Page:Nicaraguan Antiquities (1886).djvu/49

 formed only by an evenly curved, broadly oval elevation, with two circular cavities to mark the eyes, an irregularly triangular one for the nose, and a linear one for the mouth. The chest was evenly rounded, the arms only indicated by two round bands along the breast, ending abruptly with five narrow, round staves, placed at right angles to the arms, and designed to represent the fingers. The lower part of the slab with the legs was lost. Above the head were two sugar-loaf-shaped elevations, and above these a third one with parallel sides, downwards rounded. The slab had square incisions at the same height with the neck and the hands. The length of the figure from the crown of the head to the beginning of the hip was 82 cm. The length of the face was 32 cm.; its breadth 20 cm. The breadth across the shoulders was 24 cm.

Several fragments of broken statues were found on the plateau, but so shattered, disfigured, and intermixed with one another, that it would have taken much time and patience to reconstruct them. Several of the statues, mentioned by as being in comparatively good condition, for inst. his nos. 3, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, and 18 were no more to be found in the place. Some of these have possibly been destroyed by human violence or by the effects of the climate during the thirty years between our visits, others may have been carried off to be deposited in museums or to form the hearth-stone of some Indian rancho.

In general, the statues of this locality chiefly remind of the last described group of statues at Punta del Sapote. Perhaps, from an artistic point of view, they must be considered as inferior even to these. None of the statues at Punta de las Figuras can be compared as a work of art, to the figures of the mound 1 at Punta del Sapote.

The fact that in most of the statues, found in Zapatera, the organs of generation were represented, and often more conspicuous than natural, gives corroboration to the suggestion of that a phallic worship or a worship of the reciprocal principles existed among the Niquirans.