Note II-3 — Chapter II · ANTIQUITIES OF THE ISTHMUS, COSTA RICA, MOSQUITO COAST, AND NICARAGUA.

Authorities on the Isthmian antiquities are not numerous. Mr Berthold Seemann claims to have been the first to discover stone sculptures near David in 1848, and he read a paper on them before the Archæological Institute of London in 1851. He also briefly mentions them in his Voy. Herald, vol. i., pp. 312-13, for which work drawings were prepared but not published. Some of the drawings were, however, afterwards printed in Bollaert's Antiq. Researches in N. Granada, (Lond., 1860,) and a few cuts of inscribed figures also inserted with farther description by Seemann in Pim and Seemann's Dottings, pp. 25-32. It is stated in the last-named work that M. Zeltner, French Consul at Panamá, whose private collection contained specimens from Chiriquí, published photographs of some of them with descriptive letter-press. Bollaert also wrote a paper on 'The Ancient Tombs of Chiriquí,' in Amer. Ethno. Soc., Transact., vol. ii., pp. 151, 159. On various occasions from 1859 to 1865, travelers or residents on the Isthmus, chiefly parties connected with the Panamá railway, sent specimens, drawings, and descriptions to New York, where they were presented to the American Ethnological Society, or exhibited before and discussed by that body at its monthly meetings, an account of which may be found in the Hist. Mag., vol. iii., p. 240, vol. iv., pp. 47-8, 113, 144, 176-7, 239-41, 274, 338, vol. v., pp. 50-2, vol. vi., pp. 119, 154, vol. ix., p. 158. A report on the Chiriquí antiquities by Dr Merritt was printed by the same society. The above, with slight mentions in Cullen's Darien, p. 38, from Whiting and Shuman's Report on Coal Formations, April 1, 1851, and in Bidwell's Isthmus, pp. 37-8, from Hay's Report, in Powles' N. Granada, are the only sources of information on the subject with which I am acquainted.