Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/182

168 speaking of the building, mentions a chain of mountains that was called Chichiltic-calli. Casteñeda, on the other hand, is very circumstantial. He says first, explicitly, that the unpopulated region begins there, and that "the land ceases to be covered with thorny trees and the aspect of the country changes. The Gulf [of California] terminates there, the coast turns, the mountains follow the same direction, and one has to climb over them to get into the plains again. . . . The soil of this region is red. . . . The rest of the country is uninhabited, and is covered with forests of fir, the fruits of which tree are found in abundance. . . . There is a kind of oak there, the acorns of which. . . are as sweet as sugar. Watercresses are found in the springs, rosebushes, pulegium, and marjoram." In the vicinity he saw flocks of wild sheep, very large, with long horns and long hair. Finally, he describes the inhabitants as belonging to the wildest tribe which they had met in that country. They dwelt in isolated huts and lived solely by hunting. The ruin was roofless, extensive, and had been built of red earth.

A later writer, Matias de la Mota-Padilla, who was born at Guadalajara in 1688 and died there in 1766, gives a very detailed description of Chichiltic-calli. It is not probable that he had access to the manuscript of Casteñeda, for he was never away from Spanish America. He borrows nothing either in his account of the "red house" from Herrera, who copied Jaramillo. His statements are, then, derived