com-
bination, both ideographic or hieroglyphic scripts and alphabetical
signs. The history of ancient Egypt herself proves how long a span
of years must bridge the gap between the hieroglyph or the ideo-
graph and the alphabetical letter. Time's ever rolling stream bore
much away ere this amazing race of Atlantis Brazil had created the
first alphabet. Some of us may remember how the late Mr. Reid Moir
was greeted with ridicule and scepticism when he said that man
existed in the Pliocene Age tens of thousands of years earlier than
science supposed. Yet, in 1936, the same Mr. Moir was elected a
Fellow of that august and high and dry Olympian society, the
Royal Society of England. It may seem that the like chronological
correction may later have to be made in relation to the age of culture
and civilisation. For, as the famous hymn says, so much, like the
sons of Time, "flies forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day".

10

(i) High priest of Tiahuanacu with stairway, or "evolution** sign on sides of
mitre. Note enlarged ear-lobe of Easter Island type. ( Vide also No, x 5, page 1 32 .)
(2) Tiahuanacu warrior with Egyptian slant of eyes, on ancient metamorphic
slate under palace ruins. Note "Earth" sign on chest found (aa) today among
Indians in Koaty and Sampaya Islands, Lago de Titicaca, Peru. (3) Native
Peruvian ad&ratorio (wayside altar) at Carangas, the stairway evolution sign of

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF QI

One might even wonder whether the walls of cyclopean cities
of this ancient race were built as a protection against what mon-
strous serpents or marine lizards might swim out of the deeps against
them? Qyien sabe? Such negro autochthones as existed behind the
ancient civilised regions would hardly have been regarded as
serious adversaries, any more than a Zulu or Maori, in their tribal
panoplies, would be a match for, say, a modern "tank-busting"
gun, or low-diving bomber ! As their civilisation had been extended
by Qjietzalcoatl to Central America, some significance may also
attach to that queer clay dish which was dug up in San Salvador,
a few years ago, and on which is a picture of men flying above a
group of palms in curious machines, leaving a trail of smoke behind
them, and which look remarkably like flying-machines I

Monsieur Lecointe, former French consul-general at Para, has
made independent discoveries of his own in the inferno verde of
modern Brazilian Amazonas. They include enormous stone discs
divided into sections and covered with hieroglyphs. He has photo-
graphed some of these stones, which he calls "solar disks" of an
ancient sun-worshipping race. Was it this ancient race that left the
remarkable prehistoric obelisk, covered with drawings in many
colours, found by Senor Julio Tello, near Trujillo, North Perii, in
1 933? Was it they who left that simbolo escalonado (sign of the staircase),
denoting evolution towards some sort of god-head, which is found in
ancient, pre-Inca Peru, on remarkable ceramics in the island of
Maraj6 (mouth of the lower Amazon), Brazil, and in Alaska and
Patagonia, and is evidently of great age? The sign is also found, to-
day, embodied in the wayside altars, or native adoratorios of the
Quechua Indians, descendants of the old Incas, in the Peruvian
Andes. Was it they who built the ancient forts and aqueducts in
the Andes east of Cuzco, and left, with gold objects and ceramics,
the small tubes of a material like glass, but not glass, and of unknown
chemical composition, which have recently been found in ancient
graves (huaeas) at ancient, ruined Intihuantan, about ninety

Tiahuanacu. (4) Image of giraffe head found under Tiahuanacu ruins. (5)
Image of fossilized human bone found under deluge-alluvium, Tiahuanacu.
It bears on chest the Earth sign of the warrior and civilian castes of Tiahuanacu.
(Vide also No. 14, p. 132.) (6) Volute of stairway-evolution sign of Arouwak Indians
possible descendants of the Tiahuanacu ancients. ( Vide also Nos. 3 and 1 9 (latter
on page 132.) (7) Unknown extinct animal (glyph) found in hidden catacomb,Easter
Island, and on ancient pottery, Trujillo, Peru. (8) and (9) "Rayed" head-dress
petroglyphs found, 1933, by Marshall Field Expedition, in the Sierra de Santa
Marta, Colombia. (Vide also page 140.) (ip), (11), (12) Petroglyphs in Sierra
de Santa Marta, Colombia. (10) Has affinity with signs of Maraj6ense (pre-
historic Brazilian-Lower Amazon) symbols on funerary ceramics, and with
Egyptian sign of the goddess Neith, mother of sun-god Ra, Rayrm (Peru), and Vi-Ra
in Atlantean Brazil. ( 1 1 ) and ( 1 2) Stylized pctroglyph heads recalling the psenth*
or royal coiffure of ancient Egypt, and the nimbi of Christian saints.

93 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

miles from Cuzco? (The Incas and their predecessors knew not
glass, or how to make it.)

We do not yet know. It will be the task of future British and
American scientific explorers to clear up these mysteries of ages so
remote that they "crowd on the soul"., as visions of dead glories of
incredibly ancient worlds that the modern evolutionist is reluctant,
or refuses to suppose may have been antecedent to the glacial epochs.

The reader may recall the remarkable statement of the old
bandeirista that the statue of the colossus he saw in the dead city had
his hand outstretched towards the north \ When this MS. first saw
the light in the archives of a historical society in Rio de Janeiro, in
1840, this reference to the north led a Copenhagen professor to
suggest that the strange letters were runes, and that the Scandi-
navians had reached ancient South America. So impressed was the
King of Denmark that he even detailed a warship to go to Rio and
land a lieutenant who had orders to go up-country and find these
statues and the dead city of "Hyperborean" suggestion.

Here, one may recall that the Jew prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah
located the ancient Paradise and Garden of Eden in the north;
but if the reader glances at a map he will see that north of Brazil
corresponds to that very Amenti-land of the dead, paradise of the
ancient Egyptian and the Kelt, under another name of Royal
(or Hy-) Atlantean Brazil! which the people of the Pharaohs
said lay to the west of the Nile. Moreover, there was a Men, who was
twelfth king in the calendar of the Mayas, in whose country
Guatemala was a Nile, who corresponds closely with the Menes
of ancient Egypt who built the temple of Memphis and turned the
course of the Nile of Egypt !

Brazil, the old and mysterious, seems to be the ancient land which
was, perhaps, the cradle of the world's oldest civilisation, may be
60,000 years ago, in a day when our own European ancestors were
living in caves in the (then) far warmer regions of what is now
Pyrenean France, Cantabrian Spain, or lacustrine Switzerland.
It, too, is the Mecca of the treasure hunter, prepared to risk death
in very unpleasant forms in order to trail the whereabouts of ancient
gold Amines, or lost mines of platinum, which latter appear on
cryptic charts and derroteros made by wandering Jesuit misioneros
of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and deposited in the
old viceregal, Lusitanian archives, now found in the Biblioteca
Nacional in Rio de Janeiro. Many of these lost mines, or caches, lie
deep in the virgin forests of Brazil. Some of them were the quest of
those hardy and valiant land-pirates, the bandeiristas of Sao Paulo,
who waged war on Jesuit misiones and reducciones^ where mining was
done by the Fathers, with Indian aid, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.

When I was in Rio, in 1938, I heard about a French engineer,

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 93

Apollinaire Frot, who had gone into the unknown region, west of
the Goyaz plateau, to search for some very ancient gold mines. For
half a century, Frot had hunted these ancient mines, and, in the
course of his wanderings, had stumbled on ancient rock inscriptions
in Amazonas and the Matto Grosso woods which, to his amazement,
revealed the amazing fact that the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians
were of South American origin, and had left these petroglyphs as
portolanos to the location of the ancient gold mines they worked, and
which are now shrouded in dense bush and lianas, haunted by
poisonous snakes, loathsome insects whose bite is pathogenic, and
dangerous animals. In some cases, swamps of vast size border the
ancient mines, and, here again, if Indian stories are not entirely
mythical, tracks, "huge and recognised", left in the slime of the
marshy beaches by monsters of mesozoic type, leave no doubt as to
what sort of lost world lies behind. (I shall refer to this aspect of
mysterious South America in a subsequent book.)

Other inscribed stones, almost obliterated after thousands of
years, have been found in these unknown jungles of Brazil, and pur-
port that Phoenicians and their kinsmen, the Carthaginians, also
wandered this way, thousands of years ago, trading and hunting
valuable mineral lodes. Before my reader scouts the idea of these
revelations of antique civilisations in South America, he or she must
remember that more than 2,000 photographs of these ancient
petroglyphs have been made by Frot and native pre-historians
in Brazilian wilds, and that the inscriptions range from hieroglyphic
(demotic or hieratic forms) to cuneiform or proto-Phoenician
forms, such as have been found cut in caves in the Canary Islands,
or are codified in Gesenius's Scriplurae Linguaegue Phoeniciae
monument a. '

Frot had been exploring these wild woods of Brazil since he was
a youth. It was in the province of Amazonas that he came on an
ancient carved rock hidden by dense jungle close to a river, which
recorded the journey of a proto-Egyptian priest to what is now
Bolivia. The ancient inscription went on to speak of Proto-Egyptian
silver mines, located in what is now the basin of the Rio Madeira
(south of the Madeira falls). These portolanos in stone must be the
oldest treasure charts known. One of them reads as follows :

"Look out with care for a high hill on whose summit are
six palm trees. Close by the foot of this hill, thou wilt find yet
another carved rock telling thee of what lies ahead on the road
to the mines of gold we worked."

Stage by stage, these portolanos in ancient stone ran across Central
Brazil, from some very ancient, proto-Egyptian port which must
have been located between Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. In the plateau

94 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

of Goyaz, on the edge of the mysterious wilderness which has never
at any time been under sea or ice, and which, today, is known as
the Roosevelt tableland, Frot found one of these stones, while he
was running down an old Carthaginian trail. The clue of the
hieroglyphics led him to a very ancient gold mine, in the middle
of a virgin forest too thick for him to penetrate. Indeed, many of
these ancient Brazilian-Bolivian gold mines, today, are buried in the
middle of ancient woods. Frot* says his inscriptions prove that the
ancestors of the Egyptians, long before they passed to Africa and the
Nile, had established an ancient South American empire, ranging
from what is now Bolivia to Bahia. So, while the treasure hunter
is deeply engaged in trailing down caches of proto-Egyptian gold
bars and ingots in South America's jungles and foothills, he may, by
chance, blunder on some enigmatical obelisk of unknown age,
carved with hieroglyphs and covered with multi-coloured drawings
in imperishable pigments, such as Sefior Julio Tello found near
Trujillo, Peru, in 1933. Or, he may drop on a huaca (ancient treasure
tomb) wherein he may find, as did Berliner archaeologists, eighty
miles east of Cuzco, towards a Bolivian border and terra incognitaa y
peculiar ceramics or tubes made of some material like glass, but not
glass, being of unknown chemical composition.

One of the native Indian races of Brazil are the people of the
Tapuya. It is possible that these Tapuyos are the descendants
of a white helot race, serving the ancient Hy-Brazilian master-race,
and sharing with them the exodus following on the Great Catas-
trophe, when Atlantis was engulfed. Southey in his History of Brazil
tells of a Jesuit who, administering extreme unction to a very old
Indian crone, asked if he could get her anything to eat. Said the old
crone : "Father, my stomach rebels against food, but if you could
only get me the tender hand of a little Tapuyo boy, I think I could
pick the little bones ; but woe is me, there is nobody to go out and
shoot one for me."

Thus, while the descendants of the master-race of Hy-Brazilians
lived to be exterminated (in Lake Titicaca, Peru), by savage
Colloans of Carian descent, their helots became the food of cannibal
Indians, and their children delicatessen for queasy old Brazilian
Indian harridans sanctified for the Heaven of the Jesuits. Fawcett,
as Mr. Lewis Spence says and I trust he will forgive me for again
quoting from one of his excellent books on Atlantean pre-history
spoke of these Tapuyos, in the east of Brazil, as refugees from an
older civilisation that civilisation I here style Hy-Brazilian. He
said: "These Tapuyos are fair as the English. They have small feet

* It is to be feared that Monsieur Frot has left his bones in the unknown Matto Grosso
where (I heard in Rio in 1938) he was on the trail of dead cities and ancient monuments.
These lands are no substitutes for academicians' padded chairs in great libraries and
museums, salons and offices. H.M. Ambassador in Rio de Janeiro informs me, June 1944, that
Monsieur Frot is deceased. AUTHOR,

JUNGLE LIGHT THAT SHINES BY ITSELF 95

and hands, delicate features of great beauty, and white, golden and
auburn hair. They were skilful workers in precious stones and wore
diamonds and jade ornaments."

Mr. Spence and other readers may, in this connection, compare
Fawcett's story with what I myself relate about the remarkable
adventure of the man of Medellin, among a similar white helot
race, somewhere on the confines of unknown North-Eastern Brazil.
(Vide pages 49-53 supra.}

One last very curious fact shows that a corner of the mantle of
the culture of these ancient and highly civilised Hy-Brazilians has
fallen on a tribe of modern Indians who, today, dwell in a creek and
peninsula of Lake Titicaca. These Indians are Golloan or Aymara
Indians, whose ancestors as Cieza de Leon significantly recorded
in the year A.D. 1535 exterminated some very old, bearded, white-
skinned people who had taken refuge on an island in that lake,
many centuries before the Spaniards irrupted their banditti-soldiers
on old Incaic Peru. The old Spanish missioners found that these
Indians of the borders and shores of Lake Titicaca possessed a very
ancient form of ideographic writing inscribed with the juice of a
plant, called Solanum aureifolium the native name of which is
"Nuiiamayu" on animals' skins, and, later, on paper. The old
missioners turned a breviary of the Catholic faith into this script,
and, among the ideograms of these Koaty Island (Moon Island in
Lake Titicaca) and Sampaya Indians, one notes the signs following :

XT

Meanings :

"Stricken in years"; "Faith," "Heaven

"God"; or Achacki. or belief. and Earth."

1 t

"Belief, or god" : lyasatha. "Birth, or reproduction."

The reader can compare the above signs with those found on the
walls and monuments of the dead city of the Portuguese bandeiristas.
(See pages 43, 45, 46, supra.) He or she may also note the significant
fact that others of these ideograms of the Aymara Indians of Lake
Titicaca and borders exactly correspond to unknown and very
ancient rock signs found at Ferro (Canaries) ; among the Touaregs
in the North African Sahara; to letters in the Ethiopian alphabet;
rupestrian inscriptions at Thugga, part of the old empire of Carthage,
in North Africa ; and to one letter Aaph, in the Sidonian alphabet used
in the cities of old Phoenicia of Tyre. In particular, the curious
dots, above, also appear in rock inscriptions at Thugga, Sahara, in

96 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

the deserts of the strange race of the veiled men of the Touaregs,
and old Numidia. These forms have gone half-way round the
world from the land of old Brazil, lively evidence of travels and un-
known travellers of a very ancient world whose existence is hardly
suspected even by our modern world and encyclopaedic historians.

CHAPTER IV

MISSIONARY MEN IN BLACK: FORERUNNERS OF THE
GREAT CATASTROPHE

TRADITIONS ranging right round the world, from China to Colombia
and old Peru, from the jungle and forest lands of Central America
to old Burma, speak of mysterious men in black, from some far-dis-
tant highly civilised land, who suddenly appeared in the streets and
highways warning the people of the eastern and western world of
wrath to come, and the destruction of the rich, powerful and deca-
dent cities of the plain. Both in Asia and old South America, they
seem to have made their apocalyptic advent in a day when neither
the mighty Himalayas nor the Andes had reached the cloud-topping
heights at which they have been standing since the days of modern
and written history. Chronology, even approximately correct, is, at
this time, impossible to establish. All we can say is these men in
black vanished, apparently as suddenly as they had appeared in
America and Southern Asia, prior to 11,000 B.C., when Atlantis
was submerged and the cities of Hy-Brazil, her royal and imperial
colony, became, as the Hebrew poet said of other ages and peoples,
annihilated in :

"... The day of the Lord's vengeance . . . the streams shall
be turned into pitch and the dust into brimstone, and the land
shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched by night
or day. The smoke shall go up for ever and ever. . . . The cor-
morant and the bittern shall possess it ... and he shall stretch
out upon it the line of confusion and the stones (or plummets)
of emptiness. They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom,
but none shall be there. Her princes shall be nothing. Thorns
shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in her for-
tresses; and it shall be a habitation of dragons ..."

Had such a poet and prophet a vision of men, of a far distant
day, sounding with plummets some bottomless well in just such a
stone city of the unknown dead, as did the old bandeiristas of Lusitanian
Brazil in the year A,D. 1750?

THE MISSIONARY MEN IN BLACK 97

As other traditions, current in the mystic East, say of these lands
^of the morning of our world :

"These great centres and cities of the plain became so de-
graded and corrupt, that it was impossible to purify them, and
they were swept away by the besom of the wrath of the Great
Central Sun of the Cosmos."

But it seems probable that when the men in black were preaching
and civilising in Central America, on the western side of America,
and in South-Eastern Asia, the giant disaster that wrecked the cities
of Atlantean Brazil and the motherland of Atlantis was still an age
away. May be, the general feeling of insecurity after a minor, but
still terrifying volcanic upheaval of the earth's crust in Hy-Brazil,
and ranging along an earthquake belt to the motherland of Atlantis,
had sent them forth on the orders of their rulers. One can hardly
conceive that the lands had sunk to the decadence pictured in the
old myths, unless these men in black were merely the missioners of a
decent minority of Atlantean folk. None can yet say. We know
not.

Colonel P. H. Fawcett, who, with his son and son's friend, Mr.
Rimell, may be presumed to have perished there is no definite
information either way, but only what amounts to a legal presump-
tion, in the lapse of nearly twenty years in the gallant effort to
solve the mystery of the Atlantean Empire in old Brazil, points out
an amazing fact about the tremendous age of this high civilisation of
Hy-Brazil, Royal Brazil (or Imperial Atlantis), as the old Irish
Keltic wanderers called it. He says that the ancient native Brazilian
name for the Rio Amazonas, the Amazon, which is Marafton, was
originally borne by the Mexican Gulf, in a day when an arm of that
gulf must have extended to the Amazon. It is significant, too, that another
old native name for the Mexican Gulf was Orinoco , the name borne
by the great river of Guiana- Venezuela. The remote day when the
Mexican Gulf reached to the Amazon was during the heyday of
Atlantean Brazil, or Hy-Brazil, the royal colony of the great mother-
land.

The pioneer Quetzalcoatl, who, probably, came from Atlantean
Brazil on a civilising mission to barbarian and savage Central
America, was, it may be necessary to repeat, as the myths of ancient
Mexico make clear, a man, not a god. One may call him a divine man,
later deified as was Osiris, and the other gods and goddesses of the
Egyptian Nile, who, as Manetho showed, were merely men and
women who had achieved great pioneering and cultural works. The
ancient Mexicans said Quetzalcoatl came to them from a land to the
south-east^ and that his symbol was the feathered serpent. It will be
remembered that the serpent was found carved in stone in some

o

98 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

parts of the dead Atlantean city in Bahia province. Slightly varying
accounts are given of Quetzalcoatl.

Father Bernardino Sahagun, the famous missioner and historian
among the Mexicans, after the days of the conquistadores, was told :

"Quetzalcoatl had a dark countenance, all his body was
clothed in a shirt wrought like a surplice, that did not reach to the
girdle of the waist. From the knee to the leg was covered with bus-
kins of tiger-skin, ornamented with sea-shells. He wore sandals."

Fray Juan Torquemada, the Franciscan missioner, who collected
traditions about Qjuetzalcoatl from the natives of old Mexico, among
whom he worked in the years after the Spanish conquest, says :

"Quetzalcoatl, it is held for certain, was a man of upright
character, elegant carriage and was white and blonde (bianco) ,
with a ruddy face (rubio) and bearded. His beard was long. He
was of benevolent disposition and learned, and a great person-
nage. His hair was long and black. . . ."

Torquemada, however, in the same rare book, Monarquia
Indiana, says :

"Qjietzalcoatl had blonde hair, and wore a black robe sewn
with little crosses of red colour."

The Mexican Codex Chimalpopoca, written in the native Nahua
tongue (and already mentioned in Chapter I), seems to suggest
that there had been several (three) attempts from some land across
the eastern sea to civilise the savages and barbarians of Central
America; but that all had failed before Quetzalcoatl came on the
scene. This seems to be borne out by the discovery, in A.D. 1927,
by the American Indian Foundation Fund diggers, of remains of a
great temple, beautifully coloured pottery, stone monuments and
idols, or statues of men, all lying under many feet of volcanic ash,
and far more ancient than Mayan or Aztec civilisations. These
remains must be at least 12,000 years old. They were found in the
Code province of Panama state.

According to Torquemada, twenty chiefs, led by a great man,
Qiietzalcoatl, arrived "out of the blue", one day, from the north-west.
(?) They landed at Panuco, now a village about twenty-five miles
south-west of Tampico, in Vera Cruz. . . .

"They were men of good appearance, well-clothed, in long
garments of black cloth like the cassocks of priests, open in front,
but without the cowls, the neck cut in crescent shape, short
sleeves, but wide, with nothing at the elbows. This dress the

THE MISSIONARY MEN IN BLACK 99

natives use, today (in seventeenth century), in their dances and
ballets, in imitation of these ancient folk. These latter went for-
ward from Panuco, showing good manners, giving no occasion for
war or fighting, stage by stage, till they reached Tullan, where the
natives of this province received and lodged and entertained them. 5 '

The country from which they came, according to the Popul Vuh,
or Bible of the Quiches of Western Guatemala, was in the east,
"where red and white men lived in joy : their aspect gentle and
sweet, their language pleasant, and their minds very intelligent".

Torquemada says the men were Toltecs, and that their leader,
Quetzalcoatl, had come from a land not submerged, but one
which the ruling class considered so unstable, owing to occasional
cataclysms, that they looked out for a settlement elsewhere. On this
point, it will be recalled that Colonel Fawcett pointed out that all the
dead cities of Brazil had been overthrown by violent earthquakes.

Clavigero, another colonial Spanish historian of Mexico,
describes Quetzalcoatl as high priest of Tula, capital of Tulceca. . . *

"He was white in complexion, tall and corpulent, broad in
forehead, with large eyes, long, black hair, thick beard : a man
of austere and exemplary life, clothed in long garments, gentle
and prudent. He was expert in the art of melting metals and
polishing precious stones which he taught the Tultecans."

Quetzalcoatl established contact with the powerful Central
American race of the Toltecs , or Nagualecas; and, says Torque-
mada in a chapter headed, "De la Pobla$on de Tulla y su Senorio" :

"They were men great in stature, excellent gold-and-silver
snjiths. When they landed at Panuco, Quetzalcoatl was at their
head and they marched inland, under his direction. They built
the splendid city of Tullan, with fine and beautiful houses,
temples and palaces, all of the greatest magnificence."

The Toltecs intermarried with the natives of the country, and
by command of Quetzalcoatl, colonised other parts of Central
America. Tollan, says the native historian Ixtlilxochitl, was a place
of fine palaces and temples. The kings of the country this might
fit either the motherland of Atlantis, or the great colony of Hy-
Brazil, and it is part of the Deluge Myth found all over the world
grew licentious, and the provinces revolted. The gods were wroth
with king and people, and great frosts, followed by heat, visited
the city. The crops perished, rocks melted, and plagues finished the
ruin. (Frosts are seldom experienced in Mexico.)

Eight leagues north-east from Mexico City is the plain anciently
called the "Path of the Dead" (Micoatl). In it are two lagoons

IOO MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

dedicated to the sun (Tonatiuh), and the moon (Metzli). Hundreds
of pyramids surround these lakes, forming streets in dead-straight
Knes, running east- west, north-south. On top of the Mexican
teocallis a truncated, or polled pyramid, with a temple atop
stood two colossal statues, one to the sun, the other to the moon.
Plates of gold sheathed the stone and the statues fairly dazzled the
eyes. Naturally, the gold-hungry Castilian soldiers of Cortes stripped
off the gold, and the statues were destroyed by a fanatical Spanish
Franciscan priest, bishop Zumaraga, who broke up every "idolo"
he could see.

In Anahuac was found the great Teocallis of Choluhuan. It is
described thus, in an unpublished Spanish MS., by Don Pedro de los
Rios, written in A.D. 1556 :

"In the interior was a square house, built of stone, pillared
with beams of cypress. It contained in the beams two human
skeletons, and there were idols of basalt, and curiously painted
and varnished vases. There was no outlet, and the step- work
was of bricks. An altar at the top was dedicated to the white-
bearded man Quetzalcoatl ; but the Indians say the pyramid was
not originally meant to serve for the adoration of Quetzalcoatl."

This MS. has a curious story to the effect that the Teocallis was
a Tower of Babel, and that a hymn was sung, there, by the Cholulans
at their festivals, which began with the words : Tulanian hululaez.
These two words are of no dialect known to Mexico, and are strangely
like the Jewish Alleluia. Lescarbot heard a song, with the words
Aylo or Alleluia, sung in Central America, which is singularly like
the Ta-Lqylu of the modern Copts of Upper Egypt, and the Arabic
hallal and Peruvian quillal (moon). Liniae, in Quichua, Peruvian
dialect, means gods of lightning and thunder, so that some people
have gone so far as to suggest that the ancestors of the Inca Peruvians
came to America across the land-bridge from the African shores of
the Atlantic. Altogether, it is hard to resist the conclusion that this
Mexican Tower of Babel was built some time, probably long ages,
after Quetzalcoatl went back to the south-eastern land from which
he never returned.*

* It is curious that in one ancient Mexican myth, Quetzalcoatl, like certain mahatmas
and elusive sages of modern Tibet and the Himalaya recesses, is said to have periodically
repaired to a Fountain of Youth, in the land of Tlalpallan, where he drank and recovered
from the ravages of old age. American legends call this mystic land: "Place of the Shining
Sands*'. It was variously cited as the Bahamas island of Bimini; Florida (where Juan Ponce
de Leon sought it) ; and other American regions. The Red Indians of North America placed
it somewhere to the East, which might fit either Atlantis, the motherland, or one of her
Central or South American colonies. Prester John, the monk of Far Cathay, is alleged to
have written a letter to the Byzantine emperor Manuel, locating the fountain as about
three days' journey from the Paradise whence Adam was expelled. Saturn, whom Diodorus
speaks of as a god-king (or man) of Atlantis, was turned from a white-haired man to a boy,
or a man in the prime of life, by drinking of the waters of this mystic fountain. It would be
curious if this same legend of the "Fontana de la Juventud" should be found, today, among
Brazilian Indian tribes. In any event, the myth dated back to a pre-cataclysmic age.

THE MISSIONARY MEN IN BLACK IOI

Qjietzalcoatl, and other Atlanteans from cither Hy-Brazil or
.the Atlantis motherland in the Atlantic Ocean, were in the ancient
dead city of Palenque, Chiapas, the frontier state of modern Mexico,
but that ancient town with its palaces, temples, waterways, bridges,
and pyramids existed long ages before the Mayas came there. It is
at the other famous Mayan town, or dead city of Chichen Itza, in
Yucatan, well known to American archaeologists, that there is found
a significant memorial to Quetzalcoatl : he is represented, in stone,
as Atlas supporting the world. And, as is known, Atlas gave his
name to the drowned Atlantean island-continent. Quetzalcoatl and
the other men from Atlantean Hy-Brazil made the Central American
country so rich and fertile that it was said, in an old Quich< chron-
icle : "a head of maize was a burden for a strong man to carry."

Then there came a change in the spirit of the scene. The time of
the Great Catastrophe was drawing nearer. A deadly enemy of
Quetzalcoatl, one Huemac, of the strong hand, landed at Panuco
with a great army and marched on QuetzalcoatPs city of Tullan, or
Tollan, not Cholullan, located on the shores of a great lake. Like
a very modern totalitarian dictator in Europe, or like the grinning
savages of modern Japan waging a war of pure aggression on peace-
loving, civilised China, Huemac of the strong hand burnt and
ravaged all before him and left the people with only their eyes to
weep.

Wherever he passed, great cruelties were done, and great tyran-
nies set up, say the old Spanish chronicles, derived from the native
traditions, which are, possibly, confused, or are have gone off the
rails, with native traditionalists, in identifying the Toltecs, which
were led by Huemac, with the men in black led by Quetzalcoatl.
More likely, the men in black were Atlanteans, or "builders" from
Hy-Brazil, or Atlantis, and not Toltecs, who are confused with
them, as " builders", in the myths. Anyway, Huemac established
the Toltec power in old Mexico, and it did not fade away till some
465 years before Cortes landed in Aztecan Mexico, and ruined the
succeeding Aztec civilisation whose last emperor was the ill-fated
Montezuma.

Fray Bernardino Sahagun takes up the story, at this point :

"The day came when Quetzalcoatl persuaded the Toltecs
(?) to go out from the city of Tullan. They left it at his order,
although they had been there a long time, and had built fine
and beautiful houses, temples and palaces, all with the greatest
magnificence, and even possessed great riches in all the places
where they had spread. Departing out, they took their leave,
abandoning houses, lands, cities, riches ; for, not being able to
take all away, they buried much riches and gold under the
earth, whence one draws it out today, full of admiration for the

IO2 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

excellence of their works. Obeying the orders of Qjietzalcoatl
they went, pushing before them, with infinite difficulties, their
wives, and sick and old, none making resistance to his com-
mands. All went on the road, immediately Qjietzalcoatl came out
of Tullan to go up to the region of Tlalpallan, whence he never
returned. . . ."

Torquemada was told that Huemac reigned in Tullan for
seventy years after Qjietzalcoatl quitted it; but, he varies the story
of Sahagun by saying that Qjietzalcoatl left Tullan in a rage be-
cause of the evil end he foresaw to a place which had become
licentious, and that it was from Cholullan, where he abode many
years, that he finally went to the sea. From Gholullan, Qjietzalcoatl
had sent out men who colonised Yucatan, Tabasco and Gampeache
and Onohualco by the sea and, as bas-reliefs and totem-poles
show, what is now British Columbia. There, these colonisers "built
most splendid and great Roman edifices as at Mixtlan (Hell, in the
Mexican tongue), which show that these men were of great in-
tellect and powers who constructed these fine buildings". Qjietzal-
coatl, as Torquemada suggests, may have become an old man
weighed down by the burden of years and weary of exercising a
wisdom and skill which seemed likely to become a vanity and
vexation of spirit . . ."when he departed from Cholullan, he pretended
that he was going to visit other provinces that he had sent men to
settle 5 '. However that may be, Huemac of the strange land, in
a rage that Quetzalcoatl had removed himself from his reach,
slaughtered all he found, and such fear came on men that they . . ,

"worshipped Huemac as a god, endeavouring by that to darken
and destroy the form of ritual that Qjietzalcoatl had already
bequeathed to that city".

There was also an ancient Mexican tradition handed down by the
far later Aztecs* or Nahuatls, that the first settlers in ancient Mexico
and Central America were white people. They were subsequently
conquered by invaders of a dark-skinned race who drove them
out from the land, forced them into ships and saw them sail
away for a far-off land to the east, in the direction of the rising sun,
where they settled. The natives of Guatemala, at the time of the
Spanish conquest, also had this tradition :

"When King Quetzalcoatl, of the very white race, was
conquered by an invading race with dark skins, he refused to

* There is reason to suppose that some of these Aztec tribes used polished mirrors of
quartz or obsidian as heliographs to flash messages about Cortes and the men of his
expedition!

THE MISSIONARY MEN IN BLACK 103

surrender. He said he could not live as a captive, nor submit to
savagery. So, with as many of his white people as could crowd
into his ships, he sailed to a far distant country towards the rising
sun. He reached it, and with his people, settled down there.
They prospered and became a great race. During the great
battle (in old Central America) many escaped into the forests
and were never again heard of; but the rest were taken prisoners,
and enslaved by the dark-skinned men."

To this there was a curious Aztecan tail-piece about the ultimate
coming of a saviour from the land to which Quetzalcoatl and his
white people had gone in their ships in the path of the sunrise :

"In a time to come, this white people shall return and again
master this land (of Central America and old Mexico)."

An echo of a time of cataclysm is also found today in another
region of Guatemala's forests. The late Dr. Thomas Gann noted
how natives at the village of Pichek, near Rabinal, refuse to handle
ancient figurines, jade statuettes and antique ornaments and the
like, which, they say, "were made by an ancient people, allied with
powers of evil at a time before the sun shone in the sky, when
people could find their way about the dark earth only with torches".
The natives of today say these antique figurines are endowed with
life. Indeed, these idolos are used by the modern witch-doctors, or
brujos. An Indian at Rabinal told Gann that there are great numbers
of these figurines and relics in the ancient ruins, but that they appear
only on Mondays and Thursdays, and even then run back into the
ruins and hide, unless the proper incantations are said.

It is possible, though it cannot be proved, at the moment,
that this race, "allied with evil", may have been identical with
the unknown people of extreme antiquity whose remains are found,
today, up the Rio Grande in Southern British Honduras, and whom
Dr. Gann believed had Mayan links. (I am inclined, myself, to fancy
that this mysterious race possibly either emigrants from old
Atlantis, belonging to the races outside the ruling aristocratic castes
of that island-continent, or migrants from old Atlantean, colonial
Hy-Brazil of Quetzalcoatl may have contacted the mysterious
Mayans (who had Mongolian traits superimposed on a more Aryan
or Caucasian ruling type), at a time when they (the Atlanteans)
had lapsed into degeneracy. Dr. Gann calls them the "Columbia
race".)

He says these mysterious people never had any close connection
with the Mayans of the old or later empire. They built citadels on
hill-tops, left no burial mounds, but innumerable figurines of men,
women and children of all classes, in their costumes. They flattened

104 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

the hill-tops and erected these citadels on terraced mounds, faced
with stone. There are rectangular sunk courts lined with blocks of
cut stone, in these ruins, and approached by stairways of stone.
Similar structures are found in ancient ruins in Ceylon and Angkor
Wat (Cambodia), (Vide: Colonel Fawcett's discovery of the ancient
inscribed stone in Ceylonese jungles, page 6 1 et seq. supra) . Many sub-
terraneans exist in these Guatemalan ruins, of stone blocks dove-
tailed each into other with no cement bonding. There is, in one
ruin, a fine amphitheatre with tiers of stone seats for 6,000 people.
The best seats were on a stone pyramid reserved for the king, nobles
and high priests. Among the figurines are images of fishes, birds,
beasts and dragons. The women wore tight skirts, ankle-long, and
heavily embroidered bodices cut low and exposing the breasts.
Their arms are bare or short-sleeved to the elbows. The men and
women wore round ear-plugs with tassels, and the women also wore
jewelled collarettes, beads and pendants. Both sexes are shown
dancing together in quite modern style. One figurine is that of a
woman holding a drum between her legs and beating it. Another is
of a woman apparently suckling, at her breast, a little animal. There
are on stelae dominant figures, as of rulers and conquerors. No
one can read the writing they used. Rows of hieroglyphs are on the
statuettes, and they are quite different, says Dr. Gann, from any in
America, though some seem Mayan. Their land was about 3,000
square miles in area. Their society ruled by caste, and their religion
was as unique as their writing, and certainly not Mayan. Not even a
tradition of their existence remains, and the land they once occupied
is under dense forest.

Are they, again, some of the people whom Quetzalcoatl tried to
humanise, and in despair of whom he went back across the "Red
Sea", to the land Hy-Brazil, or Atlantis of the ocean, from which
he came?

Much research will alone settle this point, if it can be established
after all these ages. One gropes in the dark with only a fugitive ray
occasionally penetrating the gloom.

Then, again, what unknown and mysterious race built the very
ancient Central American city of which my friend, Mr. William S,
Taylor, retired constructional engineer, of Seattle, Washington,
tells me?

I believe the ruins of which he spoke to me are still to this day
1945 unknown to modern Mexican archaeologists.

Says Mr. Taylor : "About the year 1902, when I was manager of
an engineering project in Georgia, I had a master mechanic working
for me. To get relief from the arduous grind of the daily job, I used
to have talks with this old roamer about a subject in which I grew
mightily interested : the ancient things of old Mexico. He told me
about a vast prehistoric city in ruins some way south-west of Mexico

THE MISSIONARY MEN IN BLACK 105

City. No one has ever been able to visit it, after repeated attempts,
and I'll tell you why. It was destroyed by tremendous earthquakes
ages ago, and all the people in it perished. The quakes threw up a
circle round the ancient city, of some miles in circumference. This
circle consists of high, precipitous mountains completely girdling
the city. All the buildings therein have long ago been destroyed as
by some cataclysm. But the landscape otherwise remains unchanged.
It is extremely difficult to get near these ancient ruins ; for a man
can pack in only enough grub to carry him half-way across the
known area of the sierra. Several expeditions setting out from
Mexico City to explore these ancient ruins have failed even to sight
them.

"My old roamer said to me :

" 'I went there with an expedition which planned to reach
the high cliffs of the mountains overlooking the place. I took a
job as extra carrier. We managed to reach these cliffs, and from a
height right over the ruins, looking down on the floor on which
they lay, I watched, as I lay down and rested. In every direction
I saw nothing but a jumble of cut stone building blocks. I quit
the expedition, and never heard what luck they had, or any more
about them.' "

So many modern writers on the antiquities of Mexico have re-
peated, parrot-fashion, the conflicting statements of these old Spanish
and Mexican historians, that it is easy to see why even authorities,
such as Lewis Spence, have confused Votan with Quetzalcoatl,
called Huemac of the strong hand only another name for Quetzal-
coatl, and have wrongly identified Tullan with Cholullan, a city
which was a considerable distance from Tullan, the town to which
Qjietzalcoatl came when he marched inland from Panuco on the
Gulf of Mexico.

The (Aztec) Codex Vaticanus makes Quetzalcoatl the son of a
virgin, thus exactly paralleling the Mediterranean myths of the dark-
white race of Southern Europe who invariably bestowed this
"supernatural distinction" on great men whom they subsequently
deified.

"Proceeding on his journey (from Cholullan), Qiietzalcoatl
came to the Red Sea, which is painted in this codex, and which
they named Tlalpallan, and they say that, on entering it, they
saw no more of him, nor knew what became of him. They
say it was he who effected the reformation of the world by pen-
ance : since, according to his account, his father had created the
world, and men had given themselves up to vice, on which
account it had been frequently destroyed. It was Citinatonali

IO6 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

who sent his son into the world to reform it. ... They celebrated
a great festival on this sign, as we shall see on the sign of the four
earthquakes: because they feared that the world would be
destroyed on that sign (or date), as he had foretold them when
he disappeared in the Red Sea, which event occurred on the
same sign (or date). 5 '

The Popul Vuh, the Bible of the Quiches of Central America, has
also another Atlantean tradition, which may be cited here. This
remarkable book is associated with Votan and the Votanes, who, I
beg to repeat, must not be confused with Quetzalcoatl, with whom
Lewis Spence and others have identified him. Votan, or, Odin, or
Woden, a man deified as a god, probably hailed from the Old World
of Mediterranean Europe, or Punic Africa, and he probably furnishes
a clue to the fact that puzzled Colonel Fawcett and others: the
existence of tribes in old Brazil who worship the Scandinavian god
Odinl His cult had clearly travelled far south beyond the land-
bridge of Darien and old Panama.

In this tradition, the Popul Vuh tells of three "god-men", Balam-
Agab, Mahucutch and Iqi-Balam, who came to ancient Central
America from "the other side of the sea where the sun rises". . . .
"They had been there a long time, when they died, and already they
were very old men (or men who were venerated) called the high
priests. . . . Afterwards, the princes of the Quiches bethought them-
selves of going to the East, conformably to the wishes of their fathers,
which they had never forgotten."

The Popul Vuh goes on to say that these princes took wives long
after their fathers were dead . . . "and later said : Let us go east,
whence our fathers came, and they took their road". Their names
are given as Qpcaib, Qpacutec and Qpahau, sons of the god-men
above. Brasseur-de-Bourbourg theorises that these ancient princes
took the road towards the gulf of Honduras, perhaps a little above
Livingstone.

Says the Popul Vuh : "They went by design and wisdom and took
leave of all their brothers and relations, and parted full of sadness,
saying: *We shall not die; for we shall return.' And when they
arrived in the East for without doubt they passed over the sea
they received royalty. Now, here is the name of this Lord, the King
of the Easterns : he is called Lord Nacxit of Ranaual, the sole judge,
whose power is without bounds and to whom they conceded die
insignia of royalty, and all it represents."

Brasseur-de-Bourbourg says that Nacxit was Quetzalcoatl, whose
kingdom extended afar and was known as the "Empire of the East".
This is a vivid glance at old Atlantis and her great colonial American
empire ! The insignia mentioned were "tents or baldaquins, worked
in gold and studded with gems er ornamented with precious feathers ;

THE MISSIONARY MEN IN BLACK I(>7

flutes, and other instruments ; powders of various colours*, perfumes,
the tiger chief, the bird, the stag, the shells, pine-knots, trumpets,
the royal emblems of the herons' plumes, the art of painting of
Tulan, and its writing, they said; for that had been preserved in
their history."

Therefore, it was after the Hy-Brazilian, Atlantean Quetzal-
coatl went back to the dead cities then still in their threatened
glory and crossed the "Red Sea" to Tlalpallan that the Great
Catastrophe came on this planet Earth. It does not seem the first
time he had gone back to Hy-Brazil from Central America;
for a Quiche tradition, in Guatemala, tells us that "on re-
turning to Palenque, he found other colonists of his own race
there".

When Cortes came to Aztec Mexico, in A.D. 1519, the last
Mexican emperor, Montezuma, told the men of the white-bearded
race of Castilians that they were the men of whom his ancestors had
been foretold that their coming would be one day from the east to
deliver Mexico. Thus, the luckless emperor contributed to ruin his
own country in the shadow of a mystic prophecy many thousands of
years older than the beginning of the Aztec civilisation of a paranoiac
New Stone age !

Cortes was so struck with Montezuma's strange story that he
sent it over the ocean to the Holy Roman emperor and Spanish
king, Charles V in old Spain. It is in his first letter, dated October
30, 1520:

"It is now many days since our historians have informed us,"
said Montezuma, "that neither my ancestors, nor myself, nor
any of my people, who now inhabit this country, are natives of
it. We are strangers and came hither from very distant parts.
They also tell us that a Lord, to whom all were vassals, brought
our race to this land, and returned to his native place. That,
after a long time, he came here again and found that those he
had left were married to the women of the country, had large
families, and built towns in which they dwelt. He wished to take
them away, but they would not consent to accompany him, nor
permit him to remain as their chief. Therefore, he went away.
We have always been assured that his descendants would return
to conquer our country, and reduce us again to obedience.
You say you come from the part where the sun rises." (See
Francisco Lorenzanos* Documentos Mexicanos.)

* In a subsequent book, I shall draw attention to some unpublished Spanish MSS.,
which I shall translate, which show the existence of these Atlantean insignia, hi the
seventeenth century A.D., in the strange land of Gran Paytite, and among Indians in the
unknown region of eastern Andean Peru and modern Bolivia. The perfumes, the powders, the
colours, the painting, the tiger-chief, the writing all were found, or reported to far-ranging
Spanish dons, by remote Indian tribes.

I08 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

Torquemada has another curious, but significant version of
what Montezuma told Cortes :

"He told Cortes that Quetzalcoatl was a great magician
and necromancer, and reigned king of that land, and that, on
leaving that country, he betook himself towards the sea, feigning
that the sun-god had called him to the other part of the sea on the
eastern border; but he promised to return afterwards, with
great power, and avenge his wrongs and redeem his town from
injuries, and tyrannies ; for they say of him he was a very merci-
ful and humane man."

As we know, the luckless Aztecs did not find the sadistic, gold-
crazed Castilian conquistadores more bandits than soldiers
merciful ; but it is remarkable that these good Catholic Spaniards,
hearing that Quetzalcoatl was the Jesus of old Mexico and Central
America, said he must have been the apostle, Saint Thomas. Of
course, that could hardly be ; since the apostle was born only nine or
more thousand years after the passing of Quetzalcoatl ! And, of
course, that benevolent apostle of Hy-Brazilian culture, Quetzal-
coatl, lived long before the ancient day of Votan, whose day in
Yucatan, Guatemala and what was then proto-Mayaland is, in an
ancient MS. copied by Don Ramon de Ordonez y Aguiar very soon
after the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, made contemporary with the
erection of a great temple at Rome, by the Consul Publius Cornelius
Rufus, in 290 B.C. (The same ancient MS. of Votan, by the way,
also says that Votan, identified with men of a Phoenician, Canaanite
or Carthaginian race, went, in his travels from ancient Central
America to old Europe and Asia, to Babylon from the great temple
ofjerusalem, and saw the ruins of the Tower of Babel. Vide: Ordonez
" Probanzo de Votan".)

Ages had passed before Votan set out on his travels from what is
now Guatemala or Yucatan, and the Great Deluge and Cosmic
Disaster that for centuries on centuries made the Atlantic Ocean
impassable to the keels of the galleys and triremes of the ancient
world had left the memories of great Atlantis and her South American
empire, with their splendid cities overthrown by vulcanism and
seismic disturbances, hardly even a dim legend among wandering
tribes of Central and South America. Far and wide, as we see, were
the Hy-Brazilians dispersed over South America; albeit, their
posterity still, as I have said, survives today in remote and un-
explored regions of modern Brazil, Venezuela of the Western
provinces, and the Peru of the Andean Oriente a posterity known
as the "White Indians".

Somewhere about the time that Qiietzalcoatl landed in Panuco,
on the Gulf of Mexico, another old and bearded man of great

THE MISSIONARY MEN IN BLACK I0g

wisdom and knowledge and benignity, dressed in black, like a
Phoenician merchant in the old port of Gades, Spain, of 3,000
years ago, went out from Hy-Brazil and came among a country of
high savanas in the mountains of what is now Colombia, South
America. He found himself among the (then) savage race of the
Muyscas, or Chibchas, a naked, repulsive and ferocious people, with-
out laws, the elements of agriculture, or any sort of religion. They
called him Bochicha or Zuhe, said he suddenly appeared from a
land to the east of the cordilleras of Ghingasa, and was ag&d and
bearded, and unlike a man of any race known to them. He carried a
golden sceptre.

Their traditions as told to the Spaniards at the Conquest
were that his name was also Nemteresqueteba, and that he wore long
garments, and was also called Chinzopoqua ("sent from God"), but
was a human person with a long and bushy beard, who came from
the east of the Andes to Paxa and vanished at Sogamuso. With him
came civilisation and laws. Bochicha built towers and introduced the
worship of the sun, and taught the savages how to clothe themselves
and form towns. It was in the "remote days before the Moon accom-
panied the earth" ! Then, like Quetzalcoatl, his contemporary in
Central America, Bochicha organised the government of the
country. He nominated two chiefs, one of whom was to have civil,
the other, ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Then he withdrew himself, says
the tradition, into the holy valley of Idacanzas, near Tunja, where
he lived in the exercise of the most austere penitence for the space of
2,000 years!

As this legend says that Bochicha came among the savage
Muyscas at a remote time before the moon accompanied the earth,
it suggests that those 2,000 years were, perhaps, not our present years
of 365 days each. There was, as one noted above, a race of shepherds,
musicians and soldiers, dwelling in Arcadia, in the Peloponnesus,
in Southern Greece, in ancient times, which also boasted that their
race was older than the moon.

When the Conquistadorian Spaniards overran the country in the
sixteenth century A.D. they found the Muyscas still surviving: and
they were greatly struck by the fact that the Muyscas, or Moscas,
and two other Indian nations on the high savanas of Bogota, lived in
settled communities, tilled the land, and wore clothes, while, on the
plains below, the other tribes were naked, brutal and barbarous to
a degree. An old Spanish monk's MS. of the days of the Conquest of
Nueva Grenada, or modern Colombia, gives curious details about
Bochicha. He appointed a zague, or king, to stop the war that
threatened among the people disputing authority. He also set up a
council of four chiefs to choose a high priest, after his (Bochicha's)
death. The Muyscas called Bochicha sua, or sun, and when the
bearded Spaniards arrived, they called them "children of the

110 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

which, of course, implies that Bochicha, from Hy-Brazil, was a
white bearded man. The name Muyscas means men, Chibcha being
the name for their language.

It is significant that after Bochica, or Bochicha, came to the high
savana of Bogot&, there appeared as money, small circular plates
of gold. It will be remembered that Joao Antonio, the Portuguese
bandeirista, in A.D. 1 750, picked up in the dead city of Hy-Brazil,
behind the sierra in the sertdo of Bahia province, "a piece of gold
money of spherical shape, "greater than our Brazilian gold coin of
6,400 reis. On one side of the coin was the figure of a kneeling youth ;
on the other, a bow, crown and arrow." (Vide page 46 supra.)
In one part of the cordillera of the Colombian Andes (deep in the
Sierra Santa Marta), there has been found remains of a splendid
stone city, with paved roads, fissured and upheaved by tremendous
earthquakes. It has even yet the remains of a square arch tiled with
enormous slabs of granite. (It may have been a colony of the far
earlier (?) empire of Lemuria, or Mu.) A great highway, paved with
granite, leads no one know where, today, and in valleys adjoining
there are ruins of great buildings, and tombs cut in the living rock
the sort ofhuacas whence modern treasure hunters take out emeralds,
crystal collars of black and red gems and fine gold. In fact, it was a
story, told by the Indians, of gold plating ancient palace ruins, of
cyclopean type, and idols of the same solid metal that, when fol-
lowed up by the same avaricious investigators, gave a very unplea-
sant time to the hungry conquistadorian soldiers, under Don Jiminez
de Qjiesada, who led an army of hauberked and morioned men
Europe's finest infanteria on the hunt for El Dorado.

No. 3 emissary from the ancient land of Hy-Brazil was he whom
the Incas called the Ayar Manco Capac. He is also called Vira-
cocha, which, again, means sun-worshipper. He, too, said the Inca
Peruvians, was a "white man, with a full beard, who came over the
Andean Cordilleras from a land to the east". Another Peruvian
tradition is that the white, bearded man suddenly "appeared, from
nowhere", in an island in Lake Titicaca, in the old Collao.

Don Antonio de Herrera, Coronista major de su Majestad de las
Indias y su Coronista de Castella (Crown officer of the King of the
Indies and Castile, in Peru) was told, by the Peruvians, the story
following, about the year A.D. 1600:

. . /There presently appeared in the middle of the day,
when the sun came out on Lake Titicaca, in the Andes, a white
man, of a great body and venerable presence, who was so power-
ful that he lowered the hills, increased the size of the valleys
and drew fountains from the rocks. They called him, for his

great power, lord of all created things, and father of

the sun : for he gave life to man and animals and by him notable

THE MISSIONARY MEN IN BLACK III

benefits came to them. And, working these marvels, he went a
long way towards the north, giving, on the road, an order of
life to the nations, speaking with much loving benevolence, cor-
recting them that they might be good and upright (buenos), and
joining them, one with another (y se amasseri), who, until the
last days of the Incas, they called Ticeuro-cocha> and in the Gollao,
Tupaco, and in other parts, ArrausL And they built many
temples." (JV.5. The Gollao corresponds to the western region
of modern Bolivia.)

Montesinos, who wrote a very rare book which he copied from a
lost and very valuable MS. of the Jesuit Bias Valera, on the history
of old Peru, says the high priest of the sun told the thirty-sixth Inca
emperor, Huira Cocha Gapac, that the ruin of the Peruvian Inca
Empire would be brought about when there arrived " white bearded
and very severe people, hitherto unseen". This prediction was made
in A.D. 1320, and realised with the arrival of the bearded Castilian
bandit, Francisco Pizarro, 200 years later. As we have seen, a
similar prediction in Aztec Mexico, associated with Qiietzalcoatl,
promised deliverance, but also actually resulted in the ruin of the
Aztec Empire, which immediately followed.

So Qjietzalcoatl, Bochicha and Viracocha, the wise, black- or
bushy-bearded men, clad in austere black garments, or robes,
departed by sea or land to their home country of Atlantean Hy-
Brazil, and the gods of culture, knowledge, wisdom, civilisation and
enlightenment began to prepare for a long sojourn in the twilight.
The wandering planet streamed into our earth's skies, and must
have been noted in awe and amazement by the astronomers peering
from their high towers in the white cities of Hy-Brazil, and the
fatherland of older Atlantis. Warlike races from old Atlantis had,
as the priests of Sais and Heliopolis told Solon, invaded Western
Europe and the Mediterranean, and reached almost as far east along
the North African shores as the land of Egypt on the Nile. As the
world-dominators stood, confronting the pre-Hellenic races of old
Attica, who alone opposed their overwhelming power and menace,
tremendous earthquakes shook the ground. The blazing sky turned
to night a night rent with terrific lightning-flashes and a rain of
vast meteorites upon the stricken earth. Men flew to the mountain-
tops, only to be stricken with fear and madness, at what the skies
disclosed. Aloft, the planet Venus seemed hourly changing her
colour, course and size. Our earth was receding into space backwards
from her old orbit, nearer the sun. The stars and planets receded fast,
the great glowing ball of fire in the night sky shone like a sphere of
sultry copper, while, in the day, only less black than the night of
terrors, rising above the ball of fire the orange globe of the sun shot
out an ochre penumbra of flame from its periphery, as, of course,

112 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

seen above the swirling of the dense clouds of smoke and gases
arising from the earth. On the sea coast, terrific tidal waves rolled in
higher than the highest hills, they crashed on to the beaches, and
the immense force and momentum of colossal league-long rollers,
coming on behind, drove them far inland, overwhelming cities,
drowning whole country-sides, swirling up the sides of high moun-
tains, driving the current of rivers backward towards their sources,
even as the Earth was being impelled "backward* ' into space. Man
called on the gods to save him. The gods were silent and powerless
on high Atlantis-Olympus, looking down on the reeling globe.*

Out seaward, borne on the turgid and ever-rising waters of the
obliterated rivers, floated thousands of bodies human beings
and animals ; women, their hair clotted, or floating on the swirling,
surging waters, swept by, clutching babies to their breasts, or clasp-
ing the arms of drowned lovers, or husbands, their eyes glazed in
madness and terror as they gazed unseeingly at the sky where
dwelt the impotent gods. Old men clutching coffers of gold and
jewels, in hoary arms pressed to their chests, jostled with the dead
bodies of priests, warriors or robed rulers whose utmost skill or
might had not been able to avert by one spark the rain of fire and
gases that had overwhelmed the world, or by one drop the appalling
deluge that was drowning the world, nor by so much as one spark
the rain of fire and gases yet to come! . . . Yea, woe unto them
that gave suck in those days ! . . .

"There came a rain of fire following the sun of rain. All that

existed burned Then there fell a rain of rocks, and sand-stone

. . . the sky drew near the waters and the earth. The planet Venus
had changed her course. There was darkness over the whole face
of the earth . . . men flew to caves and the rocks fell on them and
shut them in for ever. . . . They climbed trees and the trees bent
and shook them off. . . . The sun went out and for five whole
days no light pierced the black darkness. . . . Great and terrible
earthquakes shook the land. . . . Flames belched out from the
ground, and there came a rain of flaming bodies from the
heavens. . . . Men came and went beside themselves. . . ."
(From an Aztec codex) .

So reported contemporary observers, in places as far apart as
the mountains of old Pelasgian Greece, the land of Egypt, the high-
lands and burnt places of Central America, South America, Poly-
nesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Africa. . . . For the great catas-
trophe that sunk Atlantis, the island-continent, into the depths of
the ocean was accompanied by simultaneous volcanic outbursts in

* This reconstruction of the Catastrophe is actually based on traditions current among
certain Brazilian tribes, ages before the Spaniards or Portuguese came to the country.

Cuneiform (Gilgamcsh-Nineveh) version of Deluge Story. (British Museum.)

[Photo : Courtesy of U S. Armv Air

Meteor (or Platinum) Crater, Arizona. Work of aerolite, 10,000,000 tons
weight and 400 feet wide, some 10,000 years ago.

\Lonrifsy of S. Pmivuin Riulu>nv\.

Sachahuaman, ruins of megalithic pre-Inca unknown race, Cu/co Hill, Peru.

[Courtesy S. Peruvian

Old Inca wall in Cuzco.

THE MISSIONARY MEN IN BLACK

America, Africa, and the chain of mountains of Central Asia, and
far out in the Pacific. What followed were great ice ages, all over the
greater part of the northern hemisphere.

In the land of Hy-Brazil and the dead cities into which the
bandeiristas were to blunder, 10,000 years later, no day could be
told from night. The skies were darkened. Up from the ground
swirled dense clouds of thick ash and vapours, choking and mephitic,
poisoning all round. Terrific electric flashes rent the endless black-
ness, making it the more unearthly and darker. The maddened
sea, in the mightier Marafion-Amazon gulf, rising like a thing
demented, surged and roared in over the Amazon basin, dashing on
the walled cities, with their massive breakwaters of stone.

In the highlands of this great Atlantis colony the new Atlantis
of old America it was the fire from heaven and the earth below that
ruined them. When the earth shook, and day turned to night, in
these dead cities of the unexplored Matto Grosso, of today, there
came from great and bottomless crevasses in the ground, in the
paved roads, by the side of their splendid temples and palaces,
volumes of deadly gases. Blinded, asphyxiated, maddened beyond
human endurance, rendered insane by the appalling suddenness of
the cosmic catastrophe, men and women, white-skinned, beautiful,
some red-haired like Berenice the Golden, others fair and blonde as
the Greek goddess Aphrodite, fled out of the cities, leaving all behind
them. Parts of the cities sank into the ground, swallowed up by
terrific earthquakes. May be, great fires swept through some of the
buildings ; for the old bandeiristas were puzzled by the absence of the
least vestige of furniture and utensils. The great palaces and temples
were shaken to their foundations. Those people of Atlantis-Brazil
who did not manage to escape into the surrounding mountains,
along the splendidly paved roads, now cracked and fissured and
overwhelmed by great boulders and rocks which the appalling
earthquakes and torrential deluge had toppled from the peaks into
the gorges, were either burnt and calcined, or engulfed in the
yawning earth. What was not incinerated was destroyed by the wild
beasts and birds of prey who, for many thousands of years to come,
would inhabit alone these cities of old Hy-Brazil, swept by the
besom of destruction. The Andes had risen in a night and a day, and,
far out at sea on the edge of another lost continent^ Barnes three miles
wide or high shot from a crater in what is now Hawaii.*

It was a scene that would have caused the fire of the Lord and
the spirit of poetic prophecy to come on the old Hebrew poet
Isaiah, contemplating the mournful remains of what had once been
a wonderful civilisation. With fire in his eyes, he would have de-
claimed :

* So tayi in old Hawaiian tradition.

114 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

"... And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved and the
heavens rolled together as a scroll ... it shall not be quenched
night nor day, the smoke shall go up for ever and ever.'*

Yes, we have on the Earth no sure or eternal abiding-place !

If this sound to you, reader, like a new, flesh-creeping apocalyptic
vision of a fanatic "world-ender", be pleased to note that this
appalling catastrophe of around the year 11,000 B.C. had a "faint"
reflection in something that befell modern Brazil, on August 30,
1931 (A.D.), when three giant aerolites roared down from the sky
and depopulated hundreds of miles of forests. A lonely padre,
Fidelio, reported the amazing event to the Vatican in Rome. . . .

"They fell in a forest bordering the Rio Curaca. The heat
engendered was terrific, their size was immense. Great flames
sprang up from the mass of compressed air incandescent and
glowing white-hot that is borne in front of the aerolites. The
forest was set afire, and the conflagration lasted many months,
when a whole wide region was denuded of people. The fall
was preceded by remarkable atmospheric disturbances. At
eight o'clock, in the morning, the sun became blood-red and a
penumbra spread all over the sky till it darkened the air, as in
time of solar eclipse. Then an immense cloud of reddish powder
filled the air and it looked as if the whole world was going to
blaze up. The powder was followed by a rain of fine cinders'
which covered trees and blanketed the vegetation with white.
There followed a whistling sound that pierced the air with ear-
shattering intensity then another and another. Three tre-
mendous explosions were heard. The earth trembled. Natives
in the forest were thrown to the ground, or into the water, as
they worked or fished. Indians, fishing, say they saw three
enormous globes of fire fall from the sky and vanish earthwards."

Nor has this been the only cosmic visitation from outer space in
South America of modern days. There was the huge aerolite that
fell on a mill in the Argentina, crashed with an explosion heard for
miles round, and reduced the mill to a smoking ruin (Dec., 1932).
There was the amazing meteor that crashed to the earth, in the
jungle, only ten miles from the camp of Dr. Wm. Holden, leader of
the American Natural History Museum's expedition to Guiana,
on November 18, 1937. He said (or saw) it cut a swathe thirty miles
long in a forest fringing the wild mountain-side about 300 miles
from Georgetown, British Guiana.

Up to date, as in the case of the appalling Siberian disaster in the
icy, barren tundras, in A.D. 1908, when hundreds of miles of forest
were burnt up and whole nations of Samoyeds wiped out, these "law-

THE MISSIONARY MEN IN BLACK 115

less", wandering bodies from outer space have managed to fall in
lonely parts of the earth hundreds or thousands of miles from any
large centres of civilisation. May it always be so ; though Nature
regards man and his Earth no more than anything else in the Great
Unknown Cosmos!

The world was driven insane by that appalling disaster, of around
11,000 or 12,000 years ago. When the survivors, ages after, again
congregated in communities, in Central America, and the Mediter-
ranean, as also on the uplands of far-away Britain, of the New Stone
(Neolithic) age, a very definite lunatic twist was imparted to their
culture. They became obsessed with a desire to ward off any future
catastrophe, and the desire became also queerly linked with a doc-
trine of propitiating the gods presiding over harvest. So, all over the
northern hemisphere, from the great stone cities of civilised Maya and
Aztec Mexico, to the high savanas of Bogotd, in Colombia, across
the ocean to the summit of Bredon Hill, on the borders of Worcester-
shire, in England, and eerie Stonehenge on lonely Salisbury Plain,
Wiltshire, you saw, before dawn of midsummer day, each year, a
procession of skin-clad priests, followed by bearded chieftains, long-
haired warriors, and staring women and children processing behind
a fair youth and maiden along an avenue, between monolithon
pillars, to a great stone circle of tri-lithons. Here the victim, bound
with thongs of leather, was laid prone on a long block of stone : the
slaughter-stone. At the moment of the nascent dawn when the sun
cast his beams right along the stone avenue, till the level rays fell
on the head of the victim bound to the slaughter-stone, priests, with
knives of stone, killed the victim, in prehistoric Britain just as they did
in old Mexico, as late as the days of Cortes when looting Castilian
soldiers actually met this fate in certain Aztecan temples of the sun-
god. The Aztec priests, as is well known, tore the heart of the
victim out of the writhing body, with knives of obsidian volcanic
"glass" and actually ate it, as it smoked, in the sight of the wor-
shipping multitude To that state of lunacy and a horrible

doctrine of atonement had the great planetary collision brought our
Earth's pre-Diluvian civilisation!

The ancestors of the ancient Muyscas of Bogotd, in strangely in-
congruous memory of Bochicha, their humane and gentle civiliser
from Hy-Brazil, and also to ward off the catastrophic perils of the
skies, chose a victim at the end of every cycle of twenty years. He
was called the Guesa guichica, which means "houseless" or "wander-
ing" and "door", because his death was supposed to open a new cycle
of 185 moons. This guesa, as on Bredon Hill and at Stonehenge,
England, was a boy, or youth. He was taken from a village in the
plain of the llanos de San Juan, the eastern slopes of which had seen
Bochicha, the white saviour, enter the Muysca land from the un-
known east of the cordillera. The guesa was carefully educated in a

Il6 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

temple at Sogamoso, Colombia. At the age often, the boy was made
to walk in the paths trodden by Bochicha, when he was instructing
the people, and working miracles. Then, at the age of fifteen, he
was led in procession to a circular place, in the middle of which was
a lofty column, marking, as the gnomon of a sun-dial, the length of
the shadow thrown by the sun. The priests, called xeques, wore
masks, very like those of the priests of Pharaoh's Egypt, and, having
followed the youth, they killed him as a sacrifice.

It is, again, queer that one of these masks represented the Moon,
the "evil planet", first seen in the skies of the cataclysmal world.
When the guesa reached the end of the road, or suna (Sun), he was
tied to the column, a cloud of arrows shot at him, his heart torn out
and offered to Bochicha, as a sacrifice, and his blood drained into
vases. Once again, it is ironical that a civiliser such as this old,
bearded white man, as gentle as he was wise, should have had, long
after his disappearance, such a hideous ceremony attached to his
memory. The post-Diluvian world in South America had, also,
turned to a form of paranoiac religion.

In the western world, Quetzalcoatl's memory is mirrored in a
strange but significant sign on a very old map, done by Bianco, in
A.D. 1436, and showing the Atlantic Ocean, fifty-seven years before
Columbus ^-discovered America. This sign is that of a great red
hand on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It is titled
"Yd lamon Satanaxio" (the hand of Satan). The legend is that a
great hand rose from the sea and snatched men into the ocean deeps.
Great Hand, or Iron Hand, was, as we know, the name of the bar-
barian conqueror who drove Quetzalcoatl out of Central America,
and had himself worshipped as a god. By a curious and ironical
transposition, his name was given to Quetzalcoatl by the men who
were first civilised by that old and wise man of the spade-beard.
Huemac, or Great Hand, became a god among Toltecs and Mayas,
who (a second, later wave) are believed to have reached Yucatan
around 220 B.C. when the last part of the old Atlantean continent of
Antillia leaving above water the modern Antilles submerged.

The survivors of Hy-Brazil are heard of, from time to time, down
the ages, since their splendid cities were made desolate. Some of
them wandered across the wilds of Brazil and climbed the cordil-
leras into Peru, which had been "shot higher into the sky" since the
cataclysm. A colony of the white-bearded men are heard of in an
island in Lake Titicaca, in the Andes (as we have already noted),
ages before the Inca empire began. Here, they were attacked by a
race called the Colloas, who, my old friend, U.S. Senator Miles
Poindexter, one time U.S. Minister in Peru, and an authority on
South American pre-history and archaeology, suggests were a branch
of the Toltec race kinsmen of the same militarist Huemac, of the
Iron Hand who had wandered there from old Mexico's highlands.

THE SIGN OF THE SUN

The old priest and Spanish soldier, Pedro Gieza de Leon, heard
about the fate of these lost Atlantean white men, when he was
travelling the Andes, around A.D. 1550 :

"Before the Incas conquered the country, many of the
Indians declare there were two great lords in the Colloa, one
called Sapani, the other Cari. They conquered many of the
fortresses called pucaras. They say that one of these chiefs, Gari,
entered the large island where it is swampy, in la Laguna de
Titicaca, and found there a white people, who had beards. They
fought with them in such a manner that all were killed." (La
Cronica del Per&).

So, once again Toltec Huemac, of the Great or Iron Hand, had
sown the dragon's teeth of war and extermination among the luck-
less posterity of Quetzalcoatl of Hy-Brazil.

These white-bearded men came from the valley of Coquimbo,
and lived in the Isle of Chiquito, says old Antonia Herrera, Coronista
major of the king of Spain and Castile, in Peru, in A.D. 1610. The
next people recorded to have seen them, but only at distance, up an
inland rushy creek, nine days' journey from the dead city behind
the mountains of Bahia, were the old Portuguese bandeiristas of
A.D. 1750. Jesuit missioners have left MSS. stories of encounters with
these white and bearded Indians, but those stories have long been
lost to sight in the dust of South American libraries and archive-
rooms. In 1932, as I may be pardoned for repeating, a German
missioner sighted them in a wild and wooded part of the Oriente of
Peru, but these shy, furtive and gentle men flee like the wind in the
forest from the sight of strangers. They are the oldest race now alive
in at least our western world !

CHAPTER V

THE SIGN OF THE SUN: WORLD'S OLDEST ALPHABET

IN Chapter III, I told the romantic story of the discovery by the
young gunner-lieutenant, P. H. Fawcett, in the jungle of Ceylon,
in 1893, f a strange creeper-covered stone of ancient and unknown
date, which bore hieroglyphs (or letters?) of peculiar and bizarre
form, identical, so Mrs. Nina Fawcett tells me, with certain in-
scriptions found cut on a great slab over a vault (?) in one of the

Il8 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

unknown cities of Atlantean Brazil. (The reader will remember that
a copy of these strange letters was taken by the old Portuguese
bandeirista, in or about A.D. 1750.)

I have myself discovered some queer links between these strange
letters of old Brazil, and characters found in Tibet and Vedic
Hindostan. One of the ancient letters is almost identical with a sign
in Sansar the ancient form of Sanscrit, which Hindu pagoda
traditions said was derived by the ancestors of the Sanscritian Hin-
dus from the drowned land ofRutas, which may be identical with the
Atlantis of the Pacific Ocean, known as Lcmuria or Mu. It is said
to have been found on one of the leaves of the mystic Kounboum, or
Kounboun tree discovered at the lamasery of Sinfau, or Sifau, by the
famous Abb Hue, who was subsequently unfrocked by his superiors
for his candour and courage in declaring the identity of the ritual
of the Roman Catholic church with that of Buddhism and Brah-
manism.

The Kounboum tree, it may be stated, is the (white sandal) (?)
tree of 10,000 images, found, it is said, in a great brick-walled court-
yard of a Buddhist temple at the foot of a mountain. Each leaf of the
tree is said to bear one of the characters of Sansar, or ancient Sanscrit,
the language of the sun in the drowned land of sun-worshippers of
the Pacific Atlantis, called Rutas. Hue said the sweat mounted to his
forehead in his effort to detect any lamaic fraud about the tree, which,
he added, "is very old, about eight feet high, with brilliant scarlet
flowers, and nowhere else exists, and cannot be propagated from
seeds or cuttings 5 '.*

* It is curious that while Hue says he saw these lettered Kounboum leaves, about the
year 1845, in this lamasery, on the western frontiers of China, the Prussian leutnant,
Kreitner, who visited the lamasery about 1880, saw neither Buddha pictures nor archaic
letters on the leaves of the tree. He says he noted the ironic smile at the corner of the mouth
of the old lama guide and suspected trickery with acids. Rockhill was at Kounboum in
1890 and saw only broken leaves with no visible images and none on the tree. Waddell
was there in 1895 and had no better luck. It reminds one of the "testimony leaves", about
Mohammed the prophet and Allah, which Ibn Batutah saw, on a tree in the courtyard of a
mosque on the Malabar coast. Rockhill, indeed, asks the pertinent question why there has
been a change from alphabet leaves to Buddha images on the tree. I myself am reminded
of the magic money which the wily jadoo-wallah in the N.W. provinces of India makes, and
which vanishes a short time after he has paid it over for good money received. But the
mystery is further deepened for me. In winter 1942, a friend hi Canada sent me a cutting,
from the Vancouver Sun, of a feature by the well-known Ripley wherein pictures of the
Kounboum alphabet leaves appear. From Dr. Randle of the India Office Library, I learn
that a Dr. Gordon Stables supplied information, from Singapore, about these leaves, in
1940, when he wrote to a well-known London Sunday newspaper. Whether or not these
characters appear on the leaves of the tree in the Kounboum lamasery, they certainly
seem genuine and extremely ancient. In fact, no Orientalist has, to my knowledge, any
acquaintance with the alphabet or tongue of which this inscribed letter forms a part. Other
letters on these leaves are as follows:

AUTHOR.

THE SIGN OF THE SUN IIQ

Let my reader glance at the comparative table, below :
ATLANTEAN BRAZIL ASOKA (OLD INDIA) PHOENICIAN

t

I

J

I

\)

A

6

1

t

Values:
numeral 4 and letter k.

Value:
tau> or cross.

ATLANTEAN BRAZIL
(on left}

TIBET (Sansar or Pro to-Sanscrit). Letter on the Kounboum,
or mystic "alphabet tree". (See footnote, page 1 18, supra.)

NORTHERN SANSCRIT: (1200 B.c.-8oo B.C.), also found in the
Rastrakuta-Govinda Inscription (807 B.C.), Kanheri In-
scriptions (877 B.C.), and in Northern Hindostan (1200 B.C.
-800 B.C.) . Equivalent letter u.

KATHIAWAR ROCK : (Ancient Sanscrit Inscription). Equiva-
lent letter /. (Laoka : sickle.)

KOSAMBI SANSCRIT EDICT: (on pillar at Allahabad).
Equivalent (?).

SANSCRIT (ANCIENT) : Equivalent letter y, as in vira : lute. In
Atlantean Brazil, this sign may have been that of Vira, the
Sun God. (A similar sign is found in Etruscan tombs).

SANSCRIT (ANCIENT) : Equivalent letter j. Also sign of Mons
Veneris.

SANSCRIT (ANCIENT): Equivalent letter t (tala: fan palm).

(N.B. The "cruciform" part of the Atlantean-Brazilian letter

is similar in shape to the Karian letter, h).

SANSCRIT :

ANCIENT EGYPT:

O

Thejww, or
female sex-
emblem.

Mons Veneris (female

sign of sex, with

zone).

BABYLONIAN
(Identical, ex-

FALISCAN

PHOENICIAN
(Old form

EARLY TYRE (also
GREEK GREEK
Vic. B.C.)

cept that a
fourth" hori-
zontal" re-

(Same sign

on
Moabite

Stone).

^7"?

places the
"circle orb").

in
KARIAN:
letter *).

t,

(Same sign

(Letter
Samekh
fulcrum,stay,
support,

in
KARIAN:

bed).

letter*).

I2O MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

ATLANTEAN BRAZIL NINEVEH PHOENICIAN TYRE MOABITE STONE
(on left) (Palaeographic)

9

p

(Letter Caph or

PHOENICIAN (Pa laeographic) .

(Very ancient Punic or Pauch-Atta
(India) forms of letter Lamed) (ox-goad)

TYRE, NINEVEH ETRURIA, MOABITE, SIDON, CIUCIA

I IZS II X /V

(Letter %ayn, or ^flfw).

TYRE, KARIAN, GREEK, BABYLONIAN PHOENICIAN

(Palaeographic)

(Upper part of Atlantean A

Brazilian sign s found in 2LX

Koaty and Titicaca (Ay- \

mara Indian ideograms), (Letter Daleth

today) . (tent or gate) .

PHOENICIAN AND CARTHAGINIAN MOABITE

(circa VI c. B.C). STONE

W

(Letter Aleph (cow).) (Letter Shin).

PHOENICIAN, GREEK, BABYLONIAN

(Letter: Tet or Teth).

TYRE AND CARTHAGE EARLY

(IV c. B.C.) GREEK

* (Letter Beth (house).) (Cursive letter b).

(* It is doubtful if there is any relation with the Hy-Brazilian character).

Even more remarkable similarities and identities in respect of
these ancient Atlantean-Brazilian signs have been found in the
islands of the Sun and the Moon (Titicaca and Koaty), in Lago de
Titicaca, of Peru. It was in this very lake that the last-known living
colony of bearded white men and women of old Atlantean, post-

THE SIGN OF THE SUN 121

cataclysmic Brazil was annihilated by bloodthirsty and savage
Golloans, whose descendants, today, may be the Aymara Indians of
modern Bolivia. (See chapters II and IV, pages 48, 1 17 supra). It is
exceedingly probable that the elements of culture and the syllabary,
or alphabet, or hieroglyphs of the old white race of Atlantean Brazil
survived for ages afterwards among the primitive races of later
Brazil. The Atlantean civilisation lasted for thousands of years, and
evidence exists to suggest that Diodorus was right in asserting that
the ancient Egyptians derived their hieroglyphs from old Atlantis,
and that the Phoenician seamen traders took their alphabet from
the same civilisation, but in a far later day, when decadence had
overtaken the Atlanteans of old South America and the Great Catas-
trophe was near at hand. By the side of South America one suspects
the civilisations and cultures of the so-called old Worlds of Asia and
Europe may be mere parvenus and inheritors. Nor, one must repeat,
is the white race of old Atlantis, as found in old South America,
extinct today.

It is, again, one of the ironies of history that the lost colony of
these old Atlanteans exterminated in Lake Titicaca as reported to
old Cieza de Leon by the Inca priests and chronologists should
have fallen under the sword of a chief, Cari, who, as his name attests,
was a descendant of those very Carians, Europe's oldest navigators,
whose female relatives, the Amazons, were first driven across the
Atlantic Ocean after battles with the militarist elements of Atlantis,
fought on the confines of Southern Europe and in North- West
Africa and after the war of Troy !

Here follow a few of the ancient ideograms, of Atlantean Hy*
Brazilian origin, found by the old Spanish missioners to be in use
among Indians, in old Peru, on the borders and shores of el Lago de
Titicaca (Lake Titicaca). These Indians, it may be surmised, were
akin to the other Indians in Uycali, Peru, near the source of the
mighty Amazon, whose remarkable books of paintings and hiero-
glyphs were seen by the Franciscan missioner, Narcissus Gilbar, in
the early nineteenth century.

Swastika, denoting movement, ere- Denoting eye, first, before. Nayra,

ation, conception, rotation. (Luratha, Nayran, Nayrakatahana). (Koaty and
Camatha, Indkatha, Hakkutta). (Koaty Titicaca).

and Titicaca).

re

"A very old woman*' "A very old man," stricken in years", Hy-Brazilian-

(Apachi) (God, Father (Achachi, Auki, Achachela). Atlantean

(Koaty and Tititaca). (Koaty and Titicaca). character.

122 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

Signs at end of a period.

First two characters appear in Hy-Brazilian-Atlantean dead city).
(Koaty, Titicaca and Hy-Brazil).

$ -0 / \ t

Koaty and Titicaca (Peru) signs similar "Earth, universe, earth and

to characters in African Touraeg heaven". (Koaty and Titicaca)" Hell"

(Sahara) and Ferro (rupestrian, v. (sign on right) (Koaty, Titicaca and

ancient) in Canaries. Tiahuanacu).

I # UiiU.

God, Uru (Cf. Vira, Two Gods "To create" (Luratha) Six (Sojta).
Atlantean-Brazilian (Koaty andTiticaca). (Koaty and Titicaca). (Koaty andTiticaca) .
for Sun (Dyaus, the Cf. with similar

Unknown God"). Babylonian sign

( Koaty and Titicaca). (Greek xi) .

Besides the characters above, there are also three Koaty and Titicaca ideo-
grams identical in form with three of the Atlantean-Brazilian characters, repro-
duced supra, in Chapter V. In the Koaty and T. ideograms their meanings are
"Sky and Earth"; "I create"; "I believe". Moreover, as remarkable evidence
of ancient world-wide diffusion of culture in the heliolithic age of 15,000 20,000
years ago, a system of "dots", occurring in the K. and T. Aymar& Indian (Bolivian
Peru) ideograms, is also found in ancient rock inscriptions at Thugga (Tunisia) ;
in Numidia and among the Touaregs ("Veiled Men" of the Sahara). Another
K. and T. ideogram is identical in form with Karian (Asia Minor) letter w,

It is likely that American and other prehistorians and archaeo-
logists may be forced, sooner or later, to revise their ideas on the
antiquity of civilisation in North and South America. The dis-
coveries of really revolutionary character are on the increase.
For example, in the one year of 1940, there was found, by American
archaeologists, a colossal head in stone of a man of a clearly highly
civilised race of unknown age or origin. It was carved, with great
art and sense of character, in basalt, and was found deep in the
jungle at Tabasco, Mexico, which is twenty miles from the modern
Mexican coast, and more than 100 miles from the nearest source of
this volcanic stone. It is obvious that a system of good roads must
have linked what is now deep and almost impenetrable jungle and
forest with the distant quarries. The head one of five is of a man
of white, civilised race, of masterful character, a sense of humour
judging by the expression and clearly one of a master-race. The
features are as majestic as the heads of the Pharaohs at Karnak and
Thebes and the great Rameses. The experts of the Smithsonian

THE SIGN OF THE SUN 123

cannot tell what race sculpted these colossal and majestic features*
I may note, however, that Tabasco is the place to which the Atlantean
civiliser, the humane QuetzalcoatI, man in black of peace and
culture, brought the torch of civilisation from Hy-Brazil, the great
imperial colony, of the motherland of Atlantis. In or about 15,000
or 12,000 B.C. QuetzalcoatI ma n not god sent to Tabasco colonies
from his capital, Central American city of Tollan, or Cholullan (?).
The other strange discovery is of a bowl, or olla, found, also in
1940, by Dr. Ousdal, the palaeontologist, in the mountains of
Southern California, in the top of a sandstone boulder which erosion
has thrown on to its side. The bowl bears round its rim the writing
of a highly civilised race ; for the signs are geometric and phonetic.
They were made with great care and not merely scratched on the
surface. For how many thousands of years the bowl has lain in the
hollow of this rock none yet know. But a clue to the advanced civili-
sation of this great unknown race of North-Central America I give
in the two signs among others carved on the bowl-rim with
their probable signification:

ffl Dt Dt

(i) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

(i) Letter on bowl (or olla) of unknown, very ancient race inhabiting what is
now a mountain range in S. California, U.S.A. (2) Similar ancient Brazilian
sign on ceramics and funerary urns at Maraj6 Island, Lower Amazon. Both
probably equivalent in meaning to (3) : Ancient Egyptian symbol Tort or
Teri: God. (4) Another symbol on olla ((i) above). Compare with ancient
signs : (5) at Maraj6, Brazil ; (6) China and (7) ancient Egypt. Meaning : river
spanned by bridge.

Nor is the above the only amazing example of diffusion of culture
in an incredibly ancient world of civilisation preceding even the
dynastic Egypt of the priests of Thais and Thebes and the ancient
Egyptian temple-archivists of Solon's day. This same Amazon
basin confronts us with identical signs and symbols stretching hands
across a very ancient world of wise men, from China and old India
to South and Central America of a far, pre-Columbian age. How old
these symbols may be none yet can say. They may take us back to
the days of the heliolithic culture of 15,000 years ago, before the on-
rushing waters of the outer Atlantic drowned the black- white-red
civilisations of the ancient Mediterranean basin. They were found
about seventy years ago in the large island of Maraj6, at the mouth
of the lower Amazon, which is separated from the port of Belem,
North Brazil, by the Rio Para. In this island there is inset a lake
wherein is a small island, called Pacoval. Here have been found
many highly artistic ceramics, idols, ornaments, funerary urns,
buried in mound-dwellings.

124 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

Nothing is known about the long vanished race who made them ;
but one strange fact about the craftsmen emerges, when one examines
the relics : they depict an extraordinary variety of human faces,* so
that it seems as if this ancient and unknown people of the old
Amazon basin had studied every race in the world ! Some of the
figures on the vases and ceramics are strikingly similar in their
characteristics to figures found on ancient Mexican monuments. f

These ceramics are often very highly finished and artistic;
but what is odd is that no two funeral urns have the same devices,
and on only one of them is found a decoration of part of a plant.
Their colouring is vermilion or dark black, and in this all primitive
races are alike, even to the days of the Palaeolithic man of the famous
Altamira caves of the Basque mountains. Red, black, or yellow is
the limit of their colour-apprehension; and, in fact, even the
Greeks of the heroic, epic time of Homer, and the much later Aris-
totle, recognised no more than three colours. Blue or violet was not
recognised as such, until the days of modern Europeans, proof of
which is Homer's frequent epithet of the wine-bright, or wine-dark
Mediterranean sea, and not purple or blue. Primitive and even
classic art was morphologically developed, but the apprehension of
colour rays of the spectrum and the sense of perspective are re-
markably modern developments of human consciousness.

This unknown race of Marajo Island had some queer ideas
non-Egyptian about interment and the future life, beyond the
grave. Their funerary urns were used to house desiccated skeletons
of corpses previously buried elsewhere. The skull was placed on top
of the skeleton, and the earthenware cover over the urn. Holes were
left for the worms to enter and eat the rotting flesh ! All the cooking-
pots and utensils of the dead were smashed by this unknown race,
and not placed, even in miniature model form, with the remains of
the deceased, as was, of course, the case in the tombs of the Pharaoh's
Egypt. The ancient "Marajans" seem to have come to old Brazil
from three or four directions : over the flanks of the eastern equatorial
Cordilleras of the Andes ; along tributaries on the northern bank of
the Amazon, or Maranon ; and by sea. There are also traces of an
ancient sea-faring race (the Garians?), who wandered to the Maranon
basin southwards from what is now Florida and Louisiana, and the
waters of the West Indies. They seem to have reached Brazil from
the lands of Central America, by way of Venezuela and the Gydanas.

One of these unknown races, settling in Marajo Island, practised
phallic-worship. The human generative organs are found realisti-
cally depicted in terra-cotta, and \htyoni and lingam appear exactly

* Compare with the submarine relics brought up off the coast of Ecuador by diver
of Sefior Mufioz, the haciendado. (Vide pages 20 and 183).

t Along the Rio Counay in the Brazilian Guiana, are other ancient tombs, in caves nine
feet deep, covered with heavy granite slabs, and containing glazed ceramics of art even
superior to Maraj6.

THE SIGN OF THE SUN 125

as they did in ancient Babylon, or old (or modern) India, in the cult
of Shiva. This unknown Marajan race had exactly the same notions
of the generative force of the universe symbolised in the dualism of
the sexes. This ancient form of worship they seem to have shared
with other vanished races, traces of whom have been found at
Chillicothe (Ohio), in California, in the ancient ceramics of Peru,
and in the ancient temples of old Yucatan. Here is a terra-cotta
phallus found in a mound at Marajo. Side by side with it is a phal-
lomorphic representation of the "sexo feminino", or yoni both
being depicted on the ceramics, or in conspicuous places on the
vases, between a special type of arabesque, and painted either in
vermilion, or black :

PHALLI (ancient Brazil) : lingam (male) \yani (female).

But the amazing feature of these ceramics of old Marajd's un-
known race of unknown date consists in the queer resemblances and
exact identity of forms found here, in old Brazil, and in ancient
Egypt, India, China and Aztec, or pre-Aztec Mexico. No one can
yet say what chronological relation they bear to the higher and
vanished white, Atlantean civilisation of the dead cities of Hy-
Brazil ; but it may be surmised that Marajo's ceramics and mounds
belong to a much later age than the former incredibly ancient and
vanished civilisation.

The reader will find these comparative symbols (set out below)
of great interest, if he or she is interested in ancient South America,
probably the cradle of the world's earliest civilisation :

THE SHADOW OF ATLANTEAN WHITE BRAZIL PROJECTED INTO

MARAJAN BRAZIL, PHARAOH'S EGYPT, OLD INDIA, ANCIENT

CHINA, AND PRE-AZTEC AND AZTEC MEXICO

A comparative Table of Symbols found on Ancient Pots, Funerary Urns and
Ceramics in the Mounds of Marajo Island, in the Lower Amazon-Marafton,

Modern Brazil

(All symbols in first column, below, are found on Maraj6 Island Funerary
Urns and Pots).

It should be here observed that, sixty years ago, Dr. Ladislao Netto, of the
Archives do Museu Nacional of Rio de Janeiro made a fine and careful com-
parative study of these remarkable inscriptions on the ceramics and funerary
inscriptions of Maraj6, to which one has been able to add little, except a com-
parison with the strange letters found in 1940 on the rim of the olla, sunk in an
ancient rock on a mountain-top in California. (Vide chap. V, p. 123, supra).

BRAZIL (MARAj6) MEXICO CHINA EGYPT INDIA

(Identical symbol found in the other four ancient
lands).

/>

126 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

In Maraj6 Island, it is found engraved, and also painted in ceramics; but
seems to have undefined meaning, except as bearing some affinity to an act of
phallic worship. In India, of the Hindus, it appears to have had the same inner
significance as the Delta of the Greeks. In ancient Mexico, it symbolised the action
of pricking, or breaking into parts, or the noun thorn; also the idea of union.
Some exege lists translate it as Ui-Hui-Uh', and others see in it a resemblance,
or likeness to the Egyptian sound Hou 9 having for symbol the same figure.

BRAZIL MEXICO CHINA EGYPT INDIA

Sign sometimes found painted, or represented in front of a mound, or tumulus.
When upside-down, it is an ancient Mexican character, meaning cup, or vessel,
translated by Cax-Cax-ItL

BRAZIL AND S, CALIFORNIA (Unknown race). EGYPT

P

Means God, or Tore*, or Ten (Egypt).

BRAZIL EGYPT

AA/l

Means a mountainous region, a strand by the water wherein such a
mountain is reflected. Hence, the symbol of plurality.

BRAZIL MEXICO CHINA

A house, or the verb, "to dwell*'.
BRAZIL CHINA EGYPT

A battlemented wall, or defensive barrier (found painted or engraved). Means
also a palisade on the bank of a stream.

BRAZIL CHINA EGYPT

This is the only vegetal sign found on Marajd ceramics. In Egypt and China ,
the sign meant a place covered with woods; also, in Egypt, the syllable AM.

THE SIGN OF THE SUN 127

BRAZIL CHINA EGYPT

Dt Dt

A river spanned by a bridge
BRAZIL EGYPT CHINA

The symbol for night, also suggests a form of lantern, or pharos. Means, also,
division of day and night, in ancient Chinese.

BRAZIL MEXICO EGYPT

Means govern, or command. In Egyptian is equivalent to the phonetic
symbol ph or p. In the Mexican is equivalent to petlatL

BRAZIL EGYPT CHINA INDIA

5 T

Umbrella, shelter, cover, calm.

BRAZIL EGYPT CHINA

JVt LJ -AA*

Rock, or mountain.

BRAZIL EGYPT CHINA

> <

Character not met alone, but in combination. Means pyramid, or stela,

BRAZIL EGYPT

In Egypt, is equivalent to the phonetic symbol "N", Stands for goddess

128 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA
BRAZIL MEXICO EGYPT AND CHINA

The symbol of old Egypt's Uraeus, idea of cunning, or wisdom. Is also the
symbol of Quezalcoatl, the wise man in black from Hy-Brazil, who civilised the
barbarians and savages of Central America, perhaps about 12,000 B.C.

BRAZIL MEXICO CHINA EGYPT INDIA

T ft ~ r

Sign which sometimes represents two arched eyebrows united to the nose.
Is identical with the tau of the Greek alphabet, and corresponds with the Egyptian
cross, where it symbolised omnipotence, grandeur, eternal life. In phallic sym-
bolism it means the act of coition between male and female. In the Aztecan Dres-
den Codex and No. C. Troano MS. it has same meaning. It was also the sign
borne by the ancient Egyptian goddess of fire, Sekhet.

And from the Serapcum of Isis, Horus (the son), and Osiris, the Alexandrian
Christians took it for the Christian ritual cross. It is, thus, in origin, as much a
phallic symbol as the spire of the mediaeval church, or the dome of the Moslem
mosque, or the curious monolithon stones of the Stone Ages found today in
various out-of-the-way parts of our English shires, or the abandoned old East
India army cannon (of old John Company) to which, not so many years back,
East Indian women of the Hindu religion were seen, in a jungle clearing, praying
for male offspring.

BRAZIL

MEXICO

CHINA

EGYPT

Means divine light, or sight. Idea of seeing or knowing, or sagacity. Aztec
TX IX/LT.

MEXICO

This ancient Brazilian symbol is identical with the Mexican Aztec symbol,
in which Landa says it means the lyth day, called Ahau> King, or, a period of
24 years. It also stands for demon, chief of the Legion, and invokes Hun-Hau,
Of the Qyicto Bible Popul Vuh, and alludes^lso to Hun-Camt, associated with the
wise old man, Qucttalcoatl of Hy-Brazil.

ex

CB

u

.

w

[Cnitrtfiv of Muw> \ncioiHil, Mn.co C/'v.

Human sacrifice stone from Aztecan teocallis (pyramid), near Mexico Gity.

Mi'clitll.

(') () (3)

Nos. i and 3 : Gordon-Medusa heads, old Greece and Syracuse. No. 2 : Same
motif at Palenque of Quetzalcoatl. World-wide heliolithic culture diffusion.

[Courtesy of M. Ic Alarq us ilc Wavnn.

The evolution (stairway) symbol (as at Tiahuanacu) on backs of Boro Indians,
Amazon headwaters, West Brazil.

BRAZIL

THE SIGN OF THE SUN

EGYPT

129

Cut in rock, or stone, is a symbol sign representing a lizard, or reptile.
In Egypt, it stood for the crocodile, and, as the bent tail, represented the West
which was the abode of the dead, or the land, or island-continent from which
the ancestors of the Egyptians came to the Nile, via (perhaps), old Spain, from
South America, or Rutas-Lemuria (?) of the proto-Egyptian.

CHINA

EGYPT

DMt

A reptile, or residence, between or upon mountains. May be a royal city
with two exits, and located between mountains. Or suggests a dead Brazilian
city, or Atlantean city, moated, or surrounded by water, as many of them were
and are (both in African ruins and in South American jungle cities of the dead).

BRAZIL MEXICO EGYPT

Means lagoon, basin of water, or water limited in area. Identical symbol in
all three countries. In the DRESDEN Aztec Codex its value is ATL- and Mauh.
May be a veiled reference to the drowned Atlantean island-continent.

BRAZIL

CHINA

Meant a city, or the four cardinal points, or natural forces. In ancient
Chinese, the sign meant royal residence, or palace.

BRAZIL

EGYPT

Figurative sign of a passaro, or bird. Has same sense in Peruvian antiquities.
May be compared with the sign of the Egyptian god Horus, and the Mexican
Toztli, a kind of parrot with golden feathers. It is also, for this reason, the emblem
of the sun. Teotli, or TeotL In Mexican means God. N*B. Horus, the hawk-headed
god of ancient Egypt, was the god of sunrise and the day. It was said that only the
falcon, or hawk, was able to gaze on the sun and not be blinded, or dazzled.

I

130 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA
BRAZIL EGYPT CHINA INDIA

DD

A compound, or composite, symbol having the idea of a temple, surmounted
by the "T", or tau, that thus appears a universal divinity. This primitive form
of pyramid was given to the temples of all the early races of America and Africa.
Presumably the idea of the pyramid came from the drowned continent of Atlantis
to Africa (Tanis, in old Barbary) and the Nile, and to America, South and
Central, across the then existing land-bridges. But the identity of these ancient
Marajans, who thus adopted this very ancient sign, remains a riddle, sixty years
after the discovery of their fine ceramics, funerary urns and statues.*

CHAPTER VI

SIGN-POSTS TO THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS

"They fly, forgotten,
As a dream dies at the opening day."

"As above, so below. What has been, will be again."

These words, in the ancient mysteries, whispered into the ear
of the neophyte, at low breath, mouth to ear, and in hushed voice,
as the freemasonic ritual has it, arise to the surface of the conscious
mind at every interval of a half century in the history of mysterious
South (and Central and North) America, when the great god Chance,
or the Zeit Geist, or the Central Sun of the Cosmos, or what you
will, breaks a little cranny of light into the practically impenetrable
veil shrouding the mystery of the ancient American world. f

Who are the mysterious mound-builders, whose remains are
found in Ohio? What relation do they bear to the races migrating
from old Atlantis? Had they any dim knowledge at all of that
ancient world of Stone- Age culture, which yet knew how to work
copper?

In 1927, one of the mounds of this mysterious race, or races, was

* This vast island of jungle and thick grass, today reaching five feet above the heads of
the tallest men, is known to be inhabited by head-hunters. Two officeis of the Atlantic
group of the R.A.F. Transport Command crashed there when an engine failed in February
1944. Radio flashed out the SOS, followed by a carrier pigeon. American and R.A.F. 'planes
located the wreck of the 'plane and the survivors, at the outlet of the Rio Arapixi. U.S.
Army and Navy airmen in a motor-crash boat were directed to the scene from the air and
forced a way through swamps where caymans and poisonous snakes abound. But they
had to turn back. Eventually, the two Transport Command officers were rescued by a
Navy blimp whose crew made a daring landing m the jungle and an equally risky take-off.
I mention this story in order to indicate the nature of the terrain that field workers and
archaeologists will have to face in this strange island of Maraj6.

Wide pages 122-23, supra*

SIGN-POSTS TO THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS 13!

examined by Dr. Wm. G. Mills, of Columbus, Ohio. There are
thousands of these mounds scattered all over that state, and in the
Mississippi Valley. As is well known, mounds in ancient Central
America formed the basis of the pyramid-temples on which they
were erected. Prominent men chiefs or medicine men were
buried in them, often at ground level, as in the case of Stone- Age
tumuli in Britain. The earth was then heaped over them. (In
Britain, as we know, the earth was often heaped round and over a
tri-lithon structure of stone, as in the dolmen, and a hidden tunnel-
gateway provided for some purpose, which, it may be surmised,
was not of the future tomb-robbers.)

The mound-builders of America were artists in the use of
copper. They also had rich pearls, wove fine fabrics, and made
artistics objects of bone, stone and shell. No iron has been found in
these mounds.

Copper, again, was their precious metal.

The earlier culture built their mounds on terraces; the later
used bluffs. In the graves have been found obsidian volcanic
glass arrow-heads, though obsidian is not found nearer the Mis-
sissippi than the Yellowstone. There are also beads made from shells
found along the Gulf of Mexico, which is evidence of trade and
contact with members of the race who had migrated to Central
America. It has been estimated that the earlier mound-builders
migrated to America some 12,000 years ago, which is about the date
given in the Solon-Plato-Sais account of the cataclysm that sunk
Atlantis to a watery Hades.

The race do not appear to have known the potter's wheel; yet
there have been found in the ancient mounds hand-fashioned bowls
and pots of such beauty and symmetry that the unaided eye cannot
detect the least defect. They cremated their dead, in some cases,
and in one such mound in Ohio, there was found, in 1927, four
"princes" lying in beds of pearls and covered with exquisitely
woven fabrics decorated with artistic designs. Some of the skeletons
show that the people were afflicted with tuberculosis and other
"modern" diseases. Again, some of these ancient mounds are larger
than the pyramids of old Egypt. Like the makers of the petro-
glyphs, to which we shall soon refer, the mound-builders wandered
in groups down the Pacific coast southwards to Mexico, Central
America and across the land-bridge to South America.

Arriving in the region of Mexico City, they founded a civilisation.
Pottery was made and from a species of wild grass they developed
corn. From this centre, their arts spread north and south, and they
traded and inter-married and invaded, eventually importing their
inventions and culture to the Illinois, Ohio and Mississippi valleys.
In one county of Ohio Fulton alone are some i, 600 mounds. In
the older terraced mounds, the skeletons are found flexed, the limbs

(13) Petroglyphs, Sierra dc Santa Marta, Colombia, found 1933. Note the
proto-Greek, Carton, and Phrygian type head-dresses. The Carians, defeated by
the great Pharaoh Rameses, emigrated across the Atlantic to the Americas. They
called their aldeias (villages in Brazil) Tabas (Thebes, of the Pharaohs?}. (14)
Splendid head of Tiahuanacu notable. (Vide (5), page 90.) (15) Stairway-evo-
lution sign on "dome" of high priest, Tiahuanacu. Also central cross : ancient
phallic symbol, identical with Onkh symbol of Egypt's Pharaohs ("to live"). ( Vide
also (i), page 90.) (16) Stone statue from ancient midden, British Columbia.
Type of prehistoric head-dress found in old Atlantean Brazil and Columbia.
(Fufepagc90.) (17) (Left) Venus (phallic coition) sign on (Central American)
Mayan glyph. (Middle) identical symbol of Egyptian tau, and Christian cross

SIGN-POSTS TO THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS 133

being folded on the chest. Pottery of a different sort is found in these
older mounds. In the mounds on the bluSs later in origin, since the
terraced mounds have been found buried under them the skele-
tons are buried fully extended and a different type of pottery in-
terred with them.

Below the level of the earlier terrace mounds skeletons of another
race have been found with longer and lower skulls. Whether these
are men of an entirely different and far earlier people, or whether
the skulls of the later arrivals changed in shape has yet to be
determined.

Thousands of years before the day of the North American Red
Indian, this ancient race made splendidly shaped pipes statuettes
of human figures resembling other Caribbean culture statuettes
found in Honduras and the Friends' Islands, in Rattan. Some of the
skulls found in the mound-graves have artificial copper noses fitted,
indicating that they had been operated on after death, though the
why and the significances are mysteries. A copper claw of an eagle,
exquisitely made, and a fine statuette of a handsome beardless man,
or youth, come from other graves. The race, of course, was not
nomadic, as were the Red Indians.

An even more apparently insoluble mystery of a race of whom not
even an Indian tradition remains unexpectedly came to the light of
modern day, when, in 1940, Dr. Asbjorn Ousdal, of Santa Barbara,
California, found on a mountain-top in Southern California the
queer primitive bowl sunk in the rim of a great sandstone boulder
which had slipped on its side during ages of secular erosion. Cut into
its surface was the mysterious inscription in letters, not hieroglyphs,
on which one has essayed to throw a very dim light. (Vide page 123
supra) .

The words of the famous hymn sounded, again, in summer 1940,
when close to an American episcopal mission at Point Hope, Alaska,
remains of a prehistoric city were found, with an unknown type of
very high culture. Even the Eskimos, who usually have a tradition
explaining such remains, could say nothing of these. It is quite
unlike any other finds in Alaska, or the Far North. Unless, however,

of Serapeum. (Right) Venus sign, Tomb of the Bulls, Tarquinia of the mysterious
Etruscans (Atlantean type race?). (Vide page 128.) (18) Petroglyphs, Sierra
de Santa Marta, Colombia, also found Amazonas, Brazil. Top middle glyph
like sign of Tore, or Tere (God), ancient Egypt and identical with one letter of
strange alphabet on rim of ancient olla, found, 1940, on S. California mountain.
The man in the "rayed" head-dress with staff suggests some ancient prophet or
civilizer, like Quetzalcoatl. Figures this type found also on rocks of Orinoco
headwaters. (19) (Top) Stairway-evolution signs, Tiahuanacu. (Bottom) Same
sign on modern Quichua (native Peruvian) wayside altar, Andes. (20) and (21) :

(20) "Los simbolos escalonados" (stairway signs), and also Zodiacal (deluge) sign,
Aquarius, Tiahuanacu, and all over S. and C. America, and S.W. of U.S.A.;

(21) similar signs, ancient Brazil, China and old Egypt.

134 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

more finds of the sort are made, in later years, it will remain a riddle,
exactly as that of the rocks of South and North America, whereon,
written by a far-wandering race, is an Odyssey none may read, or
interpret, as yet !

These petrcglyphs have been traced to the Aleutian Islands,
where the Jesuit missioner and archaeologist, Father Bernard R.
Hubbard, in 1937, found in the islands Attu and Agattu, farthest
eastward, an aboriginal people speaking a strange language which
he thinks has some relationship to the speech of the hairy Ainu, the
old Stone- Age inhabitants of Northern Japan. These rock signs run
right through the Aleutians, though they really start, so far as at
present traced, in Central Siberia. They mark the passage of an un-
known race who had reached a fairly advanced stage of culture.

The trail is again picked up in the gorges of the River Columbia,
in the state of Washington, west coast of U.S.A. They cross the
Rockies, into the states of Nevada and Arizona, and bear away
southwards, through the still mainly unexplored sierras of Mexico,
to the Cordilleras of Colombia, South America, and the gorges of the
Orinoco and Maraiion- Amazon. Yet, do these petroglyphs differ
considerably in degree of artistic execution and subtlety of symbolism
as I hope to show here.

More than a century ago, Humboldt and Schomburghk (wander-
ing in Guiana wildernesses and along the upper Orinoco), and,
almost forty years later, Bates, in the canons of the Rio Xingu of the
Matto Grosso, of Brazil, came on fresh passages of these Odysseys
of the rocks. It is significant that in the llanos of Venezuela and
Eastern, and still mostly unexplored Colombia Humboldt found no
rocks covered with inscriptions of the sun and animals, though, on
the banks of the Rio Caicara, where the forest joins the plain, such
rock-drawings are seen. This may mean that the unknown race
travelled through the river gorges and valleys in a day when a vast
morass, more than a million square miles in area, separated these
gorges from the nascent Andes, from whose slopes the waters were
draining into this terrible region of swamps, fevers, and, it is likely,
fearsome prehistoric monsters, or feral saurians of gigantic size.
(Qiieer stories of such monsters, leaving tracks unrecognized in the
beaches of swampy lakes are, as I have said, still current in places
on the foothills of the Eastern Andes, much about where Sir Arthur
Gonan Doyle probably placed his "Lost World' 5 .)

It was on rocks, in 7 degrees North latitude, and at a considerable
height, that Humboldt saw those figures of animals, boa-con-
strictors, the sun and the moon, stars and strange hieroglyphic signs.
The whole country, he says, was a savage desert in 1810-20. It is
not more "civilised", even today, in 1942. The natives said that, in
this country of the rock-pictures, and of the queerly Phoenician-
looking signs, found carved in rows, in a cave, their ancestors, in the

SIGN-POSTS TO THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS 135

time of the great waters, came in canoes to the tops of these mountains,
and that the rocks were so plastic that a man could trace marks on
them with his bare fingers.

Humboldt remarked that the tribes of his day, in that wild
region, knew nothing of the use of chisels, or metallic tools. From all
of which it may seem that some of these inscriptions came before,
and some after a great catastrophe, that wiped out the culture of the
great civilised race of ancient Brazil and the mighty Maranon-
Amazon basin and valley, far wider, then, than even today. As I
have suggested in this book, it is probable that great aerolites from
the sky, and vulcanism, with tidal waves below, brought the "sun"
of fire and water, as ancient pre-Aztecan sacred books, traditions, or
codices have it, on these dead civilisations. May be, then, I hazard,
the more primitive petroglyphs, of the naively primitive sort, such
as men with the intelligence of children might make, were done
with their fingers in these rocks, as the Caribs told the baron, after the
time of the great waters. The inscriptions that preceded the terrific
South and Central American cataclysm, described luridly in the
Mayan bibles, such as the Popul Vuh, are, probably, the work of
very different peoples and cultures. Time may lift the veil.

Humboldt's words are worth quoting here* He said, in 1820:

"In the interior of S. America, between 2 and 4 N.
lat, there extends a great plain, bounded by four rivers: the
Orinoco, Atabasco, Rio Negro, and Casiquiare. On them are
found rocks of granite and syenite, equal to those of Caicara
and Uruana, covered with symbolical representations. There
are colossal figures of crocodiles, tigers, houses, and domestic
utensils, and signs of the sun and moon. At this day, this un-
frequented region is entirely without a population over a space
of 500 square miles. The neighbouring tribes, exceedingly
ignorant, lead a miserable vagrant life, and are not capable of
drawing hieroglyphics. In S. America, a belt of these rocks,
covered with these symbolic emblems, may be followed from
Runupuri, the Essequibo, and the Pacariama mountains, to the
banks of the Orinoco and the Yapura, over an extent of more
than 8 of longitude. These marks, thus engraved in the
rocks, may belong to several different epochs ; for Sir Robert
Schomburghk has seen on the Rio Negro a drawing of a Spanish
ship which, of course, must be later in origin than the beginning
of the sixteenth century, and this in a savage country where the
indigenous stock was probably quite as uncultivated as the present
inhabitants." (Ansichten der Natur. 3 Ausgabe, Bde /., p. 240.)

These picture writings range north, from the gorge of the
Xingu, on the eastern side of the Matto Grosso of Brazil, to the

136 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

highlands of modern Colombia, and south through Maranhao, Ceara
and Parahyba, in lands which, as I have shown, were within the
actual zones of influence, if not always residence, of the great white
race of the Atlantean Brazil, of the pre-cataclysmic age, at least
11,000 years ago. One feature marks them all: they are carved on
high rocks, in gloomy canons, impossible to climb. No more than in
North America has one, at present, the key to these inscriptions,
and it is still, palaeontologists contend, very much an open question
whether man existed in ancient Brazil in the time of the giant
mammals. (Until one hears the Indian rumours of what lies between
the Goyaz and Roosevelt plateaux in Brazil!) His bones have
certainly been found mixed with theirs in Brazil and other South
American regions.

In the Rio Negro, of the Amazon, there are many of these rock-
pictures. Two of them strike the imagination : rock-glyphs of tall
men, of archaic type, in long robes, one with arms extended, the
other grasping a long baton or staff; and they are depicted wearing
remarkable head-dresses, like extended haloes. Similar figures are
also found in the Upper Orinoco region. True, they are in a style
such as a child, or man with a child's mind, would draw ; but they
suggest most graphically that the primitive artist was copying
monuments of a dead civilisation, far higher than his own, or, per-
haps, engraving memories in stone of the leaders of a great race to
whom his forefathers had been helots of some sort. Schomburghk
wrote to Humboldt that he had seen colossal human figures in the
rock of Timeri (interior of Dutch Guiana), and close to the great
cataracts on the upper waters of the Rio Gorentyn, on the borders of
Dutch and British Guiana. These figures were executed with much
greater care than any discovered in Guiana (Venezuela) ....

"The size is about seventy feet, and the figures seem to re-
present the human body. The head-dress is extremely remark-
able. It encompasses the head, spreading outwards considerably
in breadth, and is not unlike the haloes in the paintings of the
heads of saints. I have left my drawings of these figures in the
colony (British Guiana), and I hope some day to be able to lay
them before the public. ... In the Cuyuwini (N. British Guiana),
I saw ruder figures, and they extended over a space of 192,000
square geographical miles. 55

It is curious that head-dresses, somewhat of this type, are found
in some of the monuments of what are probably the world's most
ancient ruins : those at Tiahuanacu, and also close to mysterious
hieroglyphics on rocks in the Santa Marta Mountains, Colombia.
The late R. B. Gunninghame Graham, "El Gran Caballero", "Don
Roberto", saw rock-pictures of this sort in Mexico though he does

SIGN-POSTS TO THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS 137

not say if they depicted colossal men with curious head-dresses at a
great height ; but, in the days "when I passed through the valley, the
Mescalero Apaches made things unhealthy for archaeologists".

Who were the Homers of this Odyssey of the rock-pictures?
May be, there were more races than one ; for, as I have pointed out
before, the pictures vary greatly in type and skill of execution. Some
may be of far later date than others. R. B. Gunninghame Graham
jestingly suggested that Don Gonzalez Jiminez de Quesada, the con-
quistador of Colombia, as a lawyer, might have thought that the
writings, figures and pictures seen at a great height at a place known
as La Pefia Tejada, where the mountain stream had cut a passage
through the living rock, were a "species of Indian conveyancing".

But were they a sort ofpateran or route-map and trail, of wander-
ing ancient South American "Romanies' 9 , showing to people coming
on behind, years later, which route the pioneers had taken? Or,
again, had the makers of the rock-glyphs chanced on some in-
credibly ancient grey stone American city riven by thunderbolts,
or upheaved by earthquakes in a far-off day? Had their imagination
been so impressed by what they saw there that they copied some of
the hieroglyphs, or syllabary forms, or ancient alphabets, or some
of the monumental representations of colossal human figures, and
reproduced them as they journeyed on, ever on, into the great un-
known? (Or, again, were the rock-carvers migrating refugees from
some submerged land Atlantis?)

So, on the forehead of rocks high in mountain gorges they had
carved a sign to future, wondering men that, even of old, in the night
of time, or the morning of the world, or the twilight of cosmic
castrophe, men knew that they had no continuing city on this
planet, and that, aeons after the destruction by cataclysm of their
own incredibly ancient civilisation, the far day must dawn which
the priests of old Hindostan called the "Night of Brahma", when
life and motion cease, or, as the modern physicist would say, en-
tropy increases and energy degenerates into a molecular degrada-
tion of heat, the solar system ceases to rotate round its blazing
centre, and the universe falls asleep till the next dawn. . . .

However fantastic this may sound, and whether or no some of
the far-spread American rock-pictures are mute memorials of some
past Heliacal year of deluge, destruction and the passing away of
great civilisations which have not left even a bone or a shred of
pottery, as in the dead cities of the highlands of Brazil, it is true,
generally speaking, that the petroglyphs and ancient rock-pictures
of South America's mountain gorges and the cliffs along the affluents
of the Maranon- Amazon, such as the Rio Negro, are more advanced
or artistic than those of North America. Yet, in both, oddly Phoeni-
cian, Semitic, or Asiatic signs appear, and may not be their (ancient
South America's nomads') direct reminiscences of those other

138 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

wandering races of the ancient worlds of Asia and Europe, or as
accidental as some American and Brazilian professors would have us
believe.

At the moment, we know more of the tides of migration from
North to South America than of the meaning, or meaninglessness or
mere conventionality of some of these petroglyphs. One trail starts
at Celilo, on the River Columbia, of Oregon, close to Big Eddy and
Roosevelt, Washington. The petroglyphs cross the Rockies into what
is now Nevada and New Mexico, and reach southwards to Perti,
on whose rocks similar signs have been cut. May be, there were two
distinct streams of migrants : those on the east, from the shores of
the Mississippi; those on the west, wandering from the banks of the
Columbia, Oregon, to the Rio Ucayli, of the Andes.

It must be remembered that, thousands of years before Menes,
the ancient Egyptians cut perfect hieroglyphs on rocks and monu-
ments, and designed canals. Just so, the ancient American races,
lapidarian artists, built twelve miles of canals so far traced and
irrigated 90,000 to 150,000 acres of land in Western North America.
Some modern American archaeologists say they were men of the
Shoshonean race, makers of baskets, far older than the cliff-dwellers,
who reached the highlands of Central America from the Far
West.

One's general impression, after a study of these petroglyphs, is
that the sculptors may have had contacts with an ancient civilisa-
tion in America, probably long after its passing into the abyss of
time. For among the meaningless scrawls on the rocks are significant
pictures of serpents and animals, and forms suggesting the letters
and hieroglyphs of old Phoenicia and Egypt. But those signs pro-
bably came neither from Egypt, nor the wandering Phoenicians, but
from the sources whence those ancient races derived their letters
and glyphs: Rutas, the great vanished continent of the Pacific,
whence came the old Sanscrit forms, or the northern tropical
sea-continent of the Atlantic, called by the Greeks of Plato's day
Atlantis.

The different races and periods of these rock-painters and carvers
are suggested in the comparative illustrations below :

Petroglyphs found in the Aleutians, in 1937,
by Father Bernard Hubbard, S.J.

(These signs may, later on, be compared with the
rupestrian inscriptions to be mentioned in a subse-
quent book, as found in the Canaries, the Sahara,
and old Spain.)

SIGN-POSTS TO THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS 139

^^^ Petroglyph from Cliff in Oregon.

(0) Serpent, or earth, trailing gaseous fire-mist in the Azoic Age?

(Possible Sanscritian conception derived from either Atlantis or Rutas-

Lemuria.)

Ditto: similar idea.

Tadpole, symbol of generation. Frogs were worshipped in old Brazil
as in ancient Egypt, as a symbol of generation. (Similar sign ends
Phoenician (or Karian ?) rupestrian inscription at Graves Creek,
Ohio Valley.)

Utah cliff-

dweller's

glyph.

Ancient
Brazil :
Maraj6,
Amazon
mouth.

Mexico: sign of Quetzalcoatl,
the pacifist pioneer, who, from
Atlantean Brazil, or the mother-
land of Atlantis, brought ele-
ments of civilization to savage
North and Central America.

New Mexico :

Petroglyphs on canon
walls.

Rio Negro Valley, Amazonas,
Brazil: Men with rayed headdress
suggestive of preachers or pioneers (?)
from Atlantean South America (?).
They are not the people depicted in the
New Mexico petroglyphs at left.
. ,._ Another theory is that the hcad-

Petroglyph on Arizona chff. dresses are feat h ergj which & not

convincing.

More advanced feeling for pictorial art is shown in

this Amazonian rock inscription in the valley of the

Rio Negro, Brazil. (Animals may be the S. American

aquatic rodents, the capybaras).

Along the Orinoco and the Amazon river-gorges and in Mexican
sierras the signs are often found on inaccessible cliffs. In Siberia,
near Krasnoyarsk!, and in old Tartary, the glyphs also take the
form of rude figures of men, quadrupeds, reptiles and birds cut in
the rocks at places where the rivers run close under the granite
cliffs, which, in some regions, are smooth, steep and unscalable.

May it be that the rock-carvers are of different races of various
dates; that they migrated, in some cases, from a common centre,

140 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

not necessarily in Asia, as many scholars advance, but in ancient
America, or even across some ancient land-bridge, long since dis-
rupted in the Pacific, linking Lemuria with ancient America?
In other cases, the evidence seems to point to a wandering, from
Asia, across the Bering Strait, or the existing land-bridge of the
Aleutians.

What do we know of the extent of the migrations from Atlantis,
in the far ages preceding or after the various cataclysms presaging
the final catastrophe of the Egyptian account handed down to us in
the Solon-Plato dialogues? It may be that some of these Atlantean
migrants went wandering in thousands of years eastwards, right
across Europe into Asia, eventually reaching the American con-
tinent, which other Atlanteans had, in ancient South America,
colonised in a westward approach.

My theories are equally as good as the more conventional and
fashionable ones; for none of them are written on volcanic basalt as
enduring as the petroglyphs on inaccessible cliff-walls in America
or Northern or North-Eastern Asia !

Peru has a number of mysterious and ancient rock-inscriptions,
and, in many cases, they are far anterior to the Inca's civilisation.
One of them was found by the Peruvian historian, Dr. J. von
Tschudi. It lies about a league from Huari, in a very ancient settle-
ment of an unknown race :

Inscription of unknown and ancient race, near Huari, Peru.

These inscriptions of Huari, Peru, resemble shorthand con-
sonants ; but three of the characters are remarkable. One appears to
be a representation of a large running bird, such as an emu or ostrich.
Neither exists in modern South America. Another is a bare-legged
man in a short tunic, or one of those individuals who appear in
Mr. H. G. Wells's novels of worlds in A.D. 2500, and shapes of things
to come, or in Professor J. B. Haldane's lively scientific sketches of
the future. The third appears to be the head of a horse though the
hippine species is supposed to have been unknown in North, Central
or South America before the coming of the Spanish jennets of the
conquistadores.

SIGN-POSTS TO THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS

There are other quite different characteristics of some pre-Inca
culture cut in a rock at Sahpuayacu, Peru, in a territory not known
ever to have been conquered by the Incas, which lies about 190
miles east of Guzco outside the bounds of the old Inca Peruvian
empire. To the archaeologist, these inscriptions at Sahpuayacu are a
standing puzzle. No one of them can make up his mind, though
sorely tempted to say they are merely conventional inscriptions, or
pictographs cut on the rock in the idle moments of some savage, or
primitive gentleman, who, had he lived in the days of Sam Slick,
the famous Yankee clockmaker, would probably have spoiled some
blaspheming farmer's new five-barred gate to a cattle-fold, by carv-
ing his insignificant name, date, and initials of his sweetheart on the
top bar, in oak, or hickory. It is unsafe to dismiss them as con-
ventional, or ornamental, merely; since one sign appears thrice and
three others twice each in the two rows*

Unknown signs at Sahpuayacu, Peru.

The third discovery is the most remarkable of all. It was made,
says Senor Mariano de Rivero y Ustariz, on a granite rock eight
leagues from Arequipa. Many of the engravings are of animals
and flowers and of a fort anterior to the age of the Incas. At one
place, called Huayti, was found a ruined palace, of unknown age
and origin, and certainly not Inca. Here, a mass of granite was
engraved with these curious figures. The "hot cross bun" sign is
exactly the same in form, and, perhaps, significance as that associated
with the mysteries of the sun-god, Baal, or Bacchus, or the Phoeni-
cian letter Teth (Tyrian alphabet). As for the primitive gentleman
standing on the back of a large bird, and with the rays issuing from
the crown of his head and tips of his fingers, one might speculate
whether or no he had some knowledge of aviation or electricity, or
electro-magnetic healing.

Here is the place for one to ask how much longer American
archaeologists or their British confreres mean to persist in the
absurd and unhistorical assertion that Peru of the Incas had never
devised a form of writing? That all they had invented were a crude
system of knots, quippus, known to the conquistadores and early
chroniclers and which remind one of the mediaeval system of

* Compare these unknown signs in old Peril, with pre- Phoenician, rupestrian inscriptions
found in the Sahara, in parts of old Spain, and in the Canaries. (To be referred to in my
subsequent book on S. American riddles). Berthelot suggested that unknown races all over
the world, some 20,000 years ago, had a sort of lingua franca in these signs cut in stones.

One of the above signs appears in a writing of Indians, in an island in Lago de Titicaca.
Vide Chap. V., p. 122 supra,)

142 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

tallies, made of wood, current among the secretaries and accountants
of the royal scriptoriums, or primitive state offices of the English
middle ages. These quippus were coloured knots used as a mnemonic
aid ; but the earlier Incas had actually devised a system of writing,
far older in date than the quippus, known in Quichua as quilcas.
The Incas lost this early system of writing when an insane and
superstitious tyrant of an Inca emperor* forced the caste ofamautas,
or learned scribes, to adopt the quippus. Fernando Montesinos, whose
authoritative "Memorias Antigas Historiales del Peru" was largely
copied from the lost and most valuable MS. "Vocabulario His-
torico del Peru", of the learned Jesuit, Bias Valera, son of a Peruvian
lady and a conquistadorian soldier, tells us how this came to pass.

Rupestrian Inscription (unknown and ancient race near Arequipa, Peru).

(That MS. vanished from the Jesuit college of La Paz, Bolivia, in or
after 1631, when the historian of the Society of Jesus, Padre Anello
Olivia, saw it.)

Montesinos , repeating what Bias Valera had collected of oral
traditions and history, from the mouths of Peruvian priests and
nobles, in the days just after the Conquest, says that, in the reign of
the Inca Huanacaui:

"The amautas, or learned scribes, who knew the events of
those times by very ancient traditions passed from hand to hand,
say that the Inca had letters and also wise men, amautas, who
taught reading and writing ... as far as I am able to learn they
wrote on the leaves of plantain trees, which they dried, and
then wrote upon, whence the idea came to Juan Coctovito, in his

* Neither the word quilca, nor vira, is found in Quichua, or makes any sense in that
tongue of the Incas. There are Brazilian Indian tribes, knowing nothing of the Incas, who
sing each dawn to the sun. Their song is an invocation to Vira-Viral In the language of
the Nahuatls of old Mexico quilca means write or paint. Did this word, too, come from the
dvilisers from white Atlantean Brazil? AUTHOR.

SIGN-POSTS TO THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS 143

'Itinerario Hierosolimitano y Siriano' (lib. I, c. 14, foL 92),
that the ancients wrote upon these leaves, and that the lines which
are used in parchments in Italy, today, owe their origin to this
custom. And also in Chile, when paper for his 'Araucana' was
lacking, to Don Alfonso de Arcila (Ercilla), an Indian filled his
need with leaves of the plantain tree, and on them he wrote
great portions of his poem, as the Padre Acosta says. Also they
(the old Incas) wrote on stones. A Spaniard found among the
buildings of the Quinoans, three leagues from Buamanga, a
stone with some characters which none could read. And thinking
that the memory of the guaca (burial place, or tomb, in Quichua)
was inscribed there, he kept the stone for the sake of under-
standing better. These letters were lost to the Peruvians through
an event which befell in the time of Inca Pachacuti the Sixth."

This king is said, in Montesinos, who is following the lost work
of Bias Valera, to have been the seventy-eighth king of the Incas.
He was the sixth Pachacuti. He made great sacrifices to appease the
Illatici (Herodotos's Alilat, god of lightning and thunder), who was
associated with Viracocha, the man in black from Atlantean Brazil,
who performed the same civilising and cultural task in old Peru as
Qjietzalcoatl, his fellow-countryman, had in old Mexico. One of the
priests told Inca Tupac Cauri Pachacuti to give him his full name
that letters were the cause of the plague and none ought to use
them or resuscitate them from that time forth, or great harm would
come:

"So (about A.D. 300?) the Inca decreed pain of death to any
trafficking in the quilcas, or writing-material, which were the
parchment and leaves of the trees on which they used to write.
Nor were any to use any sort of letters. And, because, in later
times, a learned amautas invented some characters, they burnt
him alive. So, from this time forth, they used threads of quipos"

However, the plagues, as well as earthquakes and floods, happened
as frequently after this reactionary Inca had turned back the hands
of the clock of Peruvian culture. These hieroglyphics, written or
copied on the quilcas, were the royal mail of the Old Inca Empire.
One Inca Inti Capac set up post-houses on the Andean roads, and
chasquiSy or runners, travelling on foot running 12-14 (long Castilian)
leagues a day. surely a record of speed and endurance hardly matched
in any part of the world, at any time ! carried the letters until they
handed the folded leaves to the runners at the next mail-house. So
the post travelled till the letters reached the provincial governor.
After the use of letters was stopped the post-runners were forced to
commit the messages to memory.

It was, by the way, Bias Valera who compiled a list of kings of

144 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

the Incas going back to 1220 B.C., "a date" which, says Mr. Philip
Ainsworth Means, "is too early. In all probability South America,
at that time, was an uninhabited wilderness."

In advancing this theory, Mr. Means has gone badly off the
archaeological rails ! As this book has shown or it has failed dis-
mally old Brazil was a highly civilised country thousands of years
before 1220 B.C. True, it may be that the Inca tribe of Guzco did
not rise to Imperial power till A.D. noo, and that, as Bartolome
de la Gasa (who was in Peru in A.D. 1532) says, other dynasties
of chiefs ruled in the Andes before that date, of A.D. 1 100. That does
not alter the fact that Bias Valera's informants among the Peruvian
priests and the descendants of the old class of amautas, living in the
late sixteenth century of our era, were neither fools, liars nor
romancers.

Let us consider the significance of what they told him : Ayar>
MancO) and Pirua, names of Peruvian-Inca kings, have no meaning in
Quichua, the language of old Peru. Pirua, the name of the first
dynasty of the Incas, is a corruption of Vira, meaning sun, as it
probably did in the Atlantcan lands of old Brazil, of the dead cities.
Bias Valera says it was an archaic term and meant "storehouse of
creation". Ayar was the name applied to the four brethren of the
Paccari-Tampu myth, who issued from a city of caves in the high
Andes, and founded the old empire of Peru.

And what was the ancient forerunner of this late Empire of the
Andean Cordilleras? Again "chance", or adventure, gives the answer !

In 1929, a romantic adventure befell Mr. Lawrence Griswold,
an American traveller, who brought the famous Komodo dragons
from the Lost World Island of the Dutch East Indies to the Zoo in
New York. It is graphically suggestive of the far past of ancient
South America, and tears another small hole in the veil of mystery
shrouding this most ancient land of the world. Mr. Griswold was
captured by the Shuara Indians, a branch of the notorious Jivaro
tribe of head-shr inkers. He was somewhere up the Rio Juara, a
tributary of the Amazon, when he was captured, and the tribe
took him eastwards to the foothills of the Andes. One day, he was
chasing a peccary along the bed of a dried-up stream, when he
stopped as he saw, jutting from a hill, the foundations of an ancient
building. Digging away the soil, he came on some carefully jointed
stones extending backwards and upwards into the overshadowing
hill. There were two pyramidal structures and a horse-shoe amphi-
theatre, its open wings separated from the pyramids by a distance of
thirty feet. Mr. Griswold thought it might "be Tiahuanacu work of
5000 B.C." The Unta, or old man of the tribe holding him captive,
said the ancient builders were the "ancestors of the Shuaras". Many,
many years ago, he said, the Shuaras were great bearded men, like
gods, and only since the Flood had they taken a form like that of apes,

THE ZODIAC

AKJ&lUSUUf

BtUZit

I5IAWP

NORTH
AFR1C*

PISCES

EfCrtt*

MftTttnTmortp

SCORPIO

/W

AQUARIUS

TT

CHINA

LIBRA

ANDALUSIA*

TAURU5

CAnUOSNU

*&

OKIuJN OF
TH5iaSOF
THEZODWC

PFKU

n

CANCER

Atlanta

VUUJO

up

Grimaldi, in 1905, traced earliest Zodiacal inscription to Babylon (Tigris),
ca. 1 187 B.C. ; but the priest-astronomers of Atlantean-Brazil may have originated
them between 20,000 and 12,000 B.C.

146 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

and this was because of their antediluvian misdeeds. "These gods
were as tall as you," said the old Unta, "and red-haired. And it was
your red beard that saved you from death when we captured you.
We thought you must be one of the old race who built that city, on
the hill yonder." The Unta gladly gave Griswold an escort to the
nearest post on the Amazon, the village of Caracaica, whence he
returned to Manaos and took steamer for Rio and New York to
persuade an American archaeologist to return and inspect these
ruins. It is probable, though Mr. Griswold does not seem to have
heard of the adventures of the bandeiristas of A.D. 1750, in the dead
city, that this may also have been one of their outlying cities.

Fawcett said he had met a tribe he does not say where, but it
may have been in Brazil who had a name for every planet barring
Neptune ; which suggests that the old civilised race of astronomers
in prehistoric South America from whose elements of culture cer-
tain fragments had passed to the ancestors of these South American
tribes, had not discovered this planet, and is evidence of their ex-
treme and astounding antiquity. It is on the at present outermost
elliptical ring of the solar system, and on account of its immense
distance away, little is known of it by modern astronomers. Neither
Babylon nor the even more ancient world knew Neptune. But, in
1836, Lieut. W. Smyth, in a trip from Lima to Para, encountered the
tribe of the Sencis, living on the Rio Ucayli, a tributary of the
Amazon in Northern Peru. These Indians actually had names for
Jupiter and Mars and ten constellations. They are (or were) savages ;
so, here, again, there must be fragments surviving from the far-off
day of some vanished white Atlantean civilisation of South America.
It was among the Indians of the same Rio Ucayli that the Fran-
ciscan missioner, Fray Narcissus Gilbar, in the eighteenth century,
found an old man reading, under trees on the pampas of the Rio
Sacramento, MSS. on plantain-leaf paper, covered with orderly
arranged bold characters, and single hieroglyphs and pictures of
men and animals, the whole in colours. Earlier in the same century,
another missioner among the Pafios, in the valley of the Rio Hual-
lagu west and adjacent to the gorge of the Ucayli found similar
MSS. of plantain leaves among the Indians. Juan de Lucero says
they told him these MSS. contained "a history of events in the days
of their ancestors".

When the Franciscan friar, Fray Narcissus Gilbar, came back to
Lima he got in touch with Baron Alexander von Humboldt, who,
about 1820, was visiting Perii, on his travels of Central and South
America. The friar told the baron his very curious story.

Says von Humboldt:

"When I was in Lima, an extremely curious fact came to my
knowledge* The padre Narcissus Gilbar, well known for his

SIGN-POSTS TO THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS 147

courage and spirit of research among the independent Indians
of the Pafios, on the banks of the Ucayli, at a little to the north
of the point where the Rio Sarayacu (on the pampas of eastern
Peru) joins the Maranon (Amazon), found among them some
MS. books of paintings, which, in their external appearance,
perfectly resemble our own volumes in quarto. Each leaf was
i if inches long, by about yf inches broad. The books were
covered, or bound in leaves of a palm tree, with a very thick
parenchyma (tissue from bark and pith of stems), and glued to-
gether. A piece of tolerably fine cotton formed the leaves, which
were fastened by threads of agave. When Gilbar reached the
dwellings of the Pafios, he found an old man at the foot of a
palm tree, seated and surrounded by several young people to
whom he was explaining the contents of these books. The
savages would not, at first, permit a white man to approach the
teacher, and informed the friar, through the Indians of Manos,
who, alone, understand the language of the Pafios, that these
paintings contained hidden things which no stranger ought to
know. With great difficulty, Gilbar procured one of these col-
lections, which he sent to Lima, for the inspection of P. Cisneros,
the learned compiler of a periodical called El Mercurio Peruano.

"Several people, of my acquaintance, have seen this book of
the Pafios which is covered on every page with paintings. These
were figures of men and animals, and a great number of isolated
lines of characters, which were deemed to be hieroglyphs. They
were arranged with admirable order and symmetry. The liveli-
ness of the colours was particularly striking ; but, as no one at
Lima had seen a fragment of Aztec MS., it was impossible to
judge of the identity of the style of paintings found at a distance
from each ether of 800 leagues. P. Cisneros wished to deposit
this book in the convent of the missions of Ocupa; but whether
the person to whom it was entrusted lost it on his passage over
the cordilleras, or whether it was taken and sent clandestinely to
Europe, it is certain it never reached the place of its destination.
Every search for it has proved in vain . . . and the regrets of not
having made a copy came too late. . . . The missioner, Narcissus
Gilbar, with whom I was intimately acquainted at Lima,
promised to get me another collection of these paintings of the
Pafios. He knows that several exist among them, and that they
themselves say that these books were transmitted to them by their
fathers. The explanation they give, of these paintings, seems found-
ed on an ancient tradition which is perpetuated in some families.

"The Indians of Manos (or Manoa), whom Padre Gilbar
commissioned to make researches into the meaning of these
characters, imagined them to relate to travels and ancient wars
with neighbouring tribes."

148 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

Manoa, of course, reminds one of Sir Walter Raleigh's Golden
Manoa of El Dorado fame !

Humboldt adds that the Panos were savages dwelling in deep and
sultry forests, and such recent inhabitants of the soil, that it was very
unlikely they originated these paintings. Indeed, like the ancient
glyphs on the granite rocks of the Orinoco, and the Guiana savanas,
and the elevated plains of the Cordilleras in the paramos of Guanca,
these Panos paintings and MSS. must have been there long before
the ancestors of modern tribes came into that region of the Peruvian
pampas. The problem of their real origin, however, was not to be
solved in the light of the knowledge available in A.D. 1820 or, it
may be said, in A.D. 1920 ! But, with the evidence I have gathered in
Brazil, and reinforced by my own arduous researches in English,
Spanish and Portuguese source-material and MSS., I have no
hesitation in saying that in these plantain MSS. we see the hand
of the lost white imperial race of Hy-Brazil, of Atlantis the
Great !

Pedro de Garcia, of the Order of Preaching Friars, noted a
peculiar use to which Peruvians, at the time of the Spanish conquest,
put "paintings in image-characters with which they confessed their
sins, and painted each one of the ten commandments, in a certain
manner, and use ciphers to indicate the offences against the com-
mandments". The friar thought this meant that the Incas used
symbolic paintings, ruder and more unpolished than the hieroglyphs .
of the Aztecs. He admitted that quippus were ordinarily used by
them; but, oddly enough, for that age, refrained from suggesting
that brethren from the Lost Ten Tribes had been sent by Mosheth
to old Peru to convert the Peruvians to Jahvch, the hook-nosed
demi-ourgos and vindictive old gentleman whose spirit, under other
skies, had so often striven with other lesser men in fire, plague,
slaughter and clouds of loud hosannahs.

Were these MSS. or quilcas, that had escaped the attention of the
fanatic Inca Pachacuti the Sixth; or were they relics of a far earlier
civilisation? Until a MS. of this sort reaches civilisation the question
remains in suspense. We do not yet know, though, like the author of
this book, one may have strong opinions.

Von Tschudi, in his Antigiiedades Peruanas (Vienna, 1851), gives
us the clue to the probable origin of these ancient letters, though he
did not perceive its significance, when he wrote :

"It was reputed, on investigation (among the Panos Indians
of the pampas of the Sacramento, on the banks of the Rio Ucayli)
that these MSS. referred to the history of a nation that arrived,
from the north or the east> to the mountains of the Ucayli ; and
that they brought with them the knowledge of that writing ; or
that they are the remains of an ancient civilisation."

SIGN-POSTS TO THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS 149

There is no proof that the Mayas' culture penetrated so far south
and over the Andean cordilleras to old Peru. But as von Tschudi
knew nothing of the existence of the inscriptions in the dead cities of
Brazil although transcripts of them already existed in the old
Royal and Imperial Library at Rio de Janeiro, in his day he
naturally did not connect this ancient civilisation with Atlantean
Brazil.

A slender clue to die range of some of these South American,
vanished civilisations, though its end is and may ever remain lost in
the night of time, may exist in the dense and dangerous forests and
jungles of the interior of the republic of Haiti, and across the border
in the sister republic of Dominica. It was in the latter, behind the
mountains of Santiago, in a region far less known today than in the
fifteenth century A.D., that Bartholomew Columbus found the
strange, deep gold-mines spoken of by George Hornius, the (Dutch)
Leyden professor, in his De Originibus Americans (1652 edition) :

"In Haiti are found the wonderful mines (fodinae) out of
which (Bartholomew) Columbus judged the fleet of Solomon
sailed to fetch gold. Of these in his voyage he writes : 'Bartholo-
mew Columbus found in Hispaniola a cave very high and very
ancient, whence they say Solomon dug up his gold. This gold
mine is 16,000 feet deep and very ancient. The proof is great
that at one time men went to the island for metals, as in all times
the Phoenicians and those of Spain did. For these mines were not
made by the Haitians, who, of metals and mines are completely
ignorant, and of veins in the bowels of the earth, as is certain.
They get their gold out of rivers.' "

Bartholomew Columbus, who was then adelantado of San
Domingo, took a trip to these ancient mines, with a troop of soldiers
and miners. The natives told him the mines* lay sixty Spanish
leagues from the town of Isabella. When he reached there, the
obvious antiquity of the workings impressed the imagination of
Bartholomew. He saw that the pits extended over an area of nearly
six miles. The miners, riddling the earth of the workings, at several
points, affirmed that they found such great amounts of gold, hidden
in this soil, that a single miner might easily pick up "six drachmas of
gold a day. This was on 5th day of the Ides of March, 1495," says
Peter Martyr. (As those mines have long since vanished into the

* These prehistoric gold-mines of extraordinary depth may lie behind the still unex-
plored mountains of Cibao in modern Dominica's territory; but, as even maps of the late
seventeenth century show, Peter Martyr, or Bartholomew Columbus, must have been greatly in
error in stating that the region of the Montana de Cibaos, where these mines may be pre-
sumed to,lie was sixty Castilian leagues' distant from the township of Isabella {Ysabella de
Torres.] If that were the distance, then Bartholomew's soldiers must have gone a very
roundabout way to their objective. However, in a coming day, startling archaeological and
prehistoric discoveries are going to be made in this terra iwoj?nto.-~ THE AUTHOR.

150 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

jungle, lost to sight and memory, there must be a fortune waiting
some prospector in the wilds of modern Dominica.)

My friend, Captain John Houston Craige, late chief of police,
during the U.S. occupation of Haiti, says an American marine is
the only man he has ever known to reach near these mysterious
gold-mines.

Peter Martyr, or Peter Martyr de Anghiera, speaks of ancient
works of art found in this old buccaneering island. He died at
Granada, old Spain, in 1526.

Saint- Mery, in his Description de la patrie frangaise de St. Domingue,
speaks of a stone cut with strange and unknown letters, found in the
mountains of Guanaminto, in Haiti. That find was made in 1787.
"In these mountains, as in neighbouring isles, there exist great
grottoes, worked by man, and ornamented with sculptures, analogous
to those of the moon ofCaurau, and preceded, usually, by two stelae
of the ckemis, always found two by two, as in Asia," said Abb6
Brasseur-de-Bourbourg, the Americaniste. E. Nau, who wrote an
infernally dull book, titled Histoire des Caciques d* Haiti, adds that the
Caribs of Haiti had no traditions about the ancient builders of these
monuments and the workers of the ancient gold-mines, which were
shrouded in their forests and jungles. . . .

"There are vast crypts hollowed in the rocks, walls of great
extent and length in drystone, or only en terre (earthworks)/
Another race, other men more polished in culture (polices] must
have occupied this country in remote times, and the Indians of
the last epoch must have succeeded to the civilisation of people
extinguished by time or revolutions. Whence came these first
occupants? Were they autochthones? The savants are divided
over these questions. They are obscure and inextricable."

Queer caverns were also among the discoveries of the con-
quistadores in Hispaniola, or San Domingo. One of them, named
"Jouanabaina", was on the land of the cacique of Machinech, and
the object of the worship of the natives. It "was ornamented with
various paintings. At the door stands two carved zdmes. Then,
the original natives went on pilgrimage to these caverns." (imes, or
chemis, were idols of the old Antilles.) A later French traveller and
naturalist, Michel-Etienne Descourtilz, author of Voyages d'un
naturaliste, en Ha%ti> in 1799-1803, found similar Haiti-Domingan
caverns at Dubeda, among the Gonaives; on the Selle mountain,
at or near Port-au-Prince; and at Doubou, near Cap Frangois. . . .

"They are natural excavations lit from the top, so as to let
pass the first rays of the rising sun. The interior of these grottoes
is covered with idols, carved, engraved and inlaid in the rock,

SIGN-POSTS TO THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS 15!

in rude and bizarre forms ; toads with heads at the ends of their
feet, monstrous human figures with crooked body diminishing
like a cone, terminated by a spherical knob ; tortoises ; and other
animals, especially snakes."

My good friend, Dr. Price- Mars, s&iateur de la R^publique and
President of the Society of History and Geography of Haiti, has
kindly sent me a copy of a very interesting brochure titled UArt
Prtcolombien cT Haiti, which was published by the authorities of the
republic at the time of the recent third congress of the Garibs. In
this illuminating booklet are reproduced some striking photographs
of discoveries, in that island, of remains, statues, betyles (statues of a
god, or the shrine of a deity), and stelae. These remains are of a
people of unknown race and date who knew not of iron. Like the
race in Atlantean Brazil, they seem to have been heliolithic, and of
very advanced culture. The statues show that two races existed there
thousands of years ago : one white, the other black. One of the heads
is a sculptured funerary face of a white man and another of a white
woman of Atlantean type. There is also a remarkable head (masque)
of a black woman, in polished but weathered granite of prehistoric
date which bears a strange resemblance in shape and peculiar,
coronal head-dress to a splendid terra-cotta head of a negro Venus,
found in British Nigeria and now in the palace of the native ruler of
Ife, where it is worshipped as a goddess. (As, doubtless, was this
similar head in Atlantean old Haiti.) The Nigerian head of great
beauty was carved by an artist of great skill belonging to a very
ancient advanced, black civilisation in Africa.

Frobenius, who associated this ancient culture of West Africa
with Atlantis, was probably right. Had he seen this similar head in
Haiti, he would also have remembered that, in Atlantis, and her
colonies, and empire, red, white, and black races commingled.
Part of the old Empire of Atlantis extended from the far greater
Gulf of Maranon the Mexican Gulf of today into the island-
continent as it was then of the West Indies, not then shattered by
cataclysm.

One may also infer from these pictures, in the UArt Pricolombien
d* Haiti, that necromancy and black magic of the Voodoo type
existed in this strange island long ages before ever the Spanish or
French introduced negro slaves into old Hispaniola. Who can say
whether such black cults came there from the motherland of
Atlantis far gone in decay?

There are also extremely ancient petroglyphs of a curiously
symbolical whorled type recalling similar rupestrian inscriptions in
modern Colombia both baffling to modern archaeologists and pre-
historians.

Yes, on Haiti-Dominica, too, rests the shadow of great Atlantis!

152 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

CHAPTER VII

THE ATLANTEAN "SUBTERRANEANS" OF THE INCAS

"The topaz blazing like a lamp,
Among the mines beneath."

("Mad" Kit Smart.)
(The Song of David (A.D. 1760).

TRAVELLERS both in Mexico and on the bleak and lonely paramos
of the high Andes, in Peru, and far down on the trail of the old con-
quistadores that led to Potosi and the Argentine, are pretty sure, at
some stage of their journey, to meet, especially in the short twilight
at those heights, a strange light, called la luz del dinero (money light).
It is a phenomenon for which science and physics, at this time, has
no explanation. Indeed, it is pretty safe to say that, in Europe, no
physicist has ever heard of this phenomenon. You meet it about the
time of the pale, lambent dusk along the solitary tracks that lead
across the Cordilleras and the bleak paramos from old Cuzco.

Of course, the European or American traveller departing from
that old city of sad and depressing memories is likely to be in the
mood and frame of mind to be receptive of this marvel of the trail. *
And yet it is certainly not a subjective illusion, existing only in the
mind of one who has just left a melancholy place of ghosts, where
the apparitions of ruffling, Spanish hidalgos, with fierce dark eyes
and haughty, saturnine countenances, steal in the pale moonlight
across the plaza and down shadowy streets, with carved doorways,
still emblazoned with heraldic beasts, ramping on Castilian coats
of arms. (Yet, despite all his mail and hauberks and his flaming
matchlocks, the Castilian and Estremaduran soldier even with the
cold-hearted, sadistic monk, lurking in the background with his
fiery faggots of the auto da ft was never able to wrest from the
gentle and solemn-eyed Incas the secrets of their lost caches !)

As you jog along on horse-back, or afoot along any of these
old Spanish gold trails from the mines to the coast ports, in old Peru,
or the old Spanish Argentine, you may meet, at a turn of the cold
and stony ways, some Indian, or mestizo half-caste, or even a white
man, hunting for buried gold. A man will swear to you that, in a
lone canon, just off the old, gold way, he saw one evening, as the sun
had sunk into his ocean bed, far away to the west behind the walls
of the valiant Cordilleras, yonder, and the stars wheeled up the deep,
blue sky, a strange whitish light, or queer, greenish luminosity,
appear, hovering above the rocky ground.

"Estd la lu% del dinero, stHor" says he.

THE ATLANTEAN ''SUBTERRANEANS*' 153

"It is the 'money light', and where that wavers on the trail, why,
Carajd, there is a tapada (a treasure cache) . . . un tesoro entierro!"

The colonial Spanish trail from Potosi to Tucuman, in the
Argentine, is pitted with holes showing where generations of seekers
have dug for tapadas. Some of these tapadas may be caches of royalist,
or ecclesiastical gold and jewels made when the monarchist armies
were retreating from before the advancing legions of Simon Bolivar
el Liberador. These mysterious lights often appear in the dusk, or
darkness, when they may trail along the ground like slithering
snakes, emitting a greenish luminosity, or a queer, whitish shine.
At other times, the lights may stand upright like shafts of the
columns in an old Inca temple of the sun : or take the form of tropic
trees. The tapada hunter drives a stake in the ground, and retires
to some resort of >vine and warm and cheerful company, song and
fandango, to await the coming of broad day. There are demonios
abroad, as everyone knows, in the night hours, and not for all the
lost treasures of the Incas will your mestizo, or your full-blooded
Indian dig in the darkness for these treasures. His piquete serves the
same purpose as a buoy to the salvor of silver wrecks. None will
brave the evil spirits of buried treasures and darkness in the high
altiplanos of the tierrafria to grub up his piquete and jump his claim.
. . . "Si, sefior, hasta manana, when we will return and hunt for the
gold where the 'money light 5 has shone!"

I have heard some say that it is caused by the emanations of
gases, such as is probably the cause of the mysterious Faro de Cata-
tumba, in the Gulf of Maracaibo, in the Venezuelan oil regions. May
be, and may be not ! I have heard others compare the light to the
jack o 5 Ian thorns, or will-o'-the-wisp lights, which used to be fre-
quent, a century or less ago, in the neighbourhood of undrained
English fens and marshes. An old, blind and crippled gold-bug
bitten friend of mine, who died a few years ago, in his bed in a West
of England infirmary, swore that the luz del dinero was a radio-active
emanation from buried gold. Yes, but radio-activity is not usually
associated with the breaking-up of stable atoms, such as we find in
gold. Better say that the mystery remains still unsolved.

This old engineer friend of mine, who was the nephew of a
former Bishop of Bath and Wells, Somerset, England, spent many
years of his adventurous life in the Argentine and Mexico.

Said he to me: "I owned a gold-mine in South America, which
I found by this small, bluish-white light coming from the ground.
There, I dug up a very rich piece of quartz-ore. It was hardly an
inch below the surface. I always found metal after digging where
these lights were seen in the dusk. The peones and the Iiulids fear this
apparition, and give it a wide berth. Were it not for this fear of the
supernatural, many more treasures would have been discovered by
its means. It always struck me, this lu% del dintro, as resembling

154 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

alcohol burning with blue tongues of flame. It can be seen for a
long way, and the Indids and Spanish-American 'greasers' have
sworn to me that the light extends over a radius equal to that of the
subterranean metal causing it. ... I once hired an old hacienda in
Mexico where an old Indian woman told me she'd seen this light.
I searched walls and floor, but found nothing ; yet a man who took
the place after I left found a tin of gold doubloons in the roof."

Yet, no mystic, lambent flames of a money light will ever suggest
the location of the amazing lost cache of ransom-treasure of the last,
and murdered, Inca emperor, Atahualpha, a treasure which the
Spanish chroniclers and historians say consisted of from 600-650
tons of gold and jewels, worth 384 millions gold pesos de oro. (If we
suppose, conservatively, that there were 600 tons of gold in this vast
treasure, then, taking the value of gold at the pre-Great War No. 2
rate of 7 ioj. a troy ounce, the metal, at raw gold value, leaving
out of account all antiquarian values, would have been worth, in
1938, about 147,000,000, or say, $835,000,000). . . . And yet,
there is good reason to believe that, as an Inca nobleman told
Benalcazar, the Conquistador of Quito, even this immense treasure
is but a kernel of corn compared with a heap from the harvest-field,
in relation to another very ancient subterranean treasure which I
shall mention, later, in this chapter.

As Pedro Cieza de Leon virtually said, in A.D. 1545, the backs
and bottoms of the stoutest galleons of that age would have been
broken transporting these immense heaps to the bar of San Lucar
and the stone houses of the Gasa de Contratacion in old Seville, even
had that mystery sprite of the sea, Davy Jones, consented, under old
Father Neptune, to its passing overseas.

The genie decente of old Spanish descent, who govern, today, the
administrations in Lima and La Paz would lend more aid than they
do to the efforts of enterprising gringos from New York and London
to find some of these immense, Inca caches, were it not for fear of the
vigilance of millions of Quichua Indians, who still revere the memory
of the murdered Inca Emperor of the Sun, and who would flame
into revolt at the first bruiting of such an enterprise. The down-
trodden Indians, who bear small resemblance to the pictures of the
Incas which one can see, today, in the old church of Santa Ana,
a little northwards of melancholy Guzco, dream of the day when,
led by their reincarnated ancestors, they will find the wheel again
come full circle and the vanished glories of the old Inca empire of the
sun once more dawn on.a Western, South American world.

Where do whispered, native Quichua traditions say these lost
Inca hoards lie?

They lie in forests, the bottoms of lone mountain tarns where
the brooding shadows retreat into limbo only for the short space of
time when the almost vertical, mid-day sun casts his beams on to

THE ATLANTEAN c c S U B T E R R A N E A N S ' ' 155

the deep, tranquil, dreaming waters ; in sealed caves to which mystic
hieroglyphs, whose key is possessed only by one descendant of the
Inca, at a time, in each generation, give the open sesame; and in
strange "subterraneans", thousands of years old, which must have
been made by a mysterious and highly civilised vanished race of
South America in a day when the ancient Peruvians, themselves,
were a mere wandering tribe of barbarians, if not savages, roaming
the Cordilleras and the high passes, or still living, perhaps, in
some long-disrupted Pacific continent, from which they came in
ships.

"If all the gold that is buried in Peru . . . were collected, it would
be impossible to coin it, so great the quantity; and yet the Spaniards
of the conquest got very little compared with what remains. The
Indians said :

" THE TREASURE IS SO CONCEALED THAT EVEN
WE, OURSELVES, KNOW NOT THE HIDING-PLA CE !' "

This was what the Peruvians told Cieza de Leon, the soldier-
priest, about fifteen years after the conquest of Peru. They did not
think fit to add that there were some among them who Jknew and
closely guarded the tremendous secrets. Cieza de Leon adds :

"Within the space of eight months, in the year 1598,
35,000,000 of gold and silver crossed the bar of San Lucar, on
its way to old Seville, in three cargoes."

It is golden-tongued Lasso (Garcilasso de la Vega, El Inca} who
tells how one of the world's greatest treasures came to vanish in such
a way that the secret of the cache has baffled all the cunning and
scoundrelism of gold-crazy adventurers of almost all nations under
the sun, as well as the ingenuity of the cruellest, keenest wits and
intellects, in the brains of men, who ever shipped themselves aboard
galleons from Cadiz and the old port of Barrameda to fly poverty
and the ever-enduring curse of old Spain, in all ages la hambre
(hunger) and die plagues and miseries springing from the wars
and European broils financed by this stolen gold of the Americas,
in the late sixteenth, the seventeenth, and early eighteenth cen-
turies. Verily, the gentle, lofty-browed Inca had, by his sun-god, been
revenged on the avaricious and most religious sadists of old Castile
and Estremadura and Aragon, upon whose own lands, in far-away
Spain, there now descended the deadly plagues of unemployment
and almost universal poverty. So scarce was food to become, that, if
the caballero wished to give a present to the seftorita who was queen
of his heart, or the doncella honrada, his Nina of the scented calk of
San Sebastian, he was reckoned a "verie parfait, gentle knyghte"

156 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

if he gave her a gammon of ham, a large and savoury capon pie, or a
sirloin of beef or haunch of venison, instead of a jewelled miniature,
or a bouquet of flowers, which, after all, stayed the wamblings
of no one's hungry belly. As for the lower orders of old Spain,
after the mostly stolen riches of the older Americas had poured
into old Seville and Madrid, what, after the conquest, befell
them?

It happened to a hungry picaro, or famished knave of a boy-porter,
once well off under the old Moors of the Alcazar, and Granada, that
he accounted himself lucky could he be employed to carry great
weights, or a heavy basket, as an esportillero, and thereby earn a
sueldo to silence the call of hunger after the daily portion of soup had
been handed out at the abbey. Surely was this a peculiarly ironic
punishment on old Spain who, by her conquistadorian banditti,
and fanatic black priests, had wrecked a civilisation of ancient date
wherein no man or woman starved, or lacked clothing and shelter,
albeit gold was deemed only a medium for ornamentation and not
a medium of exchange. La venganza upon Spanish bandits who had
committed the atrocities whose authors Las Casas forebore to
name ! Now let us raise the curtain on this drama of history.

Today, at Caxamarca, you are shown a room which the Inca
Atahualpha had to fill with treasure for his ransom. A heap of
gold ornaments as tall as his upraised arms could reach, and as
broad as the span of his arms outstretched. The conquistadores '
were not niggardly in their estimation of what his Inca majesty's
liberty might be worth ! The usual estimate is that this room could
contain around $500,000,000, or, say, 100,000,000 of gold. The
conquistadores did not welcome gems. They looked with disfavour
on them, in fact ; for had they not found so many splendid emeralds,
pearls, turquoises and diamonds of fine water in the Peruvian empire
that the bottom of the lapidarian market had been knocked clean
out? Wedges of gold were preferred, till even they became so com-
mon that a Castilian soldier-man would liefer have a jennet or
Castilian stallion, or a quart of wine or pair of shoes.

Don Francisco Pizzaro, el gobernador y marquis del Per&> drew a
line in bright red round the walls of this cave-room of Aladdin or
Ali Baba's forty thieves, which is seventeen feet wide and twenty
feet long, and which the Inca said he could easily fill with gold. The
red line was nine feet above the stone floor. The Spaniards stripped
the gold-plating from the Cuzco royal temple's walls, and the yard-
wide gold guttering which ran round the temple like a coronal
frieze. They even took the gold pipes which fed with pure water,
from the snows of the cordilleras, the five fountains rising and falling
in iridescent displays in the lovely garden-close of the temple of the
sun. The native goldsmiths were a whole month melting down this
gold from Cuzco Temple into bars worth, today, some 5,000,000 or

THE ATLANTEAN ''SUBTERRANEANS*' 157

$25,000,000. So exquisite was the jewellers' work of some of these
antiques that even the rude bandit Pizarro was moved to preserve
it to send to the Court, in old Spain.

But, like soldiers in all ages, the Castilians and Estremadurans
might be trusted never to forget that they had a belly with two
desires, and that, after the hard battle, the warrior wanted his
recreation.

These hardy soldiers swore by Venus as ardently as by Midas's
golden ass's ears. I have an engraving, of piquant character, taken
from a very rare book published at Frankfurt on the Rhine, sixty-
six years after the conquest of Peru. It is a Latin history of America,
and tells the story not to the approval of later, Spanish historians !
of what happened the morning after the amazing victory over the
Inca's hosts, outside the walls of old Guzco. The Spaniards ate and
slept all night, as far as they were able; for they had fought like
Israelites in David's famished armies, or like buccaneers in Darien
who were so hungry they could have sacrificed "Sambolloe" Indians
to their teeth. In the morning, they strolled into the country, a mile
outside the camp at Caxamarca, and lit on many handsome, nude,
Inca women bathing in the imperial, open air baths. The picture
shows the bearded Castilians wading into the water and haling the
reluctant women to the nearby groves. These, with others ravished
in the Inca's camp, totalled, if we are to believe some old and not too
discreet, Spanish chronicler of the Indias Occidentals , no fewer than
5,000 women ! Valde, as the Latinist historian hints, Venus, Bacchus
and St. Midas had a rare day out in that year of 1533, in the dying
empire of old Peru !

When Atahualpha was brought prisoner into the presence of
Pizarro, the Inca emperor was wearing a magnificent collar of
emeralds of great size and extreme brilliancy. The gems blew such
a flame of avarice alight in the brain (or soul) of the conquistadores,
that, as Cieza de Leon writes :

"If, when the Spaniards entered Cuzco they had not com-
mitted other tricks, and had not so soon executed their cruelty
in putting Atahualpha to death, I know not how many great
ships would have been required to bring such treasures to old
Spain, as is now lost in the bowels of the earth and will remain so
because those who buried it are now dead."

Pizarro at once sent emissaries hot foot to Cuzco, and three of
the conquistadorian soldiers brought back gold to the Spanish camp,
at Caxamarca. Each horse soldier got a share of 8,800 castellanos
de oro (gold castellans), and 362 marks in silver, each mark weighing
eight ounces. The infanteria got half as much each man. The share-
out started a great gambling saloon going night and day which

158 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

beats almost anything even in the great days of the Poker Flat saloon
in the wild west of Bret Harte's prime.

As John Harris picturesquely put it, in his Moral History of the
Spanish West Indies (London, 1705), written as if he had been on the
scene as an eye-witness, rather than one writing nearly 200 years
later: "Debts were paid in wedges of gold and no Spaniard
troubled if a creditor got twice the amount of his debt. Nothing
was so cheap, so common, so easy to be got as gold and silver ... a
sheet of paper went for ten Gastilians of gold,"

The three emissaries brought back, also, the rifled treasures from
the sun temple of old Cuzco. They comprised an immense freight
of gold and silver vessels loaded on the backs of 200 staggering,
sweating Indians. It was almost more than twelve men could do to
heave even one of the gold vessels ; and when there entered the
Spanish camp the great massy gold throne of the Inca, and a heavy
gold funnel of a fountain, Pizarro felt as did Nadir Shah, in the
middle of the eighteenth century, when he broke into the Dewan-i-
Shah in the old throne-room of the Moguls in Delhi and bore off to
Iran the great golden peacock throne.

The Inca's queen, says an old Quichua tradition, I heard
in Peru, had, when her husband was made prisoner, offered for his
liberation a room full of gold "from the floor up to the ceiling, as
high as his conqueror could reach, and before the sun set on the
third day". She kept her promise; but Pizarro broke his. For he .
said, struck with the marvellous exhibition of such treasures : "I
will not release the Inca; but will murder him, unless you tell me
whence all these treasures come." Pizarro had heard, goes on the
native Peruvian tradition, that the Incas possessed a secret and in-
exhaustible mine, or enormous depository of mysterious character,
which lay in a vast, subterranean tunnel, or road, running many miles
underground beneath his imperial dominions. Here were kept the accumu-
lated riches of the country.

The poor queen begged for delay, and, in the meantime, went to
consult the oracles of the priests of the sun. In the course of the
sacrifice, the high priest asked her to look into the black mirror.*

* This must have been the Inca equivalent of the Unjun, or Anjin t of which the famous
Victorian traveller, Sir R. F. Burton, speaks. It is a lamp-blacked, magic mirror, prepared
in a peculiar manner and then applied to the palms of the hands of a child, or other virginal
person, who had to stare hard into it, and so produce a dilation of the normal consciousness.
*This art for finding hidden treasure is practised by Yogis, Sanyasis, and other Hindu
devotees," he says. From other sources, one learns that the black mirror was prepared in the
province of Agra, and also in Tibet and China. Brasseur-de-Bourboiirg, the famous savant
and historian of Central America, where he was abbe in the frontier, Mexican province of
Chiappas, cites a native historian who said the ancestors of the ancient Quiches of Yucatan
brought the black mirror to Central America from old Egypt. The Peruvian sun-worshippers
knew it, as we see. When the Spanish Conquistadores landed in Central America, the king
of the Quiches ordered his priests to consult the mirror so as to learn the fate of his king-
dom and "the demon reflected the present and the future as in a mirror'*. Of course, what
happened is that the normal consciousness transcended the normal plane and had a fourth
or fifth dimensional peep into that world where all space lies stretched out in time, and
past, future and present are all one.

THE ATLANTEAN ''SUBTERRANEANS*' 159

She looked, and, shuddering, saw a picture of the fate of her
husband, inevitable whether or no the gold were delivered to the
conquistadorian and most Spanish Catholic bandits. The horrified,
grief-stricken queen ordered that the entrance to the great tunnel
a masoned door in the rocky wall of the cliff-gorge be closed, and
this was done under the direction of the high priest and the magicians.
The chasm was hidden from sight and entirely closed by filling its
depths with huge masses of rock. When the levelled-off surface was
reached, it was hidden under green grass and bushes, and made to
appear like a natural lawn covering a rock ; so that not the slightest
sign of any fissure was perceptible to the eye. Spanish avarice was
foiled, and the secret was known only to pure-bred Indians of
Qjiichua-Inca birth, and never to mestizos^ or half-castes, who, it
was thought, could never be trusted with any such knowledge.

(I have a remarkable sequel of this story, to tell, later.)

As the fatal day drew on, the Inca asked to be taken into the
open air to see a large comet, green, black and nearly as big as a
man, which streamed across the Peruvian skies. It was on a day in
July or August 1533. Then, at the suggestion of the infamous and
fanatic black monk, Valverde, a monk of that very order, the sadistic
Dominican, which, in the "Most Holy Inquisition", drenched the
white worlds of old Europe, and Asia, and the Americas in blood
and tears, on the pretence of securing the salvation of burning souls,
the luckless emperor of the more rational sun-cultus was strangled
for the good of his soul, after he had been baptised, so they said, that
he might escape burning at the stake in the public plaza of old Guzco.
A mass was held, and a solemn funeral followed, when the dirges and
the chants rose to the diabolical skies. Here, and in the chapel,
Gonzalo and Francisco Pizarro attended in black mourning habits.
Whether this was out of pure hypocrisy, or dictated by remorse, or
twinges of conscience, only those can say who may penetrate into the
dark depths of the souls of these ruthless, stern, and fearless men who
built a great empire on the tarnished blades of men who were
simultaneously zealous Christian Catholics, hardy pioneers and
brigands who would stick at nothing to gain gold.

Theodore de Bry, writing in 1596, in Latin, shows the monk
the black Dominican Vincent dc "Valle Verde" approaching
the Inca, in the middle of the tumult of the Indians, with cross and
breviary in hand, or, "as some say, the Bible". An engraving shows
Pizarro, the breaker of faith with the Inca, ordering his strangling
"by blackamoors" and closing his ears against the advice of some of
the Castilian captains that the Inca be sent home to the "Kaiser"
Carlos V., in old Spain, and that the Spaniard should not pollute his
hands with the blood of an inoffensive man, and a king at that ! . , .
"Also, for the dead emperor, Francisco Pizarro put on black mourn*
ing clothes and ordered a ceremonial funeral." The gold and silver

l6o MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

brought into Gaxamarca by the Indians were weighed. There were
26,000 Ib. of pure silver; 3,600,500 castellanos' worth of gold,
called pesos by the Spaniards, and reckoned each at a crown and a
half (tricies vicies sex milleni et quingenti Castiliani). They gave Carlos
V., in Spain, a fifth (400,000 pesos), which suggests that our Lord
the King was unlucky in the division ! Each knight in the conquista-
dorian army got 8,900 gold pesos, and 185 Ib. of silver; ninety
captains got 30-40,000 gold pesos; while Hernando Pizarro, the
conquistador's brother, received a fifth of the treasure. Yet, sagely
comments de Bry : "It is worthy of note that the barbarous murder
of that Prince, the Inca, did not remain unpunished ; for afterwards,
they perished miserably who had conspired to cause the Inca's
murder." It may be added, too, that, in the following century, the
Spanish Council of the Indies, at Seville, allowed no man to ship
from Seville, in any galleon bound to the "Indies", unless he
attested in writing that he was not of the kin of Pizarro and Almagro.
(I freely admit that Bartolomeo de las Casas, the noble Dominican
monk and champion of the Indians, made what atonement he
could.)

Certainly, no Spanish kings, or holy Roman emperors, would, or
did, approve of the assassination of home or foreign kings and em-
perors, whose personages they would deem sacred, no matter whether,
by divine right, they governed wrong or right. Anyhow, the brothers
Pizarro followed the Inca's bier in deep mourning, and after bearing .
the royal corpse into the yard of the convent of San Francisco, they
allowed the Peruvians to take the body over the Andes to royal
Quito, where, as it was his birthplace, the soon dying Inca had said he
wished to be buried. Peru, as England of the dark ages, had reason
to say to her dark soul : "Woe unto thee, O land, when thy king is a
monk, and not a soldier !"

When the news reached the queen she followed her husband
into the land of the shades, committing suicide to escape a fate
worse than death no cant phrase, this, in that age ! which, later,
befell the young Inca princes and nobles, whom the devilish-hearted,
cold sadist, el Virrey, Don Francisco Toledo, a man after the heart of
the butcher Alva, exiled to the fever-haunted frontiers of the Darien
peninsula, or broke their hearts by deporting them to the snowy
wastes of the southern Andean Cordillera.

The story, usually told of one of the lost caches that of the
immense treasure that was whisked away from the clutching hands
of Don Francisco Pizarro waiting for it in the camp near old Cuzco
is that 1 1,000 llamas, freighted with gold from Cuzco, and elsewhere
in the old empire of Peru, were on their way to Pizarro's camp when
the Qjiichua Indians heard of the assassination of their Inca. The
Indians drove the llamas off the road, and buried the 100 Ib. of
gold with which each animal of the caravan was laden. Sir Clements

THE ATLANTEAN * c S U B T E R R A N E A N S * ' l6l

Markham, whose opinion as one with peculiarly intimate knowledge
of Peru must carry weight, said that the 1,100,100 Ib. of gold lies
hidden in the mountains behind Azangaro. The Cordillera de
Azangaro is a wild sierra little known to the Americans, or the
British ; but I may add, for the information of those interested, that
the name Azangaro >, in the Quichua tongue the tongue of old Inca
Peru means "place farthest away". It is believed that it was the
farthest eastern point in the Andean cordilleras, which the old Inca
empire dominated. Yet, despite the fact that the early conquista-
dorians and Pizarro's other camp-fellows worked old Inca mines in
the eastern montafta of this wild region, no inkling of the location of
the wondrous cache ever reached their "hungry ears".

There is a tradition current in the mystic east, and, perhaps,
derived from Atlanteans who quitted their great motherland before
the time of the terrible cataclysm (which, we may recall, the
Egyptian priests of Sais and Heliopolis told Solon happened about
9700 B.C. when a militarist section of the Atlantean peoples had over-
run Western and South- Eastern Europe and North Africa), that the
central cathedral temple of old Atlantis's capital, hill city, "Sardegon",
had a dome-shaped ceiling from which flamed a magnificent central
sun of blazing gold. The late inheritors of the remains of the civilisa-
tion of the Atlantean imperial colony of Hy-Brazil, of South America,
the Incas of Peru Peru, as one has stated, being derived from a
word (not found in the Qpichua, or native Peruvian tongue) Vira,
meaning the god of the sun had a glorious sun of purest gold which
shone with truly dazzling refulgence from the walls of Cuzco's
great temple of the Sun. It was there when the keels of Don Fran-
cisco Pizarro's caravels and galleons touched the shallows of the
Peruvian coast in A.D. 1530. The very eye-balls of the beholder were
pained by its scintillations.

But when Pizarro's conquistadores laid their bandits' hands on
this ancient civilisation, as the Carian-Colloans had done before
them in relation to what was left of the communities of the old, white,
bearded Atlanteans of Hy-Brazil in the islands of Lake Titicaca,
Peru, that glorious sun of gold vanished. For four centuries its
whereabouts have remained a mystery, the close secret of one, or
not more than two, of the Inca's posterity. Be sure, that there is
living, today, in one of the valleys of the Peruvian cordilleras, some
Peruvian, little suspected by his fellows, who knows where this sun
went to ground !

In the neighbourhood of modern Guzco, I have heard some of
the traditions about this mystic lost sun. How well its shining wonder
attests the old melancholy and vanished grandeur of a great race !
The Qirichuan pednes say it was fashioned as a human face of solid
gold, radiating shafts of light as it blazed from the walls. It per-
sonified, to the people, the Sun, and, hieratically, to the priests, no

l62 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

doubt, the "Great Central Sun of the Cosmos"; the unknown God
whom Paul of Tarsus proclaimed to the men of Athens, as he stood
on Mar's Hill, or the Areopagus; or He whom the Brahmins of old
called Dyaus, the sky, the Deus of the Romans.

This glorious face of refulgence was really, at Cuzco, a massive
plate of purest gold, of enormous width, encrusted thickly with
emeralds of superb size and quality, and other gems. At his rising,
the rays of the Sun fell directly on to this face in the temple, where
gold blazed back everywhere from walls and ceilings. The cornices
were of gold and a broad frieze of gold, let into the stonework, sur-
rounded the whole exterior of the temple.

Don Marcio Serra de Leguisamo, last of the conquistadores of
old Peru, spoke of the ' 'child" of this Sun, when he wrote the preamble
of the will he made at Cuzco, on September 18, 1589:

"I had a figure of the sun made of gold, that was placed by
the Incas in the House of the Sun at Cuzco, which is now in the
convento de San Domingo. I believe it is worth 2,000 pesos; and
yet I die poor, with many children, and I beseech his Catholic
and Royal Majesty, Don Felipe, our Lord, el Rey, to have pity on
them, and may God have mercy on my soul."

Leguisamo gambled this smaller sun away the night after the
day on which he had taken it. "He plays away the sun before the .
dawn," said Fray Acosta, the monk, of him. But this sun of Legui-
samo was merely a plate of gold on which the image of the sun was
carved, and which acted as a lid, or cover to a great, hollowed stone,
in the outer wall of the temple, into which libations of chicha (fer-
mented maize beer) were poured, by the people, in the festival of
Rqymi, which reminds one of Ra, the sun-god of old Egypt. On either
side of the image of the great sun sat the embalmed bodies of thirteen
Incas, in their chairs of gold, standing on gold slabs. In these chairs
they had sat in life. The outraged Indians made haste to hide these
sacred mummies, with the rest of the treasure, and only twenty-six
years later did the hungry and never-resting Polo de Ondegardo,
conquistador, accidentally light on the mummies of three kings, and
two queens the latter removed from the corresponding temple of
the moon. All the corpses were, of course, stripped of their jewellery
and broken in pieces by the sacrilegious hands of these insatiable
treasure hunters.

Along with the royal mummies, in 1533, therfe also went to
ground the great, gold, life-size statue of the Inca Huayna Capac,
and only one man knew the secret of that cache, and he, again, no
Spaniard, or half-bred mestizo.

"If the Christians have not found the Inca's treasure," said the
prudent Peruvians to Pedro Cieza de Leon, in A.D. 1550, "it is be-

THE ATLANTEAN '^SUBTERRANEANS*' 163

cause they are so concealed that even we know not the place."
r, por la Santissima Virgen had any one, at that time of day, admitted
that he had so much a blind horse's wink of knowledge about one
such cache, then el Virrey would have experienced such a good,
Catholic, fervent desire to assoil his soul of the accursed memory of
hidden gold that he would have called on a holy Dominican Father
of the Holiest Inquisition to shrive him with fire, anoint him with
burning oil, and crown him with faggots in the open plaza of Cuzco
or Lima, unless the secret were instantly divulged to the Audiencia !
Nobody went about boasting of knowledge of that sort, in those
picturesque days, or tried to lead hungry, official Castilians up old
Inca fairy golden gardens, on false trails of ancient gold-bugs, unless
he wished to save himself the trouble of committing suicide. If you
wiere a Catholic conquistador not of hidalgo rank of the post-
Pfzarro age, and did not need soul-saving of this sort, you yet found
it best to keep your knowledge to yourself; for you were a long
way from the justice and the alguazils of old Spain, did el Virrey or
the adelantado, hearing how that you frequented bodegas and posadas
in a way you were not accustomed to, of old, and oft sounded fellows
about the locations of likely haciendas for sale, sent to senor el Corre-
gidor and had you cast into the carcel to explain your unwonted
prosperity, and forever cut away from yourself the root of all evil.

In the archives at Cuzco, I have seen an old, yellowed parch-
ment, insect-bitten, as is the way in these countries, written by one,
Felipe de Pomares. He tells a romantic story about a Inca hoard of
Arabian Nights' splendour and variety, sealed up somewhere in, or
under the ancient fortress of Cuzco, on the Sachsahuaman Hill.
Carlos Inca, a descendant of an Inca emperor, had married a
Spanish lady, Dona Maria Esquivel, who did not think he was
ambitious enough on getting on as he ought, and did not keep her in
the style she deemed befitting her rank, or his descent from kings.

"You may call yourself Inca a lord, or hidalgo but you are
tmly a poor Indian," she one day twitted him.

Carlos, who did not rule his poultry run in the way advised by
old Spanish hidalgos^ or, yesterday, by ex-Wilhelm II, Rex et Imperator
of Prussia and the German Reich, that is, as cock of the walk, was
content to keep oviedos (sheep) and alpacas, and not worry about
gold of any origin. She somehow found out that he knew where great
treasures were hidden. The poor Carlos was plagued, night and day,
until, to gain a night's peace, he consented to blindfold his wife, and,
late at night, lead her out into the patio of the old hacienda. Under
the cold light of the stars, when all around were asleep, and no unseen
eye was on the watch, he took her by the shoulders, and, although
she was exposing him to serious risk of prison, or torture in Cuzco,
twirled her round three times. Then, deeming she had become dis-
orientated, he led her down some steps into a concealed vault in,

164 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

or under the fortress. He removed the bandages, and Dona Maria's
tongue for once was silenced. She stood on the dusty, stone floor of
an ancient vault cluttered with gold and silver ingots, exquisite
jewellery, and temple ornaments. Round the walls, ranged in fine
gold, were life-size statues of long dead and gone Inca kings. Alone,
the golden image of the Sun, on which the old Incas set the greatest
store, was missing ; but the lovely goldsmiths* work was of the same
artistic creation as the gold and jewelled plants and flowers which
the Peruvian workers made for those wondrous gardens on the isle
of Puna, in the northern part of the old Empire (modern gulf of
Guayaquil), where the Incas retired to hear the melancholy music of
the Pacific combers on the beaches below.

Don Carlos was the custodian of the secret, and from him it
passed to a successor. As Mr. Squier, one time U.S. Commissioner
in Peru, said in 1870 : "All I can say is if that secret chamber she had
entered has not been found and despoiled, it has not been for
want of digging. . . . Three hundred years have not sufficed to erad-
icate the notion that enormous treasures are concealed within the
fortress of Cuzco. Nor have three hundred years of excavation,
more or less constant, entirely discouraged the searchers for
tapadas, or buried treasure mounds."

Even today, in 1945, the secret of that vault under the Sach-
sahuaman hill may still remain locked up in the breast of some
descendant of the Inca. The last man of whom I heard in search of-
these treasures, was one, Tito Cusi Ticcapato, said to have Inca
blood in his veins. It was in 1928, and he planned to accompany an
American expedition to quarter another ancient hill near Cuzco,
where he said the lost caches lie. He was also an inventor and sought
for Inca gold to promote and exploit his creations. What struck his
imagination, as he said, was "the fact, senores, that the old Incas wall-
papered their houses with thin sheets of beaten gold".

None of the old secrets of the land of the Incas have really
perished. There are native societies of the underworld who, age by
age, keep them inviolate. Their members are sometimes wandering
Catholic priests who, on one day of the year, revert to the celebration
of their real religion : the rites of the sun, that Central mystic Sun of
the pre-cataclysmic ancient world, symbolising the unknown
Divinity and not an anthropomorphic demi-ourgos.

Peru is a very ancient country. All who sojourn there are, or soon
become deeply impressed by the mystic atmosphere hanging over
this strange land. There may, and probably does, still remain in
some Quichua breast, the sub-conscious perception of the cyclic
notions of the ancient world : that what has been will be again, when
the wheel comes full circle and the life-forces rise in an ascending
arc. Ancient glories will be restored, and men play again the
part that was played by others whom they never knew, not even in

THE ATLANTEAN ''SUBTERRANEANS 9 ' 165

the most shadowy ghost of a dead tradition. Qyien sabe? says the
gentle and brooding-eyed Peruvian who knows that he is still
ruled by the descendants of the old Spaniards, for all the political
revolution that was accomplished by Simon Bolivar more than a
century ago. Be sure, then, that in some Andean village in a lone
vale, lives some man who still guards this secret of untold millions.

It was in 1925 that the Tito Gusi Ticcapato, the Inca descendant,
we mentioned above, told someone in old Cuzco that he had had a
vision of the night in which he saw the life-sized statues of gold-
armoured Inca emperors of the sun, who had been buried, perhaps
in the wild and lonely hill of Guanacauri, in sight of their sun- temple
city, old Guzco.

Don ]os6 Eusebio de Llano Zapata, writing in Lima, in 1 760,
in the time of Senor Don Carlos III (King of Spain), tells of a
number of these finds some of them happening in his own day.

Says he :

"In our America, men who use sorcery and divining rods to
find hidden treasures, have been brought before the tribunal
of the Holy Inquisition, and I have seen various autos da fe
celebrated in Lima, where they punished severely those who
persuaded others to engage in this harmful art."

Zapata gives a list of gorgeous finds of hidden gold, both in his
own day, and in the preceding (seventeenth) century :

"In the days just after the conquistadores, gold and plate
worth more than 800,000 pesos were found where the last
cacique of Pasmanga Chimo-Ccapac, who was also lord of
Paita and Tumbes, whose capital is Trujillo had buried it.
In another entierro (cache) a quarter of a league from Trujillo,
which is called Tasca, and is on the high road (camino) of
Guanchacho, Escobar Gorchuelo and another companero found
over 600,000 pesos, and Gomara tells of a certain Spaniard who
found in a huaca plate which he sold for 50,000 castellanos de oro.
Moreover, late at the end of the past (seventeenth) century, in
the vale of Late, in the jurisdiction of Lima, Francisco de Loren-
zana found a great earthen jar (gran tinaja de oro) of gold (about 2
gallon capacity) and he bought the site of the cache, and gave
his name to the hacienda and the manor-house he erected there*
In our days, it is common talk in Lima that Alferez Jos6 de
Surzo found in a pueblo of the Magdalena, half a league from
Guzco, a treasure of great worth. The news has the living
appearance of truth. Surzo, born in Lima of poor parents, was,
in his early years, a soldier of infantry. Afterwards, he settled
himself in the same pueblo, where he became a rich merchant,

l66 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

and when, in 1 754, he died, he left over 200,000 pesos, which he
got in less than ten years ; so that the presumption of the source
of his riches is not improbable."

I, myself, possess an old Spanish map made by a Jesuit missioner,
in the year 1800. It is un piano del Obispado del Cuzco (map of the
bishopric of Cuzco), and shows the route from la Parte de la Laguna de
Titicaca through this mysterious river-canon of the Huatanay a
wild, unearthly region of mountainy grandeur, where the gloomy
rock-walls hem in a stream which roars and booms over the boulders,
cluttering the bed, and hears no sound "save its own dashings", from
age to age.

The trails through this unexplored region, where the Incas
maintained, for more then eighty years, resistance to the Spanish
penetration, after the murder of their last emperor, are, even today,
full of dangers. As one goes through the winding gorges, far up the
precipices, eyes unseen are on the watch, in eyries one cannot discern.
Though all one's laden burros may carry be a load of ancient bones,
or archaic pottery and artifacts of an ancient culture, that will not
stay the hands unseen from sending great boulders dashing from the
heights on to the narrow track on the side of vertiginous precipices.
The word of the coming of strangers into these wild and gloomy
regions passes with the quickness, almost, of radio. And down on the
lower hot slopes westward of the great Cordilleras are always los
bandidos (the bandits) !

Indeed, this route into the unknown recesses of the Azangaro is
as perilous as that to another mysterious old Inca ruin which, today,
shrouded in bush, lies high up in the hills along the upper reaches of
the Rio Ene, about 150 miles into the Cerro de Pasco, reached by
rail from Lima. A haggard and half-crazed white adventurer, dying
in a dirty hovel back of the wharfside of Gallao, some years ago, told
an Englishman about this mysterious Inca ruin.

"Its walls are plated with pure gold. I came very near it, one
day, on the side of the mountains. The Serrano Indians alone have
penetrated the montana where it lies. They shoot dead, at sight, all
intruders. . . . They shoot straight, too, scfior"

Wonder is heaped on wonder, alp on alp rises, till, in the mystic
atmopshere of the snowy Cordilleras, one comes on a queer and
shadowy clue to the existence of an immense treasure greater than
any that has gone before. The story, which has about it that strange
quality of unearthliness which reminds one, once again, that this is
a very ancient land, goes back to the melancholy days of passing
grandeur of an old civilisation, in the year A.D. 1533, when the last
queen of the Incas, despairing of her unhappy country and murdered
imperial consort, committed suicide. The last hopes of an ancient
people had faded into the setting sun behind the peaks of the blue

THE ATLANTEAN '^SUBTERRANEANS* 3 167

and misty Andean cordilleras a people of whom the remorseful el
Conquistador, Don Mancio Serra de Leguisamo wrote, on September
1 8, 1589, in old Cuzco:

"The Inca Peruvians were so free from crimes and excesses,
the men as well as the women, that the Indian who had 100,000
pesos of gold and silver in his house, left it open, merely placing
a small stick across the door as a sign that the master was out,
and no one could enter or take anything that was inside. . . .
When they found we put locks and keys on our doors, they
supposed it was for fear of them that they might not kill us,
not because they believed that anyone would steal the property
of another. So, when they found we had thieves among us and
men who sought to make their daughters commit sin, they
despised us. But now they have come to such a pass, in offence of
God, owing to the bad example we have set them in all things,
that the natives, from doing no evil, have changed into people
who now do no good or very little. . . . But I do what I can to
discharge my conscience ..."

Somewhere about the year 1844 an old Catholic priest was
called to shrive a dying Quichua Indian (direct descendant of the
Inca Peruvians). It is the strange sequel to the closing of the sub-
terranean, of which I spoke, above.

"Bend your ear down to my mouth, taita" said the dying Indian,
whose face was lined like an old parchment, "for I have something
to tell you which is not for other ears."

The story was about a mystery of a labyrinth and a series of
amazing tunnels going back far beyond the days of the Inca em-
perors of the sun. It was told under the inviolable seal of the con-
fessional and could not be divulged by the priest under pain of hell
fire ; and it would probably have remained a secret had not the old
priest, in a trail of the mountains, come into the company of a
sinister Italian, who was on his travels to Lima. This Italian, with
very dark, piercing eyes, and a hypnotic stare, talked to the old
priest, who, unwittingly, let drop a hint about a long-sought hidden
and very ancient treasure. The sinister gentleman, said to have
come from Naples, somehow managed to hypnotise the old priest,
who was a native Quichua, into telling him the story the priest had
learnt, under confession, from the dying Peruvian peasant. The
latter had said that this strange secret was known to many pure-
blooded Quichua Indians, descendants of the old Incas, but not to
the half-caste mestizos, who were deemed unreliable.

" Taita" said the dying man, "I will reveal to thee what no white
man, be he Spaniard, or American, or English, knows."

The story he told was what I have related of the closing of the

l68 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

amazing tunnel-labyrinths, by the high priest of the sun temple of
old Cuzco, and the magicians, under the eye of the imperial consort
of the last emperor, Atahualpha. The old priest added that, about
1830, rumours of this tunnel had somehow reached the ears of the
Peruvian authorities, for they had sent out emissaries to hunt for the
concealed opening. These emissaries were disguised as scientists
and archaeologists, but so well had the secret been hidden, that they
went back to Lima and La Paz no wiser than they set out.

Between the years 1848 and 1850, the well-known Russo-
American mystic, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatskaya, was
travelling in Peru, which was as badly or, perhaps, worse in-
fested with brigands than it is, in some regions, today. She was told
something of this curious story by a Peruvian she met on a mountain
trail, in the Andes ; and in Lima she rather curiously encountered
the very Italian who had hypnotised the old priest into breaking the
seal of the confessional. The Italian said he had since visited what he
believed to be one of the entrances to what suggests to the imagina-
tion a great cave of Aladdin and the wonderful and very mysterious
labyrinth of ancient kings, seen by Herodotus /on Lake Moeris of the
Western Nile, and already ancient, even in his far-off day.

"However, I had neither the money nor the time to make a
personal verification, and this I hope to do some time later," he
added.

Madame Blavatskaya herself journeyed southwards from Lima
to Arica (which, at that date, was not part of extreme Northern
Chili), near the Peruvian frontier. It was a year or so after the story
had been corroborated in her hearing, in different parts of Peru,
and by people entirely unconnected.

"We reached Arica, near sunset, and at a certain point on the
lonely coast we were struck by the appearance of an enormous rock,
nearly perpendicular, which stood in mournful solitude on that
shore, and apart from the cordillera of the Andes. As the last rays
of the setting sun strike the face of the rock, one can make out, with
an ordinary opera-glass, curious hieroglyphics inscribed on the
volcanic surface.

"When Cuzco was the capital of old Peru, it contained a Temple
of the Sun, famed far and near for its magnificence. It was roofed
with thick plates of gold and its walls were covered with the same
precious metal. The eaves troughs, carrying off the rain-water, were
also made of pure gold. In the west wall, the architects had con-
trived an aperture, in such a way that, when the sunbeams reached
it, it caught and focused them inside the temple's nave and sanctuary.
Stretching inside the temple, like a golden chain, from one sparkling
point to another, the rays encircled the walls, illuminating the
grim idols, and disclosing certain mystic signs, at other times in-
visible."

THE ATLANTEAN '^SUBTERRANEANS*' 169

Madame Blavatsakaya does not mention one curious fact about
this mystic Sun Temple of old Cuzco a fact found only in a very
rare MS. chronicle of the conquistadorian age. It enshrined a mystic
white stone called by the Incas luracrunu which seems to have
combined the functions of an oracle with that of a crystal in which
visions and pictures were seen. In some ways, it recalls the mystic
Urim and Thummim and the shining light on the breast-plate of
the high priest of the old Jewish Temple, themselves probably
derived by Moses from the ancient Egyptian breast-plate of the
goddess of truth Thmti (identical with Greek goddess, Themis).
The monks in the train of Pizarro felt impelled to make an end of this
mystic stone, on which the rays of the rising sun also shone through
the aperture. They alleged it had done great damage to native con-
verts to Catholic Christianity, "cspantandolos con tas estrefias
Crueldades, que algunos perdian la Vida" (frightening them with
such extreme cruelties that some lost their lives). The Padres deter-
mined on a given day to destroy the white stone . . .

"They first read prayers with the Indians, then round about
the house of the Sun (Casa del Sol), and the white stone (piedra
bianco), they laid much firewood and set fire to it in different
parts, exorcising the spot beforehand, and when the fire was
bigger there was heard great cries and horrid howlings, that
they were persuaded were those of the Devil (el Dcmonio) that
had been exorcised by our holy Mother Church."

Probably, in the old Cuzco Temple of the Sun, there may have
been thaumaturgists among the priestly corps, who must have had
much curious and secret knowledge about the origin, history and
purpose of the amazing, labyrinthine tunnels of ancient Peru, and
of other arcana of a very ancient race. The sun-emperors these
priests served were men of a very different type of feature from the
down-trodden Quichuas one may meet, today, on the Andean trails.
There are pictures still to be seen in the old colonial church of Santa
Ana, north of Cuzco, which portray the Incas as men of royal dignity,
of a much lighter colour, as kingly as any Pharoah of old Egypt, and
their priestly aristocrats were also men with a high forehead, slightly
aquiline nose, thin mouth, firm chin, and refined and intellectual
face of much majesty, or serenity.

It was only, says Madame Blavatskaya, by interpreting the
mystic signs, invisible except when the sun's rays struck them at a
certain angle, at a certain hour of the day, in the old Sun Temple of
Cuzco, that one might learn the secret of the tunnels and how and
where they might be entered.

One of the approaches to the great tunnels lay, and still lies,
near old Cuzco, "but it is masked beyond discovery". This hidden

170 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

approach leads directly into an immense "subterranean", which
runs from Cuzco to Lima, as the crow flies, a distance of 380 miles \
Then, turning southwards, the great tunnel extends into what, until about
1868, was modern Bolivia, around 900 miles ! At a certain point the
tunnel cuts into and is intersected by a royal tomb, inside which,
with all the ingenuity employed by the old priestly architects and
engineers of ancient Egypt, when they wished to trap tomb-robbers
of the Pharaohs, thousands of years ago, the ancient Inca (?) en-
gineers had contrived two cunningly arranged doors, consisting of
two enormous slabs of carved stone, pivoted to turn and close so
tightly that one can see not the faintest sign of crack or join. In fact,
their position can be discerned on the sculptured walls of the royal
subterranean mausoleum only by reading secret signs whose key is
in the possession of hereditary custodians.

(It is whispered that the old caste of custodians of these wonder-
ful tunnels and their secrets has not died out, even today, in 1945).

One of these pivoted, turning slabs, so cleverly sculptured and
invisibly hinged, conceals the southern mouth of the branch of the
tunnel leading to Lima. The other masks the southern entrance to
the great tunnel to the former Bolivian end. This former Bolivian
corridor (today located in Chili) runs southwards, passing through
Tarapaca and Cobijo, which are in modern Chili. It must then turn
eastwards, passing through or under the Cordillera and, skirting the
mysterious Atacama desert, of Northern Chili itself, this Atacama
desert, the home of curious remains of subterranean type, and even
in the late seventeenth century rendezvous of a gang of pirates who
called themselves u Brethren of the Black Flag", used five languages
to hide their movements, and who left a bundle of musty and faded
documents in code, found in 1 934, in Santiago, about a cache they
made here, in this weird desert.

The southern end of the tunnel is, thus, lost somewhere in this
mysterious salt desert of Atacama, a thirst-stricken waste of llanos
and alkaline deserts, out of which flow only scanty runlets of brackish
water, so that coastal ports in this region rely on sweet water brought
from long distances. May be, when the mysterious tunnel was made,
perhaps thousands of years ago, the climate was very different from
today, and the landscape one of beauty and fertility. Quien sabe,
seKores? Over this mysterious tunnel crosses a canetera, cart-track or
high road, which runs across the northern edge of the great desert
to the aptly named Rio de Mala Agua (de Loa), or Bad- Water
river, passing Indio Muerto shacktown (Dead Indian Gulch), and
ending up at old Potosi. Truly is this Desierto de Atacama one of
strange secrets !

When Bolivia had a port at Cobijo, her government, about
1850, heard rumours about this mysterious tunnel of gold and lost
secrets, and, secretly, sent out agents to try to locate it. Alas for

THE ATLANTEAN * * S U B T E R R A N E A N S * * 171

success, the quest met with exactly that attending the seekers of other
old Inca caches ! All in vain ! Probably, the Chilenos are too matter-
of-fact and unimaginative to waste time on such a quest, in what is
now their territory ; and, perhaps, they may know nothing about it,
in which case this book will bring to their bureaucratic knowledge
a very rare secret !

Arica, a port now also in Chili, but in Peru in the i86os, stands
not far from a mysterious bluff, into which are cut the hieroglyphics
seen by Madame Blavatskaya, about 1851, or 1853, anc * which
denote for those who can interpret them ! the signs and the key
to the secret entrance. Not far inland is a little river, the Payquina, or
Payaquina, a name also given to a cerro in that region, which, re-
marks Madame Blavatskaya, is so named from the little waves
which used to drift chispas of gold from the old land of the Brazils.
If that be so, the tunnel-makers may be men of that same lost white
Atlantean race, the mantle of whose high culture and science un-
doubtedly fell on old Peru, ere Hy-Brazil vanished into the land of
shades, leaving behind only a faint memory in wild, South American
Indian traditions. She says the Incas derived their gold from this
little river ; but, of course, even so, it was merely one source of the
supply. (Actually, it must be said that no Latin-American military
or diplomatic map of the years 1840-1880, shows any rivulet,
Payquina or Payaquina, running into the Pacific near Arica.)

"We found a few specks of gold in a handful of sand from this
little river, the Payaquina, which we brought back to Europe," says
Madame Blavatskaya, writing of a time somewhere between 1851
and 1853, when she is believed to have visited South America as well
as Mexico. She is thought to have visited both lands twice, between
1851 and 1855. At the date when she visited Peru, she says the "little
river Payaquina was the boundary between Peru and Bolivia".
But here the mystic's memory must have been at fault.*

Madame Blavatskaya went a little way inland towards the cor-
dillera of the Andes when she came in sight of three curiously
formed separate peaks a landmark specially, as it seemed, con-
trived by nature for some singular purpose of man. These peaks
formed a very curious triangle. Behind, ranges the mighty cordillera

* AUTHOR'S NOTE: Madame Blavatskaya's memory must have been at fault; for, as a
succession of military and topographical maps of Peru, between 1840 and 1890, show, the
boundary between Bolivia and Peru, in the years 1840-1860, when Bolivia had an outlet
to the Pacific (whose loss she has never ceased to deplore, though never making it a casus
belli t as European dictators and nationalists would do), was the Rio de Loa, Pay'quina
being a hill a good way inland and distant from the actual border when Madame Blavatskaya
was there. The key to the riddle of the lost entrance of the amazing tunnel lies in the deci-
pherment of the strange hieroglyphs cut into the enormous rock, on the shore near Arica.
The rock is called the "tomb of the Incas". But the actual entrance, revealed by the key,
lies somewhere in one of the three peaks, in a triangle, close to the Rio de Loa, the old
Peruvian-Bolivian boundary, in 1840-1860. Payquina of the gold is, today, actually not a
rivulet, but a district inland, back of the quebradas and pampas, on this nearly waterless
coast of former Peru, near the mouth of the Rio de Loa. the old boundary with Southern
Bolivia.

172 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

of the Andes, of which they are outposts. One mysterious Quichua,
in a neighbouring village, whispered that the only practicable
entrance into the tremendous subterranean leading northwards is
somewhere cut like an adit into one of these queer peaks. Yet, lack-
ing the secret of the landmarks which can be unriddled only by
those who can decipher the meaning of a certain row of "hiero-
glyphics", or inscriptions cut into the rocks and visible only when the
sun's rays strike the cliffs at a certain angle, a regiment of Titans,
equipped with tri-nitro-toluol, or amatol high explosive, or dynamite
cartridges, might even, today, rend the rocks in vain and then not
unmask the mystery.

(There are, it may be mentioned here, spots along the canon of
the Rio Colorado, where arrows cut deeply into the face of the sheer
walls can be seen in certain lights and incidences of the solar rays.
They are, by roamers who go hunting treasure westwards across the
Gila Desert and unpeopled, thirst-stricken and heat-crazed Arizona,
believed to be pointers towards ancient caches of unknown and
extremely ancient races, and, it may be, are memorials of the un-
known race whose buried temples, lofty stone pyramids, seven of
them within a mile square, and massive granite rings and dwellings,
circular walls round venerable trees, and blocks of hieroglyphics
speak of ruins of some very ancient Egypt, or Phoenicia of the wild
region, at the head of the Gulf of California, "a day's march from
San Diego", in 1850, when they were discovered.)

Yet, even were some one to discover the hidden entrance into the
subterranean and explore the vast bore until he came as far as the
wall bounding that inner sepulchre of some long-dead, Inca (?)
King of the Sun, he would still lack the open sesame to the treasure
tomb itself. How would be cause the great slab to turn on its pivot?
If he could not find the hidden mechanism controlling the slab, and
tried to blast his way into the great tomb, the old, unknown archi-
tects have been before him and his like. Almost exactly in the manner
of the makers of the tombs of Thebes and Memphis along the hills
of the dead, by the banks of the Nile of ancient Egypt who, in their
day, thousands of years ago, foresaw the ghoulish tomb-robber for
whom no Pharaoh's Kha was sacred, and who tore the jewels from
the brow of the royally dead and smashed the elaborately painted
mummy-case, in order to filch the ceremonial vessels of carved and
chased gold and remove the sheets of pure gold swathing the dead
Pharaoh the Incas (or the unknown architects) anticipated the
robber-intruder. They have arranged the superincumbent rocks so
that, if force be applied, the mass will fall and bury sepulchres and
contents in common ruin.

A mysterious Peruvian told Madame Blavatskaya, nearly a
century ago : "A thousand soldiers, were they in that tunnel, would
be forevermore one with the dead, did they attempt to force their

THE ATLANTEAN ''SUBTERRANEANS*' 173

way into the treasure-tomb of the dead Inca. There is no other
access to the Arica chamber, but through that hidden door in the
mountains near the Rio Payquina, Arica. Along the entire length of
the immense corridor, from Bolivia to Lima and royal Guzco, are
smaller hiding-places filled with treasures of gold and gems and
jewels, that arc the accumulations of many generations of Incas.
The aggregate value of the treasures is beyond the power of man to
estimate."

A plan of this fantastic tunnel* existed some years ago, and,
probably, still exists until the owner judges the time has come to
put his plans to the proof. (Meantime, in this book, I have given a
remarkable and graphic chart based on my own secret information
of this mystery. Vide : the end paper.)

" We had in our possession," said Madame Blavatskaya, nearly a
hundred years ago, "an accurate plan of the tunnel, the sepulchre,
the great treasure chamber and the hidden, pivoted rock-doors. It
was given to us by the old Peruvian ; but if we had ever thought of
profiting by the secret it would have required the co-operation of the
Peruvian and Bolivian Governments on an extensive scale. To say
nothing of physical obstacles, no one individual or small party could
undertake such an exploration without encountering the army of
brigands and smugglers with which the coast is infested, and which,
in fact, includes nearly the entire population. The mere task of
purifying the mephitic air of the tunnel not entered for centuries
would also be a serious one. There the treasure lies, and tradition
says it will lie till the last vestige of Spanish rule disappears from the
whole of North and South America."

Possibly, that time is nearer at hand today, when the last vestiges
of Spanish caste rule in the western states of Central and South
America the bureaucracies and cabinets of the genie decente are
being threatened by the rising parties and socialising movements,
representing the peones of old Mexico and the down-trodden, land-
less disinherited Quichua Indians of old Peru.

A word about this mysterious engineering of an antediluvian
world is by no means out of place here. Again we have the shadow
of old Atlantis and Hy-Brazil projected into our own era.

Tunnels and labyrinths have played a mysterious part in ancient
civilisations in regions of what may wrongly be called the older worlds
of Asia and Europe and Africa. Who can say what the ancient priest-
emperors of old Peru knew of, or had inherited, from these vanished
civilisations which are not even a name, or more than a faint and
ghostly shadow? An ancient tradition of Brahmanic Hindostan

* My information is that Madame Blavatskaya's chart of the tunnel is now in the Theo-
sophical archives at Adyar, Madras; but my own chart, in no way derived from that of the
late mystic lady, is based on independent sources of Peruvian information, checked by my
own original researches. Until I had nearly completed this book, I did not know that her
chart was still in existence. AUTHOR.

-1 74 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

speaks of a large island of "unparalleled beauty" which, in very
ancient times, lay in the middle of a vast sea in Central Asia, north
of what is now the Himalayas. A race ofnephilim, or men of a golden
age, lived in the island, but there was no communication between
them and the mainland, except through tunnels, radiating in all
directions, and many hundreds of miles long. These tunnels were said to
have hidden entrances in old ruined cities in India such as the
ancient remains of Ellore, Elephanta, and the Ajunta caverns in the
Chandore range.

Among the Mongolian tribes of Inner Mongolia, even today,
there are traditions about tunnels and subterranean worlds which
sound as fantastic as anything in modern novels. One legend if it
be that ! says that the tunnels lead to a subterranean world of Ante-
diluvian descent somewhere in a recess of Afghanistan, or in the
region of the Hindu Kush. It is a Shangri-la where science and the
arts, never threatened by world wars, develop peacefully, among a
race of vast knowledge. It is even given a name : Agharti. The legend
adds that a labyrinth of tunnels and underground passages is extended
in a series of links connecting Agharti with all other such subter-
ranean worlds ! Tibetan lamas even assert that in America it is not
stated whether North, South, or Central there live in vast caves of
an underworld, reached by secret tunnels, peoples of an ancient
world who thus escaped a tremendous cataclysm of thousands of
years ago. Both in Asia and America, these fantastic and ancient
races are alleged to be governed by benevolent rulers, or King-
archons. The subterranean world, it is said, is lit by a strange green
luminescence which favours the growth of crops and conduces to
length of days and health.

Ferdinand Ossendowski, in his Beasts, Men and Gods (Edward
Arnold, London, 1923), also mentions this strange Kingdom of
Agharti, which, he says, he has been told by learned China lamas and
Mongolian princes, has many men and tribes of incredibly ancient
races, long vanished from the kingdoms of day. He mentions an old
Brahman of Nepaul who, on a mystic pilgrimage, met a fisherman,
apparently in the interior or on the coast of Siam, or Thailand, or,
may be, another part of Indo-China, who ordered the Brahman to
take a place in a boat, and obey the will of the gods by sailing with
him on the sea to an Arabian Nights' island where live people
"having two tongues" which "can separately speak different langu-
ages". He landed in the mysterious island, which Monsieur Ossen-
dowski does not say might very well be located somewhere in the
rock-pinnacle and coral-studded China Sea, a region shunned and
unexplored today, off the main steam lanes, and not even charted
by the Admiralty, who advise navigators to stick to the well-known
sea lanes. But wherever it might be, these strange islanders showed
the old lama a bird with teeth that caught sea fish and an unknown

THE ATLANTEAN ''SUBTERRANEANS'* 175

animal with sixteen feet and one eye. The islanders said : "We come
out of the subterranean kingdom, where, in cars of type unknown
to Western races, men rush through the subterranean world through
cleavages in the earth."

Clearly, this story is of the believe-it-or-not type; but it would be
wisdom not to dismiss the story as pure fantasy. There is no smoke
without fire, nor are all the Eastern wandering mystics necessarily
romancers of the Baron von Munchausen type, nor men whose
imaginations have been over-strongly impressed by the fantasy and
most entertaining novels of the H. G. Wells of a more youthful day !
I say gently, again, reader, remember the Komodo dragon ; and I
could also add, of my own curious knowledge, the strange parch-
ment charts of the China Sea of the year 1669, kft by Captain
William Kidd, the pirate-privateer, whose originals are now in a
house in Sussex.

For what purposes, however, were these amazingly long tunnels
of old Peru intended? What mysterious cults did they serve?

Quien sabe, senores?

A startling clue, gained in a very peculiar and romantic manner,
to one of the purposes of these mysterious tunnels, and which is
directly concerned with the mysterious stone city in the Lancandones
territory, of which I have written elsewhere, came in the course of
a chance talk between a very old Peruvian a Quichua Indian
and the same well-known mystic and American woman traveller,
the late Madame Helena P. Blavatskaya, who, as one sees, was
journeying through the mountains of Peru, in 1851 or 1853. The old
Peruvian had passed all his life vainly trying to conceal his hatred
towards the official Peruvians, and the Spanish conquerors. He called
them brigands.

"I keep friends with them, these bandidos" he said, "and their
Catholic missioners, for the sake of my own people. But I am as
much a worshipper of the sun as if I had lived in the days of our
murdered emperor, the Inca Atahualpha. Now, as a converted
native and missionary, I once took a journey to Santa Cruz del
Quich< (in Western Guatemala), and, when there, I went to see some
of my people by a subterranean passage leading into a mysterious city behind
the cordilleras. Herein, it is death for any white man to trespass !"

Said Madame Blavatskaya :

"We believe his story, as it is corroborated, elsewhere, by
Stephens in his Travels. Besides, a man who is about to die wiU
rarely stop to invent idle stories."

Similar strange tunnels of incredibly ancient date, and unknown
origin, in the West Indies, were brought to the attention of Christo-
pher Columbus, when he visited Martinique. No doubt, the white,

176 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

Atlantean race built splendid cities in what are now West Indian
islands, but which, at the far-off date, may have formed part of a
now submerged, middle American continent, whose name is com-
memorated in the word: "Antilles". A curious tradition of the old
world of Asia, is that old Atlantis had a network of labyrinthine
tunnels and passages running in all directions, in the day when the
land-bridge between the drowned land and Africa, on one side, and
old Brazil, on the other, still existed. In Atlantis, the tunnels were
used for necromantic and black magic cults. Anyway, it is curious
that the Caribs, in 1493, told Columbus that, in the old kingdom of
the Amazon women warriors, anciently existing in Madanino, or
Martinique, there were great subterraneans, and when the women
were likely to be pestered, out of due season of love, orgasm and
rutting, by periodical, cannibal lovers, the women went down to the
great tunnels and hid themselves. If the lovers, not to be put off, still
followed them, their ardent passions were cooled with showers of
well-aimed arrows from Amazon bows, and many a cannibal beau
was brought to an untimely grave, in this way, by the fierce Venuses
of old Martinique.

Fuentes, who lived about A.D. 1689, and wrote an unpublished
MS. history of Guatemala, speaks of the amazingly large and
ancient towns (inhabited by an unknown and long vanished race)
found there by the conquistador es.

He says:

"The marvellous structure of the tunnels (subtenanea] of the
pueblo of Puchuta, being of the most firm and solid cement,
runs and continues through the interior of the land for the
prolonged distance of nine leagues to the pueblo of Tecpan,
Guatemala. It is a proof of the power of these ancient kings and
their vassals."

He gives no hint of the uses to which these amazing tunnels,
more than thirty miles long, on the basis of the old Castilian league,
were put by these ancient races of old America.

-It may be, too, that the great tunnel of the Incas had a branch,
underground way leading under the forests, eastwards of Guzco,
in the very direction taken by Inca Tupac Amaru, his army
and his host of camp- following refugees, in the late sixteenth
century? May be, the fleeing Peruvians vanished into these
mysterious tunnels and left only the whispering leaves of the
trees of the dense green forests, as mute witnesses of their secret
exits?

The Inca fled to the mysterious "White House" of the elusive
South American empire of Gran Paytite^ about which I shall write in
another booL It is evident that the men of this mysterious land

THE ATLANTEAN c c S U B T E R R A N E A N S * ' 177

of Paytite must have had contacts with the Incas'long before the
Spanish conquistadores overran the Peruvian empire.

At intervals of about forty years the last being in 1942 ! there
come rumours about the existence of men of a lost Mayan, or Azte-
can race who fled before the faces and horses of Don Hernando
Gortes's cavalry. From time to time, strange, elusive Indians appear
in the market-places of lonely frontier pueblos in the provinces of
Chiappas and Western Guatemala. They contact only with Indians,
barter goods, and vanish as suddenly as they come, no Mexican or
Guatemalan official being any the wiser. They are emissaries from a
lost city of the ancient, civilised race that once governed old Mexico.
No white man has ever penetrated the region of this wilderness,
where, it is rumoured, these lost-world men live as did their fathers,
erect or maintain the same majestic stone buildings, palaces and
temples, large courts and lofty towers with high terraces of stone
staircases, and are still carving in stone the mysterious hieroglyphics
that no modern scholar can decipher in the ruins of old Yucatan.

At intervals of half a century the story is revived. It was first
told to the American traveller, J. Lloyd Stephens traveller men-
tioned above by Madame Blavatskaya by a Spanish priest he met
at Chajol, or Chajul, a pueblo in Western Guatemala, in 1838-9.
The priest swore to Stephens that he had seen with his own eyes a
mysterious lost city, and so earnest was the old priest's manner,
that Stephens believed him. Said Stephens, in London and New
York, in 1839 and 1840:

"The padre of the little village near the ruins of Santa Cruz
del Quiche, had heard of this unknown city when he was in the
village of Chajul (Chajul lies in the mountains, in Western Guate-
mala, close to the headwaters of the Rio Usamacinta). The priest
was then a young man, and with much labour, climbed to the
naked summit of the topmost ridge of the sierra of the Cordillera.
When arrived at the height of ten or twelve thousand feet, he
looked over an immense plain extending to Yucatan and the
Gulf of Mexico. At a great distance, he saw a large city spread
over a great space, and with turrets white and glistening in the
sun. Tradition says that no white man has ever reached the city;
that the inhabitants speak the Maya language, know that
strangers conquered their whole land, and murder any white
man who attempts to enter their territory. . . . They have no
coin; no horses; no cattle; mules, or other domestic animals,
except fowls ; and the cocks they keep underground to prevent
their crowing being heard."

One may, parenthetically, point out that it was down this
mysterious river, Rio Usamacinta, marked on the most recent War

178 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

Department maps of the U.S. Army, unknown as to a greater part
of its tortuous course and cut up by gorges and hilly jungle, that
Wodan, or Votan, the Phoenician, travelled to the splendid stone
cities of Palenque, Uxmal, Copan, and the mysterious stone city
visited by the old Peruvian sun priest, in the nineteenth century,
A.D. Of course, in Votan's far and legendary day, these cities hummed
with life and high civilisation, being far from dead or lost ! It is also
known to the bush Indians that on a bluff over this Rio Usamacinta
is the mound-tomb of Guatemotzin, last prince of Aztecs, whose
body with regalia and much treasure was taken there and buried by
sallow-faced Aztecan priests in Cortes's days. Any greaser or gringo
seeking to cut into this royal huaca is sure of warm attentions from
the bush Indians and the dangerous and dwarfish "white" Lancan-
dones, who must be survivors of a once highly and ancient civilised
race of old Central America.

The learned Americanist and scholar, Abb6 Charles Etienne
Brasseur-de-Bourbourg, when he was ecclesiastical administrator in
the Mexican frontier state of Ghiappas, about 1858, heard the story
again with the addition that men of this lost stone city suddenly
appeared and vanished in frontier pueblos and townships, where
they came to barter. An English filibuster and adventurer claims he
heard a similar story in 1935.

In March 1942, President Roosevelt invited to the White House
two Californians named Lamb (husband and wife) who seem to
have made contact in the bush of Chiappas with a degenerate tribe
of Lancandones, or other Indians, who are hereditary guardians of a
lost Mayan city wherein is a temple containing, on gold plates, the
hieroglyphical history of the race and the world, and predicting, it is
said, Great War No. 2. One gathers that the Lambs were not allowed
to see this lost city, which lies behind a pass in high mountains. May
be, there is more than one lost or dead city in this dense and unex-
plored jungle territory. According to the Lambs, the degenerate
Indians go to the lost or hidden city to worship in its Mayan temple,
on certain days, and they told them of the "Great Things of the Old
Ones", written on sheets of solid gold, and telling of a Great
Deluge.

The story above is derived from a West country evening news-
paper extract cabled from a New York daily newspaper in summer
1940; but I may add that an English engineer whom I have men-
tioned in another part of this book as having spent many years of his
life in both Mexico and the Argentine, and who died in Gloucester
Royal Infirmary, in 1938, told me that, in the state of Jalisco, some-
where in the little-known southern extension of the great range of the
Sierra Madre, about 121 kilometres (about 75 miles) east of the
Cabo de Corrientes, are prehistoric ruins known to the Indian
pednes. The region is one that is never visited by Mexicans, unless in

THE ATLANTEAN "SUBTERRANEANS" 179

times of insurrection when a band of revolutionaries has sought to
escape the Government troops by fleeing to the recesses of the savage
mountains. Jalisco is, of course, a province well known as one of the
centres of the Aztec race, just as is the valley of Anahuac in the
territory round the capital.

The Aztecos Indids in Jalisco state say that these ancient ruins
were once the home of a people who were civilized and benevolent.
Whether they were of the Mayan race or some even more ancient
people with Atlantean connections derived from the Hy-Brazilian
pioneer and civiliser Quetzalcoatl, only exploration by competent
field workers can decide. The dead city lies on a mesa (plateau) and
from it, at certain hours of the day, or at dawn, comes the sound of an
eerie, vibrant drumming. The sound is heard from afar, even on the
Pacific! The Indians declare that the drumming emanates from
los Espiritds (ghosts), and comes from stone vaults of a great temple
where there was once worshipped "the ruler of the Universe". One
day, say the Indians, the wheel of life, or cycle of events, will come full
circle, and the ancient people will return and re-introduce a golden
age. (As one has seen, millennial prophecies of this kind are common
all over the regions where the Atlantean Central and South American
empire once held sway.)

The dead city is said to be of stone and massively and enduringly
built. Ruins of cyclopean walls surround it. On a hill above the
mesa is another city of the dead, which seems to be a necropolis of
the princes or archons of this ancient race. It is said that pyramidal
structures stand on the tops of great mounds, made by man and not
nature ; and, as in Yucatan and Guatemala, are shrouded in jungle
and trees. Great blocks of paving lead towards the dead city in
whose vaults treasures or records are concealed, watched by mystic
guardians from whom the drumming emanates. Needless to say, no
Aztecos will venture into this region. It is clearly of the sort described
by Mr. Masefield, in Sard Harker: "a place whose gods do not wish
it to be known".

Ruins of dead cities not yet reached by archaeologists also
exist, one has been told, in Mexico, on the borders of the state of
Tehuantepec. In this state there is said, by Mexicans, to exist today
a community of dancing matriarchs. As this is the very region wherein
as I shall speak of in a book to follow this were those very Amazon
women of whom a certain Gastilian don wrote to "Kaiser Carlos
V.", the Holy Roman Emperor and King of old Spain, it, probably,
in ancient days had Atlantean connections; since the Amazons
of the old world of Africa and Europe more than once fought with
Atlanteans, if not in the island-continent certainly in a submerged
North-West African colony which Diodorus, citing vanished
Carthaginian records, said had been submerged by a cataclysm
long before his day.

l8o MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

Here, again, this Oojah, or mysterious drumming* is heard, coming
afar over the environing jungle and ranges. One such dead city
stands on a mesa girdled by cliffs. The region is covered with shrouded
pyramids to which lead ancient roadways of massive paved blocks.
In vaults of this dead city, the Indians of Ghiappas say there are
hidden, and guarded by the ghosts of Mayan priest-rulers, "books"
written on gold leaves recording the history of ancient things and
races of Ante-diluvian, or later Mayan times. Competent explora-
tion is, of course, necessary, before these riddles can be solved.

Farther south, in the unknown mountain wilderness of South-
western Darien, today, there is told by the forest Indians a similar
story of a stone city in the mountains wherein tremendous treasures
are hidden and priests perform sacrifices. It may be identical with
the city sought by the Castilian soldiers under Vasco Nunez de
Balboa.

Old legend says this stone city (called Dahyba) had a secret
subterranean temple at the bottom of a cavern, where strange rites of
the underworld were performed. No smoke without fire in these
legends of mysterious America ! A native whisper in Darien says
these rites are by no means extinct, nor the subterraneans, today !

In the mountains of modern Ecuador and in Colombia the
traveller encounters the same whispered stories about islands in the
middle of wooden mountain tarns, to which access is gained on a
certain day of the year., through a secret tunnel known only to the
Indians, often speaking a tongue which they will allow no others to
learn. In these sanctuaries are, also, said to be wonderful treasures of
gold and jewels, and sacred vessels, or gemmed insignia of some cult
of the moon-goddess Chia, or of Inti, our Lord the Inca's Sun, and,
on that one day of the year, the Indians, good Catholics to all
appearance, on the others, worship their old goddess, or gods.

Always, the hunters, whether or no gringos or greasers, have
come up all standing against enigmatic towering cliffs with no signs
of a fissure, or old rifts in the sides of some lone cordillera, where,
say the informants, there existed in the days just before the hoofs
of the horses of Don Hernando Cortes's Castilian caballeria, or Don
Francisco Pizarro's conquistadores clattered over the passes of the
sierras and the Cordilleras on to the ruin of old Mexico-Tenochtitlan
and old Cuzco, entrances to amazing tunnels and labyrinths.

* This mysterious drumming does not seern to be akin to that found among the Eskimos
or the Lapplanders, who use it to induce hypnosis and an abnormal mental state wherein
telepathic messages can be received, or clairvoyant visions of the future be seen by men in
whom has been produced a dilation of the normal consciousness. It recalls, rather, that
heard among the gentilars in that prehistoric dead city close to Trujillo, in Northern Pert,
where great treasures, including the "Great Gold Fish richly jewelled'*, have been hidden.
Von Humboldt, who heard of it when he visited those regions about 1820, theorised that
the sound suggesting galloping horses or boiling waters might originate from differences
of temperature or underground waters. The noises are heard after dark, on this Chimu or
pre-Chimu hill, near Trujillo, and no adequate explanation has yet been advanced of this
tnystery.

THE ATLANTEAN *' S U B T E R R A N E A N S * * l8l

Today, in the wilds of South America, when you encounter these
mysteries of the mountains, and, with a good pair of binoculars,
pick out what looks like signs of ancient carving or hieroglyphic
inscriptions sunk in the weathered rock, your guide shrugs his
shoulders and does not even attempt to repeat the parrot talk about
the Incas knowing nothing of writing before the Spaniards came.
You may ask him if any native has the key to those strange signs cut
yonder in the wall of the cliff. What do they mean ; who carved them ;
and when, and why?

He looks up into the gloomy sky, with dark and patient face, and
from his subdued eyes comes a smouldering fire overlaid and damped
down by a long-standing grief, of a conquered ancient nation.

"Quien sabe, senor? They are long ago dead who knew, and what
they knew was more than those bandoleros odiosos of Pizarro ever
dreamt. No one can read those signs today. None ever will."

Nevertheless, one need not be too certain that no one, today,
among these sad -faced Quichua Indians has any knowledge of these
secrets of a very ancient race. The face and the mind of the soft-
spoken men of the low-pitched voices whose mules and llamas and
burros pick their way so quietly through the hushed, narrow streets
of old Cuzco, with no street cars and hardly any modern traffic, is
not an open book for any foreigner or modern descendant of Spanish
Creole to read. People who have lived for any time in Central
America or Peru, Yucatan, Guatemala, Chiappas, or Ecuador, sus-
pect that these ancient tunnels and mysterious caves are still, today,
in 1945, playing their secret part in the hidden life of the modern
descendants of these ancient races. The secret rites and memories of
the old man-god, Quetzalcoatl, of the Aztecs' murdered em-
peror, Montezuma, and Inti, the sun-god of the assassinated Inca
Atahualpha, die hard, as hard as Votan of the Quiches of old
Yucatan.

Indeed, this question is forced on the attention of the thoughtful
guest of these countries ! Is there, today, as in the past, some mysteri-
ous central organisation of a native, theocratic character, existing
in the Peruvian montana, or behind the Central American Cordilleras,
which still keeps in touch with the down-trodden Indians, giving
them orders, keeping alive the flame of old culture and race, pre-
serving sacerdotal cults and magical rites among men who, though
nominally Cristianos and good Catholics, and good subjects of
Mexico or Peru, are, yet, not quite what they seem? Even today,
nagualism, or the worship of Montezma or Quetzalcoatl, is still
practised, in subterranean vaults, and secret and very ancient caves
and tunnels, by bothpednes and, in some cases, men of old Spanish
descent who live in remote pueblos of old Mexico, Yucatan, or over
the border in Honduras and Guatemala. Nor can the Roman
Catholic Church stop, or even trail it !

l8a MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

People who have never lived in these lands and who derive their
ideas of them from films or travel books by no means always
written by devout worshippers of the George Washingtonian ideal
of truth at any cost, whether self-advertising or not ! or even from
the orthodox professors and unteachable academicians, too often
blind leaders of the blind, may smile at these "fantasies". Yet, the
fact remains that authorities such as Dr. J. J. von Tschudi, the
Peruvian historian, and the famous American, William Hickling
Prescott, believed in the existence of an organisation of this secret
sort, about the middle of the nineteenth century.

A bold or ignorant man would he be who asserted that no such
secret, native organisation, of a native, theocratic character, exists,
today, either in Western South America, or old-modern Mexico, or
Guatemala ! If early Christians, in old Rome, had their catacombs
and their pass-words, why may not this much more ancient world
of South and Central America possess its mysterious tunnels and
amazing labyrinths, which put in the shade any catacomb, or maze,
existing in any time from old Thebes and the Minotaur of Minos
to those of the lamas of the mystic land of old and modern Tibet?

CHAPTER VIII

TIAHUANACU AND THE GIANTS
"There were giants in the earth, in those days." Genesis.

TROPICAL South America, including, as it does, the most ancient
land in the world never submerged by the ocean, and never ground
under the tremendous glaciers of the Ice' Ages, may very well have
beefc the cradle of the earth's civilisation, from which it spread out-
wards to Europe and Africa, on the one side, and Asia on the other.
We cannot yet say ; and yet, what has become known in the decades
since 1920 is a mere, tantalising peep at amazingly ancient and un-
known worlds sunk in the night of time, and still shrouded in opaque
clouds of darkness and mystery. From time to time, the wind of a
freakish time spirit blows the rack aside and lets an urchin shaft of
starlight it is hardly a sunbeam ! glance through the rift ; then,
before more than a momentary glimpse is given, the clouds coalesce
and the crack closes up again.

In Guayaquil museum, on the coast of Ecuador, I have seen

TIAHUANACU AND THE GIANTS 183

strange stone arm chairs, which look as if they had come across
broad seas from those wild moors of old Cornwall, in the neighbour-
hood of St. Just, or the pixie-haunted ruins of Chapel Carnbrea,
where the ancient kings of Cornwall or the white-bearded arch-
Druids sat in granite seats and drank from great golden goblets of
mead, whilom sky-blasting notes were blown from bronze-golden
trumpets, upraised under the ancient, mystic moon! Yet, these
strange stone chairs come from the northern border of the state of
Ecuador, where there is a large field encircled by similar chairs.
What nation of ancient South America met in strange conclave and
sat in these mighty stone seats as if they had been meeting on the
Wiltshire plain at Stonchenge, or down in La Vendee, or in among
the grey cromlechs of Brittany?

No one knows; nor, up to date, has any South American pre-
historian been able to form even a theory, about the origin or identity
of this stone-chaired race.

Again, in the same country of Ecuador, on the sea-shore, close to
a place called Esmeraldas, queer relics have been found which are not
only pre-Incaic, but seem even to have preceded the old European
stone age ! The haciendadero, Senor Mufioz, points out that these sub-
marine relics, which include fine statuettes and busts of almost
Tanagra type, and both men and women, are of almost every race
(white, yellow and black) in the world, including Japanese, and of
some that no longer exist. This race, in its unknown day, perhaps
100,000 (!) years ago, may have ranged right across old Brazil;
for, in Marajo island, a prehistoric graveyard at the mouth of the
Amazon- Maranon, one finds, in a series of amazing ceramics, exactly
the same varied types of human beings, represented on funerary
urns. (Esmeraldas has also Karian statuettes!)

The artifacts of this unknown nation, whose city is below sea off
Ecuador's shores, are singular. Besides fine obsidian mirrors, carved
like lenses in a way to suggest that the race had a knowledge of
optics, there are queer, oblong-shaped prisms, on whose facets are
carved animals, hieroglyphs, or symbols. They may have served the
same purpose as the chop or personal seals which every Chinese
mandarin used formerly to affix to documents, which were not
legal without such a seal. (I note that Colonel Braghine has also
reached this conclusion in his fine book on Atlantis.)

An imaginative man or woman might, therefore, have some
warrant for theorising that the queer remnants of old races met in
out-of-the-way or dangerous regions of this continent are survivors
from some post-palaeolithic, or antediluvian age of the world's his-
tory. They are oddments dragged out of the dusty lumber-room of
evolution and dawn-history and not popular with world-historians
whose encyclopaedic views will, when this latest evidence is weighed,
corrected and accepted, need some adjustment, especially as regards

184 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

notions of the age of human civilisation, which, possibly, did not
start after the Ice Ages !

My friend Mr. Richard Oglesby Marsh, former U.S. chargi
d'affaires^ who has travelled over the Andes to the Amazonian head-
waters' country, finds that the ancient Hy-Brazilians of the Matto
Grosso's dead cities, 20-40,000 years ago, used the same names for
the Zodiacal constellations as we use today ! Lieut. W. Smyth met
the Sencis of the Rio Ucayli, of Northern Peru, in 1836, and heard
them "name the planets Mars and Jupiter and ten constellations".
They are a tribe of primitive Indians, and the knowledge could not
have originated with them. Col. Fawcett, D.S.O., said in 1921:
"I have lived among South American tribes who have a name for
every planet, barring Neptune, and although far from Inca in-
fluence, know the sun by the name of Vira-Vira and sing hymns
to its rising." Neptune, it will be observed, is the most recently dis-
covered planet, the outermost known one of the solar system, found
in 1846 as a result of the calculations of Leverrier of Paris and Galle
of Berlin. (Vide: p. 146 supra.)

Again, the pre-Vedic sun-god of Brahma was called Fzra-dj, and
according to Manu, the law-giver, was the demi-ourgos, or Jahveh of
old Hindostan. The queerly Sanscritian sound about words in some
of the South American Indians' tongues, or dialects, may cause one
to wonder whether ancient South America had colonists from some
long since drowned land in the Pacific, who settled on her western
coasts, and, in a far day, when the Andes had not been violently up-
heaved, spread inland. According to Louis Jacolliot, in his Histoire
des Vierges : Les Peuple et Us Continents Disparus, this drowned Pacific
continent was known as Rutas, in the traditions of the goparams, or
India's pagodas, the root Ru meaning war, as the people were re-
doubtable militarists and imperialists. Their language, called
Sansar, was said to be the parent of Sanscrit.

The mystery, again, of the origin or identity of the unknown and
very ancient and highly civilised race, once ruling over what is now
the comparatively unknown and still largely unexplored region of
montaHa y cerro, and highlands in modern Colombia, is no nearer
solution, today, than in 1840. In one detail this race unknown
suggests a comparison with the other unknown, North American
people who ranged from the Aleutian land-bridge to the River
Columbia of Oregon and Washington, across the Rockies, through
Central America to old Peru. This latter race, though on a lower
plane of civilisation and culture than the unknown in old Colombia,
yet, like them, constructed systems of irrigation canals. They also
left a trail of petroglyphs pver about 5,000 miles of country.

In summer 1931, Monsignor F. Lunadi, of the Apostolic Nuncia-
ture of Santa F6 de Bogota, organised an expedition into this un-
known region, which lies in the little-explored jungles of San

TIAHUANACU AND THE GIANTS 185

Agustin. He found traces of a very ancient, South American empire
extending about sixty miles along the banks of the Rio Magdalena,
a gold-river so well known to the old British buccaneers of the seven-
teenth century. This unknown race not only built irrigation canals ;
but erected colossal statues, cut from solid rock, and transported
them by unknown means over great distances. Many of the colossal
statues had been created in the faces and figures of the great men
over whose tombs they stood. In this wild region, a village named
San Agustin has houses filled with curious antique statues which are
also set up in the plaza, four of these great statues of a race unknown
combining to uphold the marble form of El Liberador, Simon
Bolivar.*

There is a suggestion of Easter Island, and of Maiden, Pitcairn,
the Marquesas, and Ponape about these ancient megalithic ruins in
the recesses of the unknown Andes. In the Rio Negro, tributary of
the mighty Amazon, are rock-pictures, two of which strike the
imagination. They are of tall men (Vide sketch, page 139 supra) of
archaic type, wearing long robes, one figure with arms extended, the
other grasping a long baton ; but what is most striking is the remark-
able head-dress like an extended halo ! Sir Robert Schomburgkh, in
1838, saw colossal haloed figures of just this sortf in the rock of
Timeri (Dutch Guiana), and along the cataracts on the upper waters
of the Rio Corentyn, borders of British and Dutch Guiana. It is
curious that head-dresses of this strange type are found in some of the
monuments of Tiahuanacu, the pathetic remnants of that city in the
Andean clouds, in rarefied air, a long dead city which must have been
raised to a great height by titanic forces of vulcanism, perhaps rein-
forced by some appalling, cosmic catastrophe of the sort which, I
have hinted, utterly destroyed the great civilisation of white Hy-
Brazil, some 11-12,000 years ago.

Colonel Fawcett advanced a theory which, breath-taking as it
must be to many people, and even ridiculous to the orthodox
archaeologist who still holds that civilisation is hardly older than
5000 B.C., is seen by the unprejudiced and thoughtful observer who
has calmly weighed the available evidence of tradition, folk-lore and
geology to be near the incredible truth. It also suggests that when
native races in South America speak in their tribal and national
"legends" of old and civilised races existing in a day when mountains

* The Guarari Indians have a tradition that these ancient races of Colombia "made fife
and light by strange means". Had they a knowledge of electricity, or some form of radiology?
(See Chap. 3, pp. 83-4 supra.)

t Poor Sir Robert was beset by peculiar difficulties in his zeal to copy these strange
inscriptions. On November 25, 1838, he was about to climb great granite boulders twelve
miles south-east of Mount Mania, Guiana of which one boulder was 400 feet high and
covered with hieroglyphs when an Indian, bitten by a snake as he fished in a brook, insisted
that Sir Robert procure for him a small cup of milk drawn from what an American acquain-
tance of mine called "mammy's titties". So, stifling an oath, Sir Robert was forced to send
for an Indian woman, chafe the Indian's leg, and abandon the rubbing or copying of the
strange inscriptions. AUTHOR.

l86 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

were not, they are not talking what the modern American called
"childish baloney".
He said:

"These megalithic ruins of Tiahuanacu were never built on
the Andes at all. They are part of a great city submerged ages
ago in the Pacific Ocean. When the crust of the earth upheaved
and created the great Andean Cordilleras, these ruins were
elevated from the bed of the ocean to where you now see them."*

This, if accepted, at once shatters a theory of some South
American Indianistas who advance a story that Tiahuanacu was
an outport of the Atlantean-Brazilian empire of old Brazil, and was
partly swept away in the catastrophe that overwhelmed Atlantis,
Moreover, fantastic as Colonel Fawcett's theory may seem, it must
be remembered that Lake Titicaca, close to Tiahuanacu, has a
chalky deposit of ancient seaweeds, with lime, about two yards
deep, which indicates that the ridge where it is found was once an
ancient seashore. In fact, modern geologists say that the actual
shore of Titicaca was once immersed in the ocean, and more than two
miles lower or a great deal below modern sea level of the Pacific !
If Tiahuanacu sprang from the bed of the ocean the Pacific
where a terrible catastrophe had sunk it, under tidal waves released
by vulcanism and stimulated, perhaps, by some cosmic forces, then
civilisation must be much older than many modern archaeologists
and historians are ready to concede. Collateral evidence about the
catastrophic alteration in the height of Tiahuanacu exists in the
"Giants' Field", near Bogota, in modern Colombia. This strange
field is on the same level as Tiahuanacu, and it is covered with fossilised
or petrified bones of mastodons, overtaken by catastrophe, withering
of pasture grounds, once, near the sea, and dead of cold and rare-
faction of air. Extinct animals figure on ceramics dug up in the plain
of modern Tiahuanacu, and geologists and biologists assert that
these animals were extinct thousands of years ago. In fact, their
fossil remains have been found in this same strata of Tiahuanacu.

The great heaps of hewn stone, once found at Tiahuanacu,
abandoned by their ancient builders suggest, as in Easter Island,
sudden catastrophe. (Alas, the modern Governments of Bolivia have
used these ruins merely as a quarry for ballasting the road-bed of the
railroad !)

Even the astronomers do not altogether resolve the riddle of the

* One other theory, raising the still unsettled problem of the a$e of the Andes, is that
Tiahuanacu may have been a port, or outpost of some long- vanished Pacific continent,
standing at sea level at a time when the Andes had not been upheaved from the ocean bed.
This would account for the sea-horses (hippocampi) and flying fish images found among the
prehistoric ornaments of the structures. It may also suggest some vanished link in the shape
of some land, sunk by cataclysm in the Pacific, where giraffes were of the fauna. (Vtde
p. 189 infra.)

TIAHUANACU AND THE GIANTS 187

age of Tiahuanacu. They say that the great Kalasasaya a name
which, again, has a queerly Sanscritian sound and suggests a con-
nection with some drowned continent in the Pacific or sun temple,
in the vast stadium of modern Tiahuanacu, was built some time
between 21,600 B.C. and 2800 B.C. a range of 18,800 years. This
calculation is arrived at by using data connected with the obliquity
of the ecliptic, or wobbling of the earth's axis in the polar spin.
German astronomers from Potsdam Observatory used signs found in
this stadium and calculated that the Kalasasaya was left unfinished
about 9550 B.C. But there is some agreement outside the ranks of
"conventional" and academic archaeologists that ruins of an
ancient port are found near the stadium of Tiahuanacu, suggesting
that it was once near the sea-shore, and that cast-down builders'
tools, found in the ruins in the sixteenth century of our own era,
also suggest a hurried abandonment, in a far day. Obviously, how-
ever, these evidences are by no means inconsistent with a catas-
trophe that occurred ages before the great upthrust of the crust of
the earth that raised the Pacific shore and heightened the Andes,
say geologists, about 12-13,000 years ago.

Suppose Fawcett is right?

Then, perhaps, 100,000 years ago Tiahuanacu was a "recent"
colonial outpost still in the building when cataclysm overtook
it and drowned the great motherland of Mu, or Lemuria. It is
significant that, in this connection, there stands in the plain of the
bleak paramo on the Andes, at Tiahuanacu, a colossal statue, wear-
ing a strangely inflated skull-cap, one hand clasping to his breast a
sceptre of a condor-head, the other a tablet with hieroglyphics. The
guide told me, when I was gazing at this colossus whose thick,
tightly closed lips, square and powerful jaw are those of a man of a
master-race, that he is called Ra-mac.

Ra-Mac is singularly like the name of the sun-god, which the old
Sanscritian traditions say, in the drowned Pacific continent of Mu-
Lemuria, was called Ra-Mu. And Ra, of course, was the sun-god of
old Egypt.

The old Peruvians told Cieza de Leon, who visited Tiahuanacu
in a day about A.D. 1540 when immense walls were still standing,
and there were two colossal figures in stone, with long robes reaching
to the ground and with ornamental caps on their heads :

"... Some of the natives told me . . . that all these marvels
sprang from the ground in a single night. . . . There are not such
stones in any of the hills around."

The natives may have been alluding not to necromancy, but to
tremendous volcanic action resulting in the upthrust of the Hima-
layas and the Andes, after the cataclysm that sank the great land

l88 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

of Mu into a pit of fire and then poured the raging ocean into the
inferno.

The place has suffered terrible modern vandalism at the hands
of modern railroad and permanent- way makers. But even before
that modern day the old misionero, Diego de Alcobaso, tells us of what
he saw in the sixteenth century of our era :

"I saw a vast hall carved on its roof to represent thatch. There
were the waters of a lake which washed the walls of a splendid
court in this city of the dead, and, standing in its fine court, in the
shallows of the water, on the platform of a superb colonnade
were many fine statues of men and women. So real they were
that they seemed to be alive. Some had goblets and upraised
drinking-cups. Others sat, or reclined, as in life. Some walked
in the stream flowing by the ancient walls. Women, carved in
stone, dandled babies in their laps, or bore them on their backs.
In a thousand natural postures, people stood or reclined."

Of this host of life-like statues, not one is left today ! And yet they
existed in the days of Atahualpha, the last murdered Inca emperor.

"These are the words of Fray Diego de Alcobaso who hath
been visitor and preaching friar among the Indians in many
provinces of this kingdom."

One of these statues wore a beard. And the Indians or Indianistas
of South America are, and were, beardless and glabrous.

When the early Inca emperors entered Tiahuanacu, in the
second century A.D., they found it had long been a deserted city.
Its streets were still beautifully paved and splendid temples still
stood in its deserted plazas. There were also remains of fine aque-
ducts, and fine statues graced the bed and sides of ancient water-
ways. Among the ruins of megalithic buildings stood heaps of hewn
stones, ready to place in situ, perhaps, when sudden calamity dis-
persed the ancient builders. That this city of the dead probably
the oldest in the world was originally built in the clouds, in rarefied
air, where breathing is a torture, and in a waste of scrub, on a bleak
paramo, where nothing grows that is edible, or can grow, is most
improbable. There are also remains of what looks like an unfinished
port off the field of the Kalasasaya, and ports are not usually built
on the tops of high plateaux.

When Pizarro's conquistadores entered Tiahuanacu they com-
mitted terrible vandalism in its ruins. Thousands of fine statues were
smashed with hammers wielded by soldiers hungry for gold, or set
on by fanatics with fires of madness and intolerance burning in their
monkish eyes. One man, standing by a great monolith in a square

TIAHUANAGU AND THE GIANTS l8g

of the dead city, noted that a mammoth silver bolt riveted the
stone. He called up other bandidos and straightway there began an
orgy of iconoclasm. The monoliths were broken up in order to
extract the silver bolts, which weighed from half to three or more tons.

Yet, I do not believe that this dead city of Tiahuanacu was ever
an outport of the bearded men in black who ruled Hy-BraziPs
Atlantean civilisation, some 20,000 or more years ago. The Inca-
Quichuan tradition was that the man in black, Viracocha vira
meaning the sun who brought to the primitive Peruvian tribes the
elements of civilisation from the east of the Cordilleras, entered the
city of the deady Tiahuanacu, when already it lay in grey, deserted ruins.
Tiahuanacu may, then, have been a city of an even earlier civilisa-
tion dominating the Pacific, perhaps that called Rutas, in the early
Brahminical traditions of old Hindostan. The men depicted on its
statues are really, I think, too archaic in type to be compared with
the beautiful youths and maidens and the men of Grecian character-
istics carved in stone in the dead Hy-Brazilian city entered by the
bandeiristas in A.D. 1750.

They were a reddish-skinned race, though among them, as re-
markable statuary, dug up from the ruins shows, were also black
men, with prognathic features. One splendid piece of terra cotta
depicts in beautiful colours a high priest of the sun, with remarkably
Egyptian eyes and having on his fine, large forehead a mitre and the
sign of evolution, called by Bolivian archaeologists, el simbolo escalonado
(the stairway sign). Only a race that had attained a very high degree
of civilisation, perhaps more than 25,000 years ago, would have
reached such a concept of descent from some mystic Central Sun,
symbolising the Great and Unknown God-head of the cosmos.
There was a college of surgeons who in bronze age Tiahuanacu
trepanned with bronze knives!

The great Sun Temple of ancient Tiahuanacu was built on the
top of a gigantic truncated pyramid, one more pointer towards the
probable or possible fact that the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians
of the Pharaohs came from some lost land far out in the Western
Pacific. The astronomers of Tiahuanacu had all the elements of the
modern telescope : reflectors and lenses ! They do not seem to have
known the Moon which certainly suggests that that planet was
captured by the Earth, about the time the great catastrophe de-
stroyed their civilisation, and possibly that of Easter Island and the
lost land called Mu, or Lemuria. Another remarkable piece of
statuary is the head of a. giraffe.

That animal, as we know, is not found in South America. From
over what lost land-bridge, then, came this piece of evidence to
Tiahuanacu, off the western shore of archaean South America?

All the signs on the ruins of Tiahuanacu point to a great earth-
quake, accompanied by tremendous vulcanism. The sea, sweeping

1 90 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

inshore in gigantic tidal waves, engulfed the great city. Then came
a second appalling disaster, which buried the smoking ruins under a
great heap of muck, alluvium, mud and sand. Everything was re-
duced to chaos. Fragments of skeletons of men and animals lie any-
how among the broken, massive stones of megalithic proportions.
Bits of pottery depict prehistoric animals which must have been
familiar to the old Tiahuanacuans. Pottery, jewels and implements
of engineering and architecture are inextricably mixed in utmost
confusion. The heaps of blocks of masoned stone bear every evidence
of having been abandoned by men fleeing for their lives, and taken
by surprise.

Look inside the great ruins, today. Some of the pillars were
obviously decorated in colours, like the interiors of old English
naves of cathedrals of pre-Reformation days. There are remains of
great drainage systems cloaca maxima, such as were found in old
Rome. But what strikes the imagination so vividly are the coverings
of extremely ancient volcanic ash and powder which overlay the
ruins of this city of the great unknown and mighty dead. Decom-
posed felspar itself a volcanic rock lies at the bases of massive
walls that it seems giants must have heaved into place. How long
did it take this felspar to rot?

Ages and ages, say geologists.

Standing in niches of the powdered walls were finely carved
images of the men of this great city. One of them has been found.
It is carved out of human bone, and depicts a man of strong face,
wearing a queer turban. He has a perforated ear and carries a sceptre
in one hand, and a bundle of inscribed slabs in the other. So far back
is his time that he and the images found in the muck of ages are
fossilised and petrified. . . . Very suddenly, like a thief in the night of
time, came disaster on this colonial outpost of a Pacific continent
at the doors of ancient South America. Only men engaged, probably,
in mining in the proto Andes, then, on this theory, not part of arch-
aean South America, and far lower in altitude, then, than now,
escaped. And, even so, they could not have carried away any of the
civilisation ; for the subsequent violent and sudden elevation of the
Andes would have wiped even them out.

Two mighty continents vanished, apparently almost in a day
and a night and at the same time : most part of Mu, or Lemuria
in the Pacific, that had survived an earlier catastrophe, and Atlantis
in the northern tropical part of the Atlantic Ocean. Alike with these
ancient lost continents, this riddle of a city of Tiahuanacu of in-
credible age, perhaps even 30,000 years old has suffered cataclysms
separated by great intervals of time, and probably in the far-off day
before what are now the Andes arose, for the second time, from the bed
of the Pacific Ocean.

One may be forgiven, when contemplating the amazing com-

TIAHUANACU AND THE GIANTS igi

mand of these ancient engineers and masons over vast masses of
rock in a way that can hardly be rivalled by modern engineers with
all their wonderful technique and power appliances, for speculating
whether they were a race of giants in stature?*

If they were a race of "the giants in the earth, in those days",
who built this strange city, it is clear that when they vanished from
the earth whether by inundation and vulcanism, in some Pacific
lost continental-island, or on the Andes themselves they left
behind them degenerate men who, too, were master-builders in
stone. This is no fantasy of mine. It is a story of very ancient Peruvian
tradition; for, in the reign of the Inca Ayatarco Guso (Inca XII),
giants entered Peru from the sea. Fernando Montesinos, native of
Osuna, in old Spain, probably derived this story from the lost MSS.
of the famous Bias Valera, whose mother was a Peruvian lady and
father a conquistadorian soldier.

These giants arrived in boats made of reeds, or a sort of rushes,
and they landed from the Pacific off the Point Santa Elena, close to
Puerto Viejo, in the old empire of Peru. The times were extremely
remote, say the Indians, "and we had the tradition from our parents".

Here was the peculiar story told by the Quichua-Peruvian
Indians to Don Gieza de Leon, the old Spanish soldier-priest, in
A,D. 1545. "These giants from the sea were so great in stature that
from the knee down, they were as tall as a tall man. It was amazing to
see how the hair hung from their great heads to their shoulders.
Yet were they beardless. They ate more than fifty ordinary men.
Their eyes were big as plates (como pequenos platos). Their arms and
legs were proportionately huge. Some were clad in skins of animals;
others quite naked. No women came with them. Going inland, they
ravaged the country, and, finding no water, these builders in great
stones set to and sank an immensely deep well in the living rock"
. . . "and today (in A.D. 1545), the water of this ancient well is so
clear and cold and wholesome that it is a pleasure to drink of it."
This well the giants lined with masonry, from top to bottom "and
so well are these wells made that they will last for ages".

The giants overran all lowland Peru, beat down the puny
resistance of the Indians, and took their women to wife. "But they
ruined the women ; for they were too big for them, and the women
were ruptured and died."

Gieza de Leon also tells how in Cuzco, in A.D. 1560, in the days
of the viceroyalty of Don Antonio de Mendoza, a tomb was found
containing large human bones, and says that similar bones were
already found in Mexico City. Let none suppose these were bones of
dinosaurs, or other prehistoric mammoth mammals, any more
than were the bones of giants "of huge greatness" which, says

*The Montagnais Indians of Canada have a tradition that God was angry with the
Giants and sent an inundation upon them*

IQ2 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

another old Spanish missioner and historian, Padre Acosta, were
found round Manta, Peru, in A.D. 1560, (This Manta is identical
with the Manta of the Central Railroad of Ecuador, where bones of
similar human giants were found, in a cave, in 1928, behind great
stalagmites on the petrified floor. The remains found in this cave
were of ancient men over eight feet in height ! And the stalagmites,
testifying to the remote age of the bones, were of immense size.
Scientists know how long such stalagmites take to grow.)

Similar remains of giant men have also been found on the Pacific
shores of modern Mexico. In his Eighth Decade of de Orbe Novo,
Peter Martyr de Anghiera tells a queer story of that Diego de Ordaz
who, subsequently, went out on an El Dorado quest into the in-
terior of Eastern South America. Diego was he who, according to
Las Casas, in his Historia de las Indias, climbed the high volcano of
Popocatepetl, near Mexico City.

Says Peter Martyr :

"De Ordaz found in the sanctuary of a temple the thigh bone
of a giant, which had been cut and half-gnawed away with age.
This bone was brought to Vittoria to be sent to Rome to the
Pope. Said Ordaz : C I have preserved this bone, which measures
from the neck to the knee-cap (patella) five cubits (about 8 feet
4 inches !) Its width is in proportion.' Men sent by Cortes to the
mountains of the south, later discovered the country inhabited
by these giants. In testimony of their discovery they have brought
back several ribs torn from the dead bodies."

This race of giants entered Mexico, in some far distant day.
Near Tepic, Sefior de Valda, in 1938, found a series of very ancient
grave-mounds wherein were seven skeletons of men and women
lying under thin slabs of grey stone of slaty-blue colour. The skele-
tons were all from eight to nine feet tall. No trace of metal was found
in these ancient Mexican graves, but there were fragments of un-
glazed pottery, and bowls with a pattern of painted Greek-line
Meander design, in blue and red lines. Senor de Valda took a foot
and arm each of the skeletons and showed them to Dean Cummings
of Arizona University.

It has been found that giants ranged far south in South America
into what is now Patagonia. Years ago, indeed, Charles Darwin,
landing in a fjord at Ultima Speranza, entered a cave where he found
dung-balls of chewed grass lying close to the gigantic bones of a
monstrous prehistoric type of mylodons. Only giant men, it may be,
could have tamed such huge animals at that far time of day and
used them, as they did, as beasts of burden.

It may, or may not be, that those were descendants of this
incredibly ancient race of giant men who overwhelmed the warm

TIAHUANACU AND THE GIANTS IQ3

lowlands of old Peru, as the Ayar-Inca traditions tell, and forced the
ancestors of the early Incas to retreat to walled mountain cities
12,000 feet up in the cordilleras and paramos above old Guzco,
where the city of retreat hung like a fly on a ceiling, and was reached
by men toiling painfully up 536 hand-hewn masoned steps past
tiers of white granite walls with a gradient of 50 degrees. The ruins
of this ancient refuge city were found, in 1940, by the Axel Wenner-
Gren expedition led by Dr. Paul Fejos. (The Peruvian authorities
at Lima intend to make an automobile road to this strange dead
city.)

One may theorise, with probability, that lack of oxygen and the
rarefied air at these great altitudes were the more potent guards
against the irruption of these giants, used to the warmer lowlands.

At one time of day, and not long ago, either, these and all such
stories would have been dismissed as "mistakes" by or naivetd of
men who knew not the difference between the bones of men, pre-
historic saurians, or giant mammals. Today, one is not so positive
that that is always the explanation !

If one may believe the queer stories that, from time to time, come
from the North- West territory of Canada, giants still exist! There
is the story told by trappers and Indians, as recently as A.D. 1938,
that, in the unexplored recesses of British Columbia's rugged hinter-
land, a race of hairy giants, called locally "The Sasquatch", are to
be found, today. The Indians say these hairy giants are eight feet
tall, and covered, except round the eyes, with short woolly hair of
simian character. J. W. Burns, Indian agent in Chehalis Indian
reservation, says these modern giants are very shy men, descendants
of an ancient primitive tribe, and meet in secret conclave atop of the
Morris Mountain. The Indians say they have met the giants, and
an article on them appeared, quite recently, in the Victoria Daily
Times, British Columbia.

At Pachacamac, where, today, exist ruins that have received
much attention from the archaeologists of U.S. and British museums
and the Carnegie Institution, the giants, mentioned (as we have
stated above) by Bias Valera and Fernando Montesinos, repeating
ancient records of the Inca priestly caste, built a sumptuous temple
with iron tools. This, as already stated, was in the time of the Ayar-
Inca emperor (the twelfth), Ayatarco Cuso, about 500 B.C., the time
when one British authority suggests that only savages inhabited
South America ! (Here seems to have been a case where a stone age
race were also workers in iron).

This curious passage seems also to import that the giants remained
in the land for a long time after their landing on the coast, though
it is odd that the Incas are said never to have used iron tools ! Did
the giants bring such tools with them? Later on, the giants became
homo-sexual, according to the story and traditions of die Peruvians ;

194 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

"for they had no women with them, and, one day, when they were
publicly polluting the market-place with these practices, the fire
from heaven rained down on them, and consumed them".

But not all were burnt in this Sodom-Gomorrah holocaust
either of some immense aerolite, which, before now, and as recently
as 1932, has devastated hundreds of square miles of Brazilian jungle,
or from vulcanism. Some of the giants ascended the Cordilleras, and,
outside old Guzco, were met by the armies of Inca XII (Ayatarc6
Cuso) and dispersed.

That giants of this sort existed in ancient Peru is a fact depicted
on some ancient pottery, dug up near Pachacamac, which shows
them engaged in these perverted amours. And giants must, at one
time, have ranged very widely over the equatorial belt of South
America not to speak of the ten-footer Goyazes, or Brazilian Curiii-
queanos, of the Amazons, in quite recent times, who were adorned
with gold; or the ten-footer Marquitas, who fought under women
chieftains.

Whoever these giants of old Peru were, they were clearly makers
of megalithic structures as were the men of mysterious Tiahuanacu.
Were they an outlying colony whose remote ancestors had escaped
the cataclysm that drowned a great land and great cities formerly
located well out in the ocean off the western shores of ancient South
America, and which, as to one ancient city, was later upthrust
from the sea-bed to below the peaks of Andean Cordilleras as we see
them today?

Old Europe had also giants.

Homer's Lestrygones were giants. Some have supposed that the
land they inhabited was ancient Norway, where in caves have been
found tremendous human arm, leg and head bones, long antecedent
to any Aryan invasion. It will be remembered that these giants of
old Europe, allied to the Cyclops, fed on human flesh, and that when
Odysseus, or Ulysses came on their coasts, they sank his ships and
ate his companions. Homer does not name their country, but says
their capital city was called Lamus. One Lamus led a colony of
these giants or so said ancient authors into Italy, where they
built the town of Formiae.

A discovery made in a field in the Jalpaigur district, near Simla,
in June 1938, suggests that old Hindostan had, too, her giants.
Many footprints, apparently human and of unknown date, were
there found in a field. The footprints are said to have been two feet
in length and eleven inches wide, and it was reckoned that those who
made them must have been at least eighteen feet tall.

I have, for a very good reason, alluded to the world-wide
provenance of these giants who, said the Babylonian priests, corro-
borated by Eupolemus, built ancient Babylon after escaping the
Great Deluge. They were said to have erected a tower of Babel,

TIAHUANACU AND THE GIANTS 195

and were great astrologers who received from their fathers, "The
Sons of God' 5 , all secret learning which they imparted to the ancient
priests of Babylon, according to Eusebius (Vide: the Praeparatio et
Demonstratio Evangelica), and desposited in the Babylonian temples
records of the periodical cataclysms they themselves had witnessed.

Some have been tempted to euhemerise these Giants of the pre-
and post-diluvian eras as leaders of a lower Atlantean caste in that
old island-continent, who had revolted against the ruler-castes, as
the Titans did against the Gods, or Lucifer against the Ruler of the
Heavenly Fields. It is, however, evident that Giants in the ancient
world cannot all be allegorised away in this fashion. They certainly
existed, unless the reader be prepared to dismiss all these evidences
from South America, old Europe or old Asia. Who they were,
whence they came, and what relation they bore, if any, to the lost
world-races of Atlantis or Rutas-Mu-Lemuria are still enigmas.
The legends of the Fomorians in old Ireland, of Gog Magog in ancient
Britain, and of Albion, the giant-god of old Britain, seem to enshrine
ancestral memories of such people.

Some light may have been thrown on the riddle by the discovery
in Western Missouri forests, in 1875, of conical mounds, on high bluffs
overlooking the Missouri river, which were the tumuli of skeletons
with head bones of monstrous size. The lower jaw of one skeleton
was double the size of that of a civilised man. The thigh bone looked
like that of a horse ; but the receding human or anthropoid frontal
bone indicated a low order of intellect. These skeletons were found
in sitting posture with flint knives and scrapers. Are they, then, of
palaeolithic age?

Once more we grope dimly through the mists and darkness of
very mysterious ages in the world's most mysterious continent,
perhaps at a time before the ice ages had gripped our planet, and
when glaciers, still existing above the level of 12,000 feet, reached as
far south as the Sierra Nevada, including a large glacier about 250
miles north of Los Angeles, California. The last great ice age is
said to have ended some 15,000 years ago, leaving, as echo soundings
made with dynamite recently indicated, a continental ice sheer, in
the interior of Greenland, which is over a mile deep. (Thousands of
years hence, much of the ice may return to the sea, and the polar
zones become what they have been before: lush, warm lands
with tropical vegetation reaching as far north as the Canadian
border.)

Scientists have arrived at the conclusion that the mystery of the
cause of the (last) ice age is that volcanic activity, with heat and
fire, touched off the ice age. This theory, one of others, seems true,
perhaps, in a way not quite appreciated, in view of what one has
written in this book. Man, it is said, arrived in the North American
continent, about 15,000 years ago, at a time when an animal trap

ig6 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

existed in what today are the McKittrick tar seeps in the San Joaquin
Valley. An earlier prehistoric animal trap is found in the La Brea
tar pits of Los Angeles, contemporary with a day some 25,000 years
ago, when imperial mammoths, thirteen feet high at the shoulder,
huge wolves, sabre-toothed tigers, camels, horses, sloths and bears
roamed the North (and South) American lands.

The reader may remember the camel found carved in a pottery
statuette in the ruins of Tiahuanacu, and also the figure of a horse in
a pre-Incaic inscription existing ages before the conquistadores in-
troduced the Gastilian jennet into the "Spanish Indies' 5 . All that
has gone before may suggest to some that a rectification of a chrono-
logical and palaeontological character seems long overdue in re-
lation to the remote date when civilised man appeared in America.
May be, in the pre-cataclysmic ages, not 15,000, but 25,000 years is
nearer the truth in relation to man's appearance in America.

We may now return for a last glance into the dimmed mirror of
pre-history in which is reflected a hazy picture of "the age of giants"
whose work was the Cyclopean city of Tiahuanacu, the great and the
mysterious. It is a riddle of die "dark backward and abysm" of
Time upon which, probably, no last word may ever be said.

In a preceding part of this chapter, concerning the problem of
the age of Tiahuanacu, I referred to the astronomical calculations
of the Potsdam Observatory staff who used certain data, in part
furnished by the remains of the Kalasasaya, or Sun Temple at Tia-
huanacu, to determine the date of this extremely ancient civilisation.
I have left to the last some comments on the very interesting theories
advanced by Mr. H. S. Bellamy, in his fascinating book: Built
Before the Flood (Faber and Faber, London, 1943). He visualises a
heaping up of the tides, swelling from northern and southern hemi-
spheres, in a great girdle roughly corresponding with the zones
between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. He appears to suggest
this phenomenon occurred some quarter of a million years ago, under
the pull of a disintegrating satellite that preceded the capture of the
present moon. His interesting theories are inspired by the glacial
cosmogony and "Welteislehre" studies of the late Hans Horbiger,
"Maschineningenieur" of Atzgersdorf, near Vienna. According to
Mr, Bellamy, the dead city of Tiahuanacu was surrounded by a
rampart of the Andes, which barred off the rising waters of the
Pacific, until, under increasing pull and pressure from the disinte-
grating satellite, those waters spilled over and drowned the city.
Twice the city was drowned, while, on the "inter-Andinian plateau",
lived races who had sought refuge there from the catastrophes that
had, in the north and south hemispheres, drowned populations. The
final cataclysm happened, he says, about 13,500 years ago, when the
ancient metropolis was to have formed a source of building materials,
or to be repaired. Before the final disaster, there had been no satel-

TIAHUANAGU AND THE GIANTS 197

lite accompanying the earth, the first "moon having been disin-
tegrated, and its debris thrown on to the earth." After the "lunar
interregnum," our present moon had approached near the earth and
been attracted into its gravitational field. The survivors lapsed into
primitivism and the ruins were henceforth avoided, and put under
taboo.

We are asked to believe that this interregnum time between the
death and disintegration of No. i satellite and the capture of our
present moon lasted about 230,000 years and that in all this
immense stretch of time survivors from the cataclysm that ruined
"classic" Tiahuanacu were living in the lush, warm lowlands on
the paradisial coast of Western South America ! When the present
moon threatened them with another inundation, they sent pioneer-
ing "scouts" to view the uplands where stood the ruins of Tiahuanacu,
which was merely a dim memory or myth among them as well it
might be after more than 200,000 years ! All one can comment is the
famous remark of the celebrated dominie in Scott's novel : "Mon, 'tis
prodeegious !" A race whose paradise on the Pacific littoral lasted
230,000 years !

I say nothing about this theory existing in a vacuum that
apparently has no relation to the cataclysmic loss of a continent or
continental islands in the Pacific Ocean.

In its second prime, under a bronze age race which had de-
veloped a lost technique of tempering bronze that could cut and
shape the very hard stone used andesite their world was very
different. Frequent vulcanism shook the country, and the tre-
mendous megali thic structures were deeply embedded in the ground
in order to withstand tellurian shocks. At that time, he says, the
climate of the Andean Altiplano, on which the ruins stand, must
have been tropical.

It is, however, I suggest, very difficult to understand how at a
height of over 1 2,000 feet, conditions such as these prevailed, where, as
Mr. Bellamy points out, the great structures of Tiahuanacu in
Quichua, meaning "city of darkness or waning light" were built
unroofed and open to the sky as assembly places for great multitudes.
Nor, unless the region of the dead city, the Altiplano, once stood at a
far lower level in a day before the rise of the Andes to their present
elevation, can one comprehend how prehistoric animals, existing
only in lush, warm regions and unable to withstand glacial tempera-
tures, could have ranged these regions, or how fossil fishes of tropical
type can be found in the strata round the dead city.

Even if, as Mr. Bellamy, following HSrbiger's glacial theory,
urges, the pull of the disintegrating satellite, that preceded in earth's
skies the capture of our present moon, caused the belt of our atmo-
sphere to be drawn off from the poles and northern regions into a
relatively thicker blanket over this region of archaic South America

198 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

as well as over other sectors environed by his girdle tides of global-
cincturing range round "the waist" of our earth, then this denser
belt of air could hardly have created lush tropical conditions at the
height of 1 2,000 feet in the clouds at which Tiahuanacu even then, he
presupposes, was situated. (One has a comparable state in the high-
lands of Kenya Colony on the equator ; where, despite the fact that
the region is on the equator, the cold at great heights is not lessened
in the fact that, below, is an atmospheric belt of relatively greater
density.)

Mr. Bellamy, too, is opposed to the theory of scientists that there
occurred about the end of the Tertiary Age a catastrophically sudden
and unbalanced rise of South America out of the waters of the ocean,
which elevated the continent more strongly in the north than the
south. When this occurred, say scientists, the Andes must have been
jerked up more than 12,500 feet on an average. This catastrophic
movement by the way, not confined to this region of our world
exposed a continental shelf which is now the arid lowlands of Peru
and North Chile, and raised into regions of rarefied air this dead city
of Tiahuanacu as well as the mountain ramparts girdling it, all of
which, prior to their sudden elevation by tremendous forces of both
tellurian and cosmic origin, had been submarine mountains with a
paramo, or plain set in their crests, also under sea.

When this happened, some 13,500 years ago, say, the dead city
of Tiahuanacu had simply risen dead from its watery tomb under the
old Pacific Ocean, and what are now the Andean Cordilleras with it.
The problem is, clearly, one of chronology and resolves itself into
one main question : just how old are the Eastern and Western cordil-
Icras of the Andes? That question has not really been resolved. The
remarkable unevenness of the forces would account for the curious
fact that shore or strand lines, found on mountain slopes and walls
on the Bolivian Altiplano, and denoting the beaches of ancient seas,
or ancient sea levels, are not level either with the present level of
Lake Titicaca or with that of the modern Pacific Ocean.

One other point may be noted : the mitre of the high priest in
terra cotta, found under the earth at Tiahuanacu of today it is
depicted in pages 90, 132 supra of my own book. This archaic and
very beautifully made and designed statuette bears, on its polychrome
cap, 4 quadrants of symmetrical symbols which are in the form of el
simbolo escalonado, with a black crosslet and orb in the centre of the
design. They are the subject of a rather fantastic suggestion by
Mr. Bellamy, who says that the pictograph on the cap of this mitre
of a Tiahuanacu high priest denotes "a highly conventionalised map
of the world, known to the inhabitants of the Andinian Life Asylum,
which also features certain magical (or religious) elements".

But is this not a far-fetched notion? Surely, the world, as known
by these very ancient races, could not have been so symmetrical

ATIAHUANCU AND THE GIANTS 1 99

in the shape of all its continental outlines as to be capable of repre-
sentation in this way? I advance the theory and I am not alone
in it that the simbolo escalonado, found also on later Mayan glyphs,
on artifacts all over South America, and, today, in native non-
Christian wayside altars at Carangas, and in the form of a sacred
volute at Chimbote, Peru, was the sign of evolution from the god-
head ; denoted by the Central Mystical Sun of the universe : the
unknown God, or Dyas, of whom, in old Hindostan, Brahma was the
demi-ourgos.

As for the black crosslet and yellow orb in the middle of the
cap of the mitre, with the stairway signs on all four sides, which Mr.
Bellamy calls a heaven-pillar magically warding off lunar dangers
from the earth denoted, he says, by the hierographs of the four stair-
way signs that crosslet is identical in origin with the Venus sign of
reproduction the phallic symbol of coition, the cross, or Egyptian
tau found on glyphs in Mayan Guatemala and Yucatan, and on
tombs of the Etruscans in old Italy.

If this interpretation of mine be correct, the yellow orb in the
middle of the black crosslet, denotes not Mr. Bellamy's "evil"
yellow, former tellurian, pre-Luna satellite of the earth, but the
Mystic Central Sun of the universe, which the sun of our own plane-
tary system symbolised. After all, these ancient men of Tiahuanacu
were sun-worshippers, and so, far more likely to set his sign on the dome
of a mitre, than a yellow disk of merely "evJl" significance. One
might as well have expected a mediaeval abbot to set the horns, tail
and trident of the Evil One not on a gargoyle but on the topmost
turrets of a minster or abbey, rather than the Christian cross ! I
hope Mr. Bellamy will forgive me for my constructive criticism of a
part of his very interesting and illuminating book. Many of us are
faced by the danger of pressing our theories too far.

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BACH, Johann Nicolaus. Solonis Atheniensis carminum quae supersunt (Ed.
A.D. 1825).

BALDWIN, John Denison. Ancient America (1872).

BARAZA, Fray Cypriano. Relacion Surnaria de la Vida . . . del U.P. CyfP.
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Very rare, blackletter vol. S. Americana.

BEDE, The Venerable. Historia Ecclesiastica.

BENALCAZAR, Sebastian (de Moyano). Conquistadorian eye-witness of
affairs in the Popayan, and Nueva Andalucia y Nueva Granada
(modern Colombia. S.A.). (Died at Benalcaz. A man of action, he
is not known to have left any MSS., or diaries.)

BERREO, Antonio de. (See DE BERREO.)

BLAS VALERA, Fray. Lost sixteenth-century Latin MS. histories of Peruvian
antiquities, cited in Fernando Montesinos's Memorias Antigas 9 histori-
iales y Politicas de Perti. (Only one MS, known to exist, and (No, 3)
published anonymously by Sefior Ximinez de la Espada at Madrid.)

2O2 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

BOAS, F. Report on N. W. Tribes of Dominion of Canada. (Brit, Asscn.

meeting at Bath, September 1888.)
BOEGK (German Hellenist). The Panathenaean Festival (ancient Athens)

on Atlantean memories.
BRASSEUR-DE-BOURBOURG, Abb6 Etienne-Charles. Popul Vuh (Quich6

reprint, with French translation); Histoire des nations civilises du

Mexiijue et de VAmerique centrale. (Owner, in 1874, of very rare and

valuable MSS. on obscure Central American races, Spanish and

native writers.)
BRAZILIAN ARCHIVES (Museo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, and Archives,

SSo Paulo.
BUEHLER, Georg. Grundriss der Indo-Arischen Philologie und der Altertums-

kilnde.

BUFFON, Comte Georges L. L. Histoire Naturelle.

BURTON, Sir Richard Francis. Travels in the Brazilian Highlands (1869).
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CALMET, Dom Augustin. Dissertorum Hebrorum Ritu Phaenicio de Urbe West
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CARVAJAL, Fray Gaspar de. Descubrimiento del Rio de las Amazonas segtin
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century MSS.).

CASTELNAU, Comte Michel de (Sieur de la Mauvissire, Touraine).
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CEDRENUS, Georgius. Compendium historarium ab urbe condito ad Isaac
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CENSORINUS. Liber de die Natali (circa A.D. 238).

CHARLEVOIX, Pere Francois Xavier de. Histoire et description generate de
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CLAVIGERO, Francisco Javier. Historia del Mexico (1781); Storia Anlica
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COCHRANE, Captain Charles Stuart, R.N. Journal of a Residence in
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COLUMBUS, Christopher. Viages. ( Vide : NAVARRETE, and PETER MARTYR
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CoNGRfes DES AMERICANISTES. Various reports and conferences in Euro-
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COSMAS INDICOPLEUSTES. Topographia Christiana (sixth century, A.D.).

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CUNNINGHAM, Sir Alexander. Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum.

CURTIN, Jeremiah. Creation Myths of Primitive America.

DA ROCHA PITTA, Sebastiao. Historia da America Portugueza (Lisboa, 1880),
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DA SYLVEIRA. Capitao Symao Estacio. Relafdo Sumaria das Cosas do Mar~
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 203

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204 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

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the problem of the age when the Andes were upheaved from the

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HAKLUYT, Richard. Principal Navigations.

HANNO. Periplus (fifth century B.C.).

HARRIS, John. Moral History of the Spanish West Indies (London, 1705).

HERODOTUS. Melpomena.

HERRERA, Antonio (see DE HERRERA).

HOMER. Odyssey.

HORNIUS, George. De Originis Americanis (Hague edition, 1652).

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Vue de Cordillires et Monuments ; Monuments and Ancient Inhabitants of
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IXTLILXOCHITL, Fernando de Alva Cortes. Historia de los Chichimecs.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 205

JEFFERSON, Thos. (ex-President U.S.A.)* Notes on the State of Virginia

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"JENAER LITERARZEITUNG" (1874).
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2O6 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUTH AMERICA

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los Culebras,

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"POPUL VUH" (The Bible of the Quiches of old Yucatan).
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 207

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2O8 MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT SOUIH AMERICA

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century A.D.). Taught that Atlantis had actually existed.

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Nature and the gods for granting longevity to the crow and the

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1723)-

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VARRO, M. Terentius (Roman scholar and writer, 116 B.C. -A.D. 27?).
De gente Populi Romani (lost book cited by St. Augustine).

VELASCO, Fray Juan de. Historia del reyno de Qjiito.

VENEZUELA DOCUMENTS (British Government: Guiana Boundary Com-
mission, MSS. Dept., British Museum).

VIRGIL. (See FERGHIL.)

WALLACE, Alfred Russel (English naturalist, A.D. 1823-1913). Notes of

a Botanist on the Andes.
WALLIS BUDGE, Sir E. On tlie Sumerians.

XIMINEZ, Fray Francisco (Dominican missioner in Yucatan and Mexico) .
Vocabulario del lengua

(See DE ZAMORA.)
ZAPATA. (See DE LLANO ZAPATA.)

ZARETE, Agustfn de (Spanish Historian, A.D. 1492?- 1560?). Historia de
la Conquista del Pent.

INDEX

Page numbers marked with an asterisk (*) refer to footnotes in the page numbered.

in, 113, 118, 125 et $eq., 129, 140,

142, 144, 146, 148, 170, 171, 173, 174.

(Vide also Cataclysms)
Atlantis, 13, 16, 17, 22, 23, 34, 45, 77,

78, 79, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 99, 103,

146-8, 151
Atlas, 10 1
Audiencias, 163

Axel-Wenner-Gren Expedition, 193
Ayar (Inca), 144
Ayar Manco Capac, no, in
Ayatarco Cuso, or Cusi, 191, 193-4
Aymara Indi6s, 95
Azangaro, 161, 166
Aztecs, 14, 102, 102,* 108, 115

ABYLA (West Morocco), 77
Acapulco, 15, 1 6
Acosta, Fray Jose" de, 143, 162
"Adoratorio", 90, illust, 3; 132, illust.

19; caption, p. 133
Aelian, Claudus, 21, 78
Aerolites, ioetseq. t 114-15, 135
After life, the, 124
"Agharti," 174
Ainu, the, 134
Airships, n

Ajanta, or Ajunta Caverns, 174
Alaska, 133-4
Albinos, 59
Alcobaso, Fray Diego de, 188
Aleutians, 134, 138, 140
"Alleluiah!", 100
Alphabet, of unknown and ancient race,

I2 3 I 33.' European, 89
Altamira, 124

"Amautas," The, 142, 143, 144
Amazons, 50, 66, 88, 121, 176, IJQ, 184
"Amenti," 92
America, 22-3, 79
American Indian Foundation, 98
American Natural History Museum, 114
Anahuac, 29, 179
Ancient man, 195
Andes, n, 64, 96, 104, 113, 184, 186, 190,

198, 204

Angkor Wat, 104
Anjan or Unjan, 158, 158*
Ante-diluvian, 26, 27, 174, 175, 192.

(Vide Rio Roosevelt Plateau)
Antillia, 116, 151
Araguaya, Rio, 76, 89
"Araucara" ( Vide deErcilla, Don Alfonso)
Arcadians, The (or Pelasgians), 29, 86, 87
Archaeologists, 37, hie et ubique
Archives do Museu National, 125 et seq.
Arequipa, p, 142, illust.
Argentine, 80

Arica, 168, 171, 171,* 172, 173
Arks, 13, 16, 25
Armageddon, 34, 85
Arran Isle, 80
Arranmore, 81

' ' Arraua, ' ' 1 1 1 . ( Vide Viracocha)
Aruvudus, of Brazil, 68, 70, 74
Asoka, 62, 63, 119
Atacama, 170

Atahualpha, 154, 156, 157, 159, 160, 188
Athens, 22

"AH," 129. (Radical of name Atlantis)
"Atlan," 52*
Atlantean, or Hy-Brazil, or O'Breasal,

10, 16, 23, 24, AI et $eq.> 50 et seq., 76

et s*q. t 86, 87, 89, 97, 98, 102, 103-10,

BAAL, 141

Babel Tower, 16, 28, 29, 33, 100, 108, 194

Babylon, 28, 33, IIQ; phallicism of, 125;

146, 194

Bahia, 38, 55, 56, 57
Balam-Agab, 106
Banana, 88*
Bandeiristas, 37 et seq., 44, 45, Q2, 96,

146

Basilea, 87
Bates, H. \V. f 134
Bearded "Indians", 188
Bealtine, The, 84.* (Vide also Light

Pillars)

Belern, 63,* 123
Bellamy, H. S., 32, 196-200
Benalcazar, Sebastian de, 154
Bering Strait, 140
Berthelot, 154

Berzil, Bracie, Brazil, Brasil, 80, 8r, 8^
Betyles, 151
"Biancaea Sappan," 80
Bianco, map of, A.D. 1436, 116
"Black Magic," 151

Blavatskaya, Madame Helena Petrovna,

168, 169, 171, 171,* 172, 173, 175, 17?

Blusterer's mountain. (Vide Serra do

Roncador)
Bochicha, or Zuhe, 31, 65, 65* ; longevity

of, 109; TII, 115, 116
Bogota, Sante Fe* de, 52,* no

Bolivar, Simon, el Liberador, 185

Bolivia, 170, 171

Brahma, 34-5, 137, 148

Brasseur-de-Bourbourg, Abbe" C. E., 82,
106, 150, 158*

Brazil. (Vide Atlantean -Brazil)

Bredon Hill, 115

Brendan, 81

"Brethren of the Black Flag," 170

British Columbia, 65; 132, illust. 16

"Brujos, los," 103

Brutus, The "Pauch", 84

2IO INDEX

Buamanga, 143
Buccaneers, 57
Budge, Sir E. Wallis, 30
Buffon, Comte de, 82
Burton, Sir Richard, 158*
Bushmen (of Kalahari), n
"Bush Telegraph," The, 59, 71
Bustamente, Carlos Maria, 15

CASUAL, Dom Pedro Alvarez de, 36,

80, 82

Caches. (Vide Incas)
California, Gulf of, 172
California (South), U.S.A., 123, 133
Calpe (Gibraltar), 77
Cambodia, 103
Camels, 196
Campeache, 102
Camuhibal (Popul Vuh), 85
Canals, 138, 184-5
Canaries, The, 10
Cannibal, 94
Cannon, 128
Cape Verde Islands, 10
Caii (Colloan chief), 112, 117
Carian- or Karian-Colloans, 48, 49, 61,

94, 95, 116, 122. (Vide also Karians

or Carians)
Carians, or Karians, 84, 124; 132,

illust. 13 and caption 13; 139, 183.

(Vide also Amazons)
Caribs, 135, 176
Carlos Inca, 163
Carlos V (Charles V), 160, 165
Cam Brea, 183
Carthage, 77, 87, 93
Casa de Contratacion, 154
Casa del Sol. (Vide Cuzco)
Cataclysms, Cosmic, n, 13, 14, 15,

17* *9, 21, 30-1, 32-4, 52,* 86, 103,

in, 112, 112,* 113, 115, 116. (Vide

also Quetzalcoatl, Men in Black,

Deluge Myth, Moon, Atlantean-

Brazil)

Caupolican, 89
Caves, 144, 150
Caxamarca, 156, 157, 160
Cayapos, 68
Cedrenus, 85
Ccnsorinus, 32-3
"Central Sun of the Cosmos." (Vide

Sun)

Cerro de Pasco, 166
"Ce Tecpatl" (year of Flint, ancient

Mexican Calendar), 15
Ceylon, 62, 103, 104
Chairs, 183
Chajol or Chajul, 177
Chambers, Admiral Bertram, C.B., R.N.,

.
Chasqtus, 143

Chemis, or Zemes, 150-1

Chia, 31, 180

Chiapas or Chiappas, 101, 177, 178, 180

Chibchas, myths of, 31, 109. (Vide

also Muycas, or Moscas)
Chicha, 162
Chichen Itza, 101
Chillicothe, 125
Chimus, 1 80*
China, 30, 31, 125 et seq.
China, or South China Sea, 1 74
ChollulanorCholuhuan, 29, 100, 102, 105
Christ (Horus), 128-9
Cibaos, Sierra de, 149, 149*
Cieza de Leon, Pedro, 48, 49, 95, 117,

121, 154, 155, 157, 162, 187, 191
Cisneros, P., 147
"Citadels," 103
Citinatonali, 105-6
Civilization, age of, in N. America, 89,

122-3, 186, 196
Clavigero, F. J., 99
Clothed Indians (S. America), 109
-Code, 98

Cocotovito, Juan, 142-3
Codex (Codices): Letellier, 14; Chimul-

popocan, 14, 25, 98; Vaticanus, 105;

Dresden (Aztecan), 128-9
"Cold Light ' ' ( Vide Light Pillars)
Colombia, S.A., oriente of, 134; 137, 151
Colorado, 172
Colossi, 25, 27, 136, 184-5
Colours and Perspective, 124
"Columbia Race," 103
Columbus, Bartolomeo, 149
Columbus, Cristofcro, 175-0
Comets, 10 et seq.
Conane, 82
Conquistadores, 152
Copan, 178
Copper- workers, 131, 133. (Vide also

Atlantean-Brazil)
Copts, 100
Corentyn, Rio, 185
Corn, 131
Cornwall, 183
Cortes, Hernando or Herndn, 101, 102,*

107, 108, 177, 180; 192
Counay, no, 124*
Council of the Spanish Indies, 160
Craige, Captain John Houston, 150
Crantor, 22
Cross, The, 128
Cuneiform (in Brazil), 93
"Curveros," 48
Customs Mede, 84*
Customs Scrubs, 84*
Cuyaba, 83

Cuycurus, or Kuikurus, Indi6s, 68, 70
Cuzco, 91, 156-7, 160, 161-2, 164, 168,

181. (Vide also Sachsahuaman)
Cycles, 32, 130 et seq., 195
Cyclopes, 194

INDEX

211

D

DAHYBA, 180

Darien, 59, 160; 180. (Vide also
Buccaneers)

Dark-skinned race, 102-3

Darwin, Charles, 192

Das Mortes, rio, 67

Dead City (Mexico), 104-5

Dead Horse Camp, 68

De Bry, Theodore, 159-60; De Carvalho,
Benigno Jose", 53 et seq; de Ercilla,
Alfonso, 143; de Garcia, Bartolom6o,
148; de Herrera, Antonio, no-ii;
de Llano Zapata, Jos Eusebio, 165;
de Leguisamo Francisco, 162, 164;
de Leon, Ponce, 100*; de las Casas,
Bartolome", 144, 156, 160, 192; de
Ondcgardo, Pola, 162; de Ordaz,
Diego, 143; de Ordonez y Aguiar,
Kam6n, 108; de Orellana, Francisco,
66; de Pomares, Felipe, 163; de
Quesada, Jiminez, no, 137; de
Souza, or Sousa, Francisco, 38-9;
De los Rios, Pedro, 29, 100

Deluge, The Great, n, 13, 16, 17, 18,
28, 29, 31, 87, 99, 108, 134-5, I 7 8 / I0 4-
(Vide also Moon, Cataclysms, Atlantis,
Atlantean-Brazilian)

Dementia. ( Vide Cataclysms)

Demi-Ourgos, 86, 148

Denmark, 92

Derrotero, 166

Descourtilz, M. E., 150-1

Devil-worship, 84

Dewan-I-Shah, 158

Dias, Roberio, 38-9

Diodorus, Siculus, 77, 77,* 78, 87, 121,
177, 179

Dolmens, 131

Dome (Mohammedan), 128

Dominica, or San Domingo, 149, 149*

"Dots" (rupestrian), 05, 96, 122

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 33-4, 65, 89,

134

Dragons, 104
Drumming, 179-80, 180*
Dyaus, Dyas, or Deus, 122, 199. (Vide

also Sun, Central of the Cosmos)
Dyott, Cdr. George. (Vide Fawcett)

EAR-LOBES, 27; 90, illust. i. (Vide

also Orejones)

Earth, 15, 16, 20, 30, 31, 32, in
Earthquakes, 88, 105, 106, 189. (Vide

also Vulcanism)
Earth Sign, 90, illust. 2a; 91
Easter Island, 25, 26, 27; 90, illust. 7
Eckener, Doktor, n, 64, 74
Ecpyrosis, The, 32
Ecuador, 20, 124,* 183, (Vide also

Subterraneans)

Egypt, 85 et hie et ubique; 91, 93, 127,

129, 138, 189
Electro-physicists, 24
Elephanta, 174
Ellore, 174
El Simbolo Escalonado. ( Vide Stairway

symbol)

Emanuel, Dom, 80
Emeralds, 157, 162
"Empire of the East/' 106. (Vide

Atlantean-Brazil and Atlantis)
"End of the World/ 1 34-5
Erse-speaking Indians, 24*
Eskimos, 133-4
Esmcraldas (Ecuador), 183
Esquivil, Dona Maria, 163
Ethiopia, 95
Etruria and Etruscans, 133; 177,

caption

Eupolemus, 28-9, 194
Eusebius, 195

Evil, alleged "aura" of, 63, 64,* 65
Evolution. (Vide Stairway symbol)
Ezekiel, 92

FARO DE CATATUMBA, 153

Fawcett, Colonel P. H. f 62-70, and foot-
notes; 73, 76, 81, 88, 94, 97, 117-8,
146, 185-6

Ferghil, Fergil, or Vergile, 80, 80*

Ferro, 95, 122

Fidelio, Fray, 114

Flying fish, 186*

Fomorians, 195

Formiae, 194

Fossils, 89

Fountain of Youth, The, 100*

Friends 1 Islands (Rattan), 133, (Vide
also Mound-builders)

Frobenius, 151

Frog- worship, 139

Frot, Apollinaire, 93, 94*

Fuentes, Fray, 176

Fulton (Ohio), 131

Furetana, 84

GADBIRA, 77

Gades (king of Atlantis?), 77*

Gambling, 157-8

Gann, late Dr, Thomas, 103-4

Genesis, 28, 29. (Vide also Deluge)

"Gentilars," 180*

Geraes, The. ( Vide Minas Geraes)

Gesenius, GuiL, 93

Giants, 17, 22, 28,29, 33 ; passim, 191-200

"Giants' Field/' 18, 186

Gilbar, Fray Narcissus, 65, 121, 146-8

Gilgamesh, 29

Giraffe, 90, Must. 4; 189

Glass (ersatz), 91, 94

212

INDEX

Gloucester (Eng.), 178

Gog Magog, 195

Gold and platinum, 52, 92, 93, 94, 161

"Golden Age," 30-1, 179

Gondwanaland. (Vide Rutas)

"Goparam," 9

Gorotire Indians, 71

Goyaz. (Vide Roosevelt (Rio) Plateau,

S.A.)

Goyazes, 194
Graham, R. B. Cunninghame, "Don

Roberto", foreword, 5; 136-7
Grande Rio (British Honduras), 103
"Gran Paytiti," or "Paytite," 48, 65,

107,* 176-7

Grave's Creek (Ohio), 139
"Great Gold Fish," 180
Greeks, 32
"Green Rays," 174

Gregory, the late Prof. J. W., 64, 204
Griswold, Lawrence, 144
"Guaca, or Huaca," 143
Guamanaga (dead city), 48
Guanacauri, 165
Guara Indians, 185*
Guatemala, 102, 177
Guatemotzin, 178
Guayaquil, 182
Guayra (dead city), 47
Guiana, Dutch, 185
Guiana, 86, 185*

H

HAITI, 141, 149, 150, 151

Haldane, Professor J. B., 140

"Half Moon Coins," 48

Haloes, 52, 66; 90, illusts. g and 12;
136-7, 139, 185. (Vide also Psenth)

Harris, John, eighteenth-century his-
torian of Spanish America, 158

Hawaii, 113

Head Hunters, 130*

Hebrews, 96, 205

Heitsi-Eibib, 13

Heliacal Year, The, 32

Heliographs, 102*

Heliolithic Culture, 79; 122, 123, 141 ; 151

Heliopolis, 77

Hercules, Pillars of, 77. (Vide also
Pharos)

Herreros, 13

Hieroglyphs, 89, 93; 104; 134, 135, 143,
168, 171, 171,* 172, 185*

Himalayas, 96, 187

Hindostan, 82,* 125

Hippocampi, 186*

Holden, Dr. Wm,, 114

Homer, 64, 194

HOrbiger, Hans (Wien), 32, 196, 197

Hornius, G., 149

Horse and Hippine, 140, 196

Horns, 128, 129

Huacas, 94, no
Huallagu, no, 146
Huanacaui, 142
Huatanay, no, 166
Huayna Capac, Inca, 162
Huayti, Peru, 141
Hubbard, Father Bernard, 134, 138
Hue, AbbE. R., 118
Huemac, 101, 102, 105, 116
Humboldt, Baron Alexander von, 83,
86, 134, 135; 146-8, 180*

ICE AGES, 20, 32; 91-2, 113, 182, 195

Ideograms, 89

Illatici (Alleluiahl), 143

Illinois, U.S.A., 131

Incas, 88; in, 141-4, 152, 154-5, *57

158, 160, 162, 164, 165, 166, 169.

(Vide also Peru)
"Inca Way," The, 49
Inquisition, 159

Insignia (of Quetzalcoatl), 106-7, 107*
Intercalary Days (Mexico), 14
Inti, 1 80, 181
Intihuanta (Peru), 91, 94
Iqi-Baiam (Popul Vuh), 106
Ireland, ancient, 24,* 80, 80,* 81, 84
Isaiah, 92. (Vide also North-pointing

Statues)

"Isle of the Blest," The, 81
"lurucrunu," 169
Ixtlilxochitl, F. de Alva Cortes, 99

J

JACOLLIOT, Louis, on Rutas, 184
Jahveh, or Jehovah, 148. (Vide also

Demi-Ourgos)
Jalisco, 178, 179
Jeans, Sir James, 20
Jebel Musa, 77
Jesuits, 65, 70, 92, 117, 142
Jowett, Ben, 82
Juara, rio, 144

K

KALASASAYA . ( Vide Tiahuanacu)
Kanheri, 61, 119
Karians. (Vide Carians)
Karnak, 14, 22
Kathiawar, 119
K&tzer, Friedrich, 64
Kelts, 80, 80,* 81, 84
Kenya Colony, 198
Kha, The, 172
Kidd, Captain Wm., 175
Kingsborough, Lord, 205
Koaty, 43-6; 90, illusts. 2, ^a\ 95.

120-1; 122, 141.* (Vide also Atlan-

tean-Brazil)
Kosambi, 119
Kounboum, or Kounboun ("Alphabet

Tree" of), 118, 188*

Krasnoyarsk!, 139

Krupps, 58, 64

Kuluene, no, 67, 68, 70

Kumesene, or Kulusene, rio, 67, 71, 74

LA BREA, 196

Lancandones (Indi6s), 59, 175, 178

Laplanders, 180*

La Pena Tejada, 137

Lasso (Garcilaso de la Inca), 155

Lecointe, M., 91

Lemuria. (Vide Rutas)

Lescarbot, M., 100

Lestrygones, 194

"Life Ray/' (Holland), 86

"Light Pillars, 1 ' 83, 84, 85. (Vide also
Sun-Worshippers)

Lights ("Cold"), 66. (Vide also Per-
petual Lamps)

Lingam, The, 124-5. (Vide also Phal-
licism)

"Little Sun of Cuzco," The, 162

Livingstone (C. America), 106

Locomotion (legend of), 175

Lorenzano, F., 107

"Lost Ten Tribes," The, 148

"Lost World," 40 et seq. (Vide also
Conan Doyle)

Lucero, Fray Juan, 48, 146

Ludlow, General, 81

Lunadi, Federico, 184-5

"Luz del Dinero" (Money Light), 152-4

Lynch, Colonel Dr. Arthur, 71

M

MADEIRA, rio, 93

Magdalena, rio, 185

Mahucutch, 106

Mala Agua, rio (Bad Water river) , 1 70

Maiden Island, 185

Mammoths, 18, 19

Manco, 144

Manetho, the Mendesian, 77, 97

Manos, or Manoa, 147-8

Manu, 184

Maraj<5 (Brazil), 91 et seq. t 123 et seq.,

130, 130*

Maranon, rio, 8, 19, 23, 97, 186
Marcellinus, Ammianus, 78
Markham, Sir Clements, 160-1
Marquesas, 185

"Marquis of the Mines" (Brazil), 38
Marquitas, The, 194
Marriage, 87

Marsh, R. Oglesby, 88-9, 184
Martinius, Fray Martin, 30
Martyr, Peter (de Anghiera), 149, 150,

192

Mania, Mount (Guiana), 185*
Maryland (U.S.), ancient Irish in, 80*

INDEX 213

Masefield, John, 179
Mastodons (America), 18, 19, 186
Matto Grosso (Brazil), n, 58, 64, 67,

83-85
Mayas (C. America), 88, 103, 149, 158,

177, 178, 179, 1 80
McKittrick, prehistoric animal traps,

Cal.. 195

Means, Philip, 144
Medellin, story of man of, about lost

white cities of an ancient S. American

race, 49-53* 96
Melcarth, 84
Memphis, 85, 172
Men (king of the Mayas), 92
Menes (king in ancient Egypt), 92, 138
"Men in Black," 24 et seq., 96 et seq.

(Vide also Quetzalcoatl, Bochicha,

Manco Capac, Viracocha, Zuhe, World

Wars)

Mercurio, el Peruano, 147
Methuselah, 30
Metzli (Moon), 100
Mexico, 11-13, 104-5; Gulf of, 97
Micoatl, 99-100
Mills, Dr. (Ohio), 131
Minas Geraes, 39, 49
Mines (Lost), 38, 39, 4 1 - ( vide also

Gold)

Mississippi, 131
Mixtlan, 102
Moated Cities, 129. (Vide Chapter II

of this book)
Moeris, Lake, 168
Mohican (U.S.S.), 26
Moir, Reid, 89
"Monkey -Men," 16, 144
Monsters. (Vide Ante-diluvian,

Roosevelt-Goyaz Plateau, Easter

Island)

Montesinos, F., in, 142, 143, 191
Montezuma (name of culture-hero), 16;

last Aztec emperor, 107, 181
Moon, 13, 17, 21, 24, 29, 31, 32, 86, 87,

100, 109, 1 1 6, 150, 189, 196-200
Moon Island. (Vide Koaty)
Moon Temple, 162
Morass (Post- Andean), 134
Morcegoes, 71
"Moribeca." (Vide Mines)
Morris, Mount (N.W.T.), 193
Moscas, or Muyscas (S. America), 109,

H5

Mound-Builders, 130-1
Mu. (Vide Rutas)
Mua (Indians), 76
Mummies, 162
Mylodons, 192

N

NACXJT and Ranaual, 106
Nadir Shah, 158
Nafuca Indians, 68

214 INDEX

Nagualecas, 99

Nahuatls, 102, 102*

Nat or Nata, 24-5

Nata and Nena, 15

Nau, E., 150

Negro, rio, 136, 137, 139, 185

Neith, 127

Nemteresqueteba. (Vide Bochicha)

Neolithic Age, 115

Nephilim, 17, 174, 175

Neptune, 146, 184

Netto, Dr. LadislSfo, 125

Nile (Guatemala), 92

Noah, 13, 1 6, 25

North-pointing Statue, 43, 63, 92

Nueva Granada, 109

Nufiuamayu, 95

Nunez, H. B., 52*

Nuflez de Balboa, Vasco, 180

O

OBELISK, 91, 94. (Vide also Atlantean-

Brazil)
O'Breasal, or Hy-Brazil, 80, 81, 82.

( Vide also Atlantean-Brazil)
Obsidian, 131. (Vide also Heliographs)
"Obumbraculum," 85
Odin (S, America), 66, 106
Ogham, 8 1
Ogyges, 15, 29, 89
Olivia, Fray Anello, 142
Onkh, 132, ittust. 15
Onohualco, 102

"Oojah, or Ouija." (Vide Drums)
Ophir (in Brazil,) 149
Orej6nes, 27
Orinoco, 97
Osendowski, F., 174-5
Osiris, 85, 97
Ostrich, 140

O'Sullivan, Lieut. -Col., 63, 63*
Ousdal, Dr. Osbjorn, 123, 133
Ova-Herreros, 13

PACCARI-TAMPU, 144

Pachamac, 93, 193

Pachacuti (Inca), 143

Pacoval (Maraj<5), 123 et seq.

Painted Peruvian MSS., 148

Palenque, 101, 107, 178

"Pampas Enthral" (Argentine), 80*

Panch-Atta. ( Vide Pauch)

Pan" os Indians, 146-8. (Vide also von

Tschudi, JJ.)

Panuco (Mexico), 98, 99, 105, 108
Paranatinga, rio, 68
Paria (Indi6s), 52*

Patanios (or Patanian Indi6s), 24,* 80*
"Paterans," 137
"Path of the Dead/* 99-100
Pauch, or Panch-Atta, 84

Payquina, rio, 171, 171,* 173

"Peacock, Golden Throne," 158

Pearls, 131

Pedregal, San Agustin, 15

Pelasgians (or Libyans?), 21

Peplos, The, 22

"Perpetual Lamps," 85-6

Peru, 141-2, 143

Petroglyphs, 90, and illusts. 8-12;

93 > 941 r 3 2 ittust. 13 and caption in

133; 134 et seq., 135, 136-7, 138,

139, 142, 151, 185
Phallicism, 26, 125, 128; 132, illust.

15. (Vide also Lingam, Yoni,

Cannon)
Pharos, The, 16; 24, 127. (Vide also

Light Pillars, Pillars of Hercules)
Phoenicians (in Brazil), 87, 93, 134,

137-8, 139, 144. (Vide also Ophir,

Pauch)
Phrygian (S. American head-dress),

132, illust. 13

Physicists, 185.* (Vide also Light Pil-
lars, and Chapter 111)
Pillars of Hercules, 83
Pilquixta, 14
Pirua, 144
Pitcairn Island, 185
Pizarro, Francisco, 19, in, 156-7,

158, 159, 161, 1 88
Pizarro, Gonzalez, 159
Pizarro, Hernando, 160
Planets, 146. ( Vide also Sencis)
Plantain Leaves (S. American paper),

I 43~4- (Vide also Gilbar. N.)
Plato, 25, 78-9, 82
Plutarch, 22, 85
Poindexter, Miles, dedication, and 76-7,

116

Ponape (Carolines), 183
Popul Vuh, The, 15, 80, 99, 106, 128, 135
Portulanos (in ancient 33razil), 93-4
Potosi, 152-3

Potsdam, Observatory of, 187, 196
Prescott, Wm. Hickling, 182
Prester John, 100*
Price-Mars, Dr., 151
Psenophis, 21, 79
Psenth, 90, illusts. u, 12
Psonchis, 23, 79
Ptolemy, The Geographer, 82
Puna, Isla de, 164
Pygmies, 49, 51
Pyramids, 24, 26, 29, 52, 100-2, 127-30,

131, 144, 172, 189

"QOACUTEC, Qoahau, Qocaib," 106

"Qoaglgal," 65*

Quetzalcoatl, 29, 65, 65,* 66, 66,* 84, 85,
9i 97> 98, 100, 100,* 101, 102, 103-4,
105, 106, 107, in, 116, 117, 123, 128;
vide caption 18 in p. 133; 179, 181

INDEX

215

Quiches (Kings of the), 80, 84, 106
Quichua, or Quechuas, 91
Quilcas, 141, 142, 143, 148
Quinoans. (Vide Buamanga)
Quippus, or Quippos, 141-2, 148
Quito, 1 60

R
RA, and Vi-Ra, Raymi, 91, caption

10; 162
Ramac, 187
Ra-Mu, 187

Rainbows, 2getseq.,$i t 86
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 148
Rameses, Pharaoh, 132
Ramos, Bernardo de Azevedos da Silva,

36

Randle, Dr. (India Office Librarian), 118*
Rastrakuta-Govinda, 119
"Rayed Men," 132, illust. 18 and caption

bottom 133; 136-7, 139
"Red Sea," The (of Quetzalcoatl), 104,

1056, 107
Rimell, Raleigh, foreword, and vide

Fawcett

Rio de Janeiro, 36
Rivero y Ustariz, Mariano, 141
Rondonia. ( Vide foreword)
Roosevelt-Goyaz Plateau, 23; 75, 88;

89, 93, 94> 134, M<>
Royal Geographical Society of London,

Eng., 66, 68, 69, 71, 73
Ru, 184

Rufus, Publius Cornelius, 108
Russell, Dr. H. Norris, astronomer, 33
Rutas, 9, 20, 21, 28, 32, 82, 82,* no,

118, 129, 138, 139, 184, 186, 186,*

187, 190, 200

S

SACHSAHUAMAN, 163-4
Sacramento, rio, 146
Sahagun.Fray Bernardino, 15, 98, TOT, 102
Sahara, 141
Sahpuayacu, 141
St. Augustine, 85
St. Just (Cornwall), 183
St. Thomas (apostle), 108
Saint-Mery, 150
Samboes, 56, 57
Sampaya, Isla de, 95, 141*
San Agustin (Colombia, S.A.), 184-5
San Diego (Cal.), 172
San Domingo, (Vide Haiti and
* Dominica)

San Domingo ("Cori-Cancha"), 182
San Francisco (convent), 160
San Salvador, 91
Sansar, 82,* 118, 119, 184
Sanscrit, 66, 184, 187
Santa Cruz del Quiche, 175, 177
Santiago, 149
"Sar-Degon," 161, 184
"Sard Harker," 179

Sasquatch, The, 193

"Satanaxio," 116

Sawkins, Richard. (Vide Darien)

Schomburghk, Sir Robert, 134, 135,

185, 185*
"Scomalt," 17
Secret Native Societies (C. and S.

America), 164, 170, 175, 181, 182
Sekhet, 128
Seleidiva, 61
Sends, 146
Seneca, M. A., 61
Serapeum, 128, 132; 133, illust. 17;

133, caption
Serpent, 97, 98
Serra do Ciii9ora, 54, 58
Serra do Mar, 18
Serra do Roncador, 67, 70-1, 75
Serrano Indians, 166
"Sertao" (Brazil), 36 et seq.
"Shangri-La," 174
Shoshones Indians, 138
Shuara Indians, 144
Siberia, 18, 134
Sidonia, 95
Sierra Madre, 178

Sierra de Santa Marta, no; 132, illust.
18; 133, caption] 136

Smith, Professor Sir Graf ton Elliot, 79

Smithsonian Institution, 122-3

Smyth, Lieut. W. f 146, 184

"Snorer's Mountain." (Vide Serra do
Roncador)

Sodom and Gomorrah, 16

"Solanium Aureifolium," 95

Solon, 78

Sonchis. (Vide Psonchis)

South America, 19, 73, 76

Southey, Robert, 94

Spain, 141, 155-6

Spanish Galleon, 135

Spence, Lewis, 70, 94, 95

Spitzbergen, 20

Squier, Ephraim, 164

Stables, Dr. Gordon, 118*

Stairway Symbol (of Evolution), 90,
illusts.; 91; 132, illusts. 15, 19-21;
i33> 189; 198-9; 199 illust.

Stephens, J. Lloyd, 175, 177

Stonehenge, 115

Sua, or Suna (Sun), 116. (Vide also
Bochicha)

Submarine Vulcanism . ( Vide Vulcanism)

"Subterraneans" or Ancient Tunnels,
104, 152 et seq. t 167, 170, 170,* 172,
*73 I74~5 I77~8, 180, 181, (Vide
end-paper chart)

Sumer, kings of, 30

Sun (Gold of Cuzco), 161, 164, 168

"Sun, Central of the Cosmos, 97, 162,
164, 189, 199, 200. (Vide also Vira)

Sun-Pillars. ( Vide Light Pillars)

"Suns," 31, 135

2l6

INDEX

Sun-Worshippers, 24, 52, 84, 109, no,

129, 134. H* 142.* i?5. 189. 20
Suyas Indies, 68

T
TABAS (Thebes?), 132, Must. 13 and

caption

Tabasco, 102, 122-3
Tallies, 141-2
Tanis, 130

Tapados (caches), 153
Tapajos, rio, 63
Tapirape Indians, 71
Taprobane, 61; 82
Tapuya or Tapuyos Indians, 94-5
Tartary, 139
Tau, 130; 132, illust. 17
Tehuantepec, 179. (Vide also Amazons)
Tello, Professor Julio, 91, 94
Teocallis, 100
Teri, or Tore, 123, 126; 132, illust. 17;

133, caption
Tetzontli, 15
Thaumaturgists, 169
Thebes, 172. ( Vide also Tabas)
Theopompus of Chios, 21, 22, 78
Thmei, 169

Thomson, Paymaster, U.S.N., 27
Three-Master Ships (Easter Island), 27
Thugga, 95. 96
Tiahuanacu, 18, 18,* 19, 25,* 48-9; 90

illusts. 1-2; 132, illust. 14; 136, 185-

6, 1 86,* 187, 1 88, 189, 190, 197
Tibet, 61, 118, 118*
Ticcapato, Tito Cusi, 164, 165
"Tiger King," The, 48
Titans, 29, 195
Titicaca, Lago de, 19, 186
TlalpaHan, 100,* 102, 105, 107
Toledo, Don Francisco, 160
Toltecs, 79, 99
"Tomb of the Incas," The, 171, 172

(Vufcalso Arica)
Tonatiuh, 100

Torquemada, Fray Juan, 98, 99, 102, 108
Totem Poles, 102
Touaregs, 95-6, 122
Treasure "Derroteros", 93, 94, 102
Tnncomali, 61
Troano MS. (Mexico), 128
Troglodytes (Brazil), 70, 91
Troy, Wars of, 121
Trujillo, 165

Tschudi, Dr. J. J. von, 140, 148, 149, 182
Tuberculosis, 131
Tucuman, 153
Tula (Tulteca), 99
Tullan, Tulan, 99, 101, 102, 105-7
Tulliola (Cicero's daughter), 85
Tupac Amaru (Inca), 48, 176

A*$, no, 70.
Troglodytes)

(Vide also Medellin,

Uassu (Noah of Amazonas), 18

U-Booten (Nazi), 88

Ucayli, rio, 138, 147; MSS. of Indiana of,

121

Unta, 144
Uraeus, 128
Urim and Thummim, 169 (Vide also

Thmei)

Urubamba, rio, 64
Usamacinta, rio, 177-8
Uxmal, 178

VALERA, Dora Bias, 142, 143, 144

Valverde, Fray Vincente, 159

Varro, 30

Venezuela, 52*, 134

Venus (The Black), 151, (Vide also

Haiti) ; planet of cataclysm, 29-32, 86,

in, 112; symbol of coition, 199-200;

132, illust. 17

Vienna (congress of scientists of), 20, 32
Vira (Sun), 122, 142,* 161, 184, 189.

( Vide also Pirua)
Viracocha, 143, 189. (Vide also Men

in Black, Ayar Manco Capac)
Virgin Birth, 105
Vitreous (huaca artifact), 91, 94
Voodooism, 151
Votan (Odin, Woden, or Wodin), 106,

108, 178
Vulcanism, 9, 85, 87, 97, 99, 135, 195

W

WALL-PAPER (Incan), 164

Wells, H. G., 23, 51

West (The), 129

White and Bearded South American

"Indians," 47, 48, 49 et seq., 52,*

102, 103, 108, 116-17, 120-4
White House, The (S. America), 176
"White Mountains,' 1 The, 71
Wissier, Dr. Clark, 66
Wodan, Wodin, Woden, 65, 178. (Vide

also Votan)
World Wars, 87, 88. (Vide also Men

in Black)

X

XEQUBS, 116
Xingu, rio, 63, 70, 134, 135

YONI, 124-5
Yucatan, 102 .

Z

ZACHARIAS (Pope), So

Zagues, 109

"Zak Gazlem," 85

Zodiac, 88; 132, illust. 20; 133, captions

20 and 21 ; 145, 284
Zuhe. (Vide Bocfcfcha)

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