Page:Researches in the Central Portion of the Usumatsintla Valley.djvu/38

30 the lake has no beach; but I think it probable that ducks, herons, and pelicans frequent the lake in the dry season when the water has fallen perhaps full five metres and large portions of the shore are above water. We found the water very deep everywhere, and therefore used only oars and never poles. Returning from the southwest arm, we skirted the southern shore and the inlets on that side, and came to an exceedingly beautiful soutliern passage, which led back to the main or large eastern basin. Along this passage — on our left as we passed through — we again saw great cliffs rising perpendicularly from the water. These we also investigated in the hope of finding pictorial representations, and to our great joy we discovered three separate large pictures. The central picture appeared to me to be the most interesting and the best preserved. At a height of one and one-half metres above the surface of the water (in September) a drawing was visible executed in bold black lines, which I conceived to be the representation of the jaws of a monster (the eye was especially distinct) in the act of swallowing a man head foremost. On the right (from the beholder) a smaller grotesque face develops out of the upper scrollwork, and on the left or at the back the head of the monster terminates in plumage (Fig. 9). The drawing is fifty-two centimetres high and fifty-seven wide. About one metre above this picture a diminutive man (about forty centimetres in height) is very crudely painted, also in black. Further up, a little to the right, are daubed large red hands (Fig. 10).

At the right of the central picture, in spite of the washing away by torrents of rain and the luxuriant vegetation, three and one-half metres above the surface of the water, we could discern the picture of a yellowish foot on a red ground (that is, a picture of the sole of the foot, with the toes pointing upward), and above this in red outlines on a yellowish ground an overturned pot (?) covered with red dots, from the lower edge of which