- [Footnote: The origin and elements of the civilisation introduced are
attributed to two mystical forms, Bochica (Botschica) and Nemterequeteba which are often confounded together. The first of these is still more mythical than the second; for it was only Botschica who was regarded as divine, and made almost equal to the Sun itself. His fair companion Chia or Huythaca occasioned by her magical arts the overflowing of the valley of Bogota, and for so doing was banished by Botschica from the earth, and made to revolve round it for the first time, as the moon. Botschica struck the rock of Tequendama, and gave a passage for the waters to flow off near the field of the Giants (Campo de Gigantes) in which the bones of elephant-like mastodons lie buried at an elevation of 8250 (8792 Engl.) feet above the level of the sea. Captain Cochrane (Journal of a Residence in Colombia, 1825, Vol. ii. p. 390) and Mr. John Ranking (Historical Researches on the Conquest of Peru, 1827, p. 397), state that animals of this species are still living in the Andes, and shed their teeth! Nemterequeteba, also called Chinzapogua (enviado de Dios) is a human person, a bearded man, who came from the East, from Pasca, and disappeared at Sogamoso. The foundation of the sanctuary of Iraca is sometimes ascribed to him and sometimes to Botschica, and as the latter is said to have borne also the name of Nemqueteba, the confusion between the two, on ground so unhistoric, is easily accounted for.
My old friend Colonel Acosta, in his instructive work entitled Compendio de la Hist. de la Nueva Granada, p. 185, endeavours to prove by means of the Chibcha language that]*
