tures, because the natives, before the Spanish conquest,
used timber for building, but owing to the abundance of gold in their
brooks and rivers, they developed skill in gold-working, and produced
fine ornaments of wonderful beauty. Many hollow figures have been found,
evidently cast from molds, representing men, beasts, and birds, etc.
Stone-cutting was also an art of this ancient race, sometimes applied to
making idols bearing hieroglyphs.

When the Spaniards invaded them to take their gold and precious stones,
the "Chibchas," who then held the Colombian table-land and valleys,
threw large quantities of those valuables into a lake near Bogota, the
capital. It was afterward attempted to recover those treasures by
draining off the water, but only a small portion was found; and in the
present year (1903) a new engineering attempt has been made. A Spanish
writer, in 1858, asserted that evidence was found in the caves and mines
that in ancient times the Colombians produced an alloy of gold, copper,
and iron having the temper and hardness of steel. On a tributary of the
River Magdalena there are many curious stone images, sometimes with
grotesquely carved faces.

Turning next to the mound-builders, in the Ohio and upper Mississippi
Valley, we find traces of an extinct civilization in high mounds,
evidently artificial, extensive embankments, broad deep ditches,
terraced pyramids, and an interesting variety of stone implements and
pottery. Some mounds were for burial-places, others for sacrificial
purposes, others again as a site for building, like those we have seen
in Mexico and Maya. Many enclosures contain more than fifty acres of
land; and one embankment is fifty miles long. Among the relics
associated with those works are articles of pottery, knives, and copper
ornaments, hammered silver, mica, obsidian, pearls, beautifully
sculptured pipes, shells, and stone implements. The mounds found in some
of the Gulf States seem to confirm a theory that the mound-builders were
the ancestors of the Choctaw Indians and their allies, and had been
driven southward.

In the lower Mississippi Valley, eastward to the seacoast, there are
many large earthworks, including round and quadrilateral mounds,
embankments, canals, and artificial lakes. Similar works can be traced
to the southern extremity of Florida. Some were constructed as sites for
large buildings. The tribes to whom they are due are now known to have
been agricultural--gro