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Updated: May 25, 2025
Most of the beautiful old pottery had been smashed, but among the fragments Lennon found several ceremonial stones and tablets, a bone awl, many obsidian arrowheads, and a few broken turquoise ornaments. His search was cut short by the return of Carmena. She carried a modern Indian basket-vase that would have been very convenient for holding Lennon's collection.
We have other evidence of intercourse between the two peoples; for the obsidian dug from the mounds, and perhaps the porphyry also, can be explained only by supposing commercial relations between them.
It seems to have been embedded in some reddish tufaceous matter; and may have been transported either by the aborigines or by natural means. The external saucer consists of compact obsidian, of a bottle-green colour, and is filled with finely cellular black lava, much less transparent and glassy than the obsidian.
"When I come to, there was Vahna spread-eagled on top of the nugget, and the old fellow with a beak jabbering away solemnly as if going through some sort of religious exercises. In his hand he had a stone knife you know, a thin, sharp sliver of some obsidian- like stuff same as they make arrow-heads out of. I couldn't lift a hand, being held down, and being too weak besides.
They carried on a considerable trade in it with the neighbouring islands; and from the consumption thus occasioned, and the quantity of obsidian which must have been broken in the course of manufacture, we may presume that this mineral has become scarce from the lapse of ages. We are surprised to see an Atlantic nation substituting, like the natives of America, vitrified lava for iron.
Perhaps the most disconcerting characteristic of that complex affair, the human organism, is the lack of continuity of its moods. The soul, so called, is as sensitive to physical conditions as a barometer: affected by lack of sleep, by smells and sounds, by food, by the weather whether a day be sapphire or obsidian. And the resolutions arising from one mood are thwarted by the actions of the next.
My excuse for entering into these details must be that some of the facts I have to offer are new. A bas-relief at Kabah, described in Mr. Stephens' account of his second journey, bears considerable resemblance to that on the so-called "sacrificial stone" of Mexico; and the warrior has the characteristic Mexican maquahuitl, or "Hand-wood," a mace set with rows of obsidian teeth.
In the ploughed fields in the neighbourhood we made repeated trials whether it was possible to stand still in any spot where there was no relic of old Mexico within our reach; but this we could not do. Everywhere the ground was full of unglazed pottery and obsidian; and we even found arrows and clay figures that were good enough for a museum.
He placed this bow near his feet and dived a second time under the branches, pulling out another object, which proved to be a quiver made of panther-skin filled with arrows. He examined each of these arrows carefully, trying their heads of flint and obsidian, and replaced them in such a manner that the feathered ends projected from the quiver.
Had I not found in some cases, a distinct centre of attraction in these nodules of obsidian, I should have been led to have considered them as residuary matter, left during the formation of the pearlstone, in which they are embedded, and of the sphaerulitic globules.
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