country, and had many encounters and wars with the Indians. He was so brave and valiant a man, that the Indians feared him, and began to come in peaceably. In crossing a great river on his horse, he was drowned. Afterwards Garcia de Lerma was appointed governor of that land.
There is a province, seven or eight leagues from the town and port of Santa Martha, inland, called Bonda, where there are large villages, but the country is very rugged and
and fifty cavalry, each with two or three spare animals, in search of Zenu. They marched inland through the dense forests, and at length reached a wide open plain, where the cavalry chased the deer. Here they came to some huts surrounded by a vast number of mounds or tumuli. This was the general cemetery of the surrounding country, where all the dead were buried, with their riches, food and drink. Heredia ordered the place to be pillaged. On the first day twenty-four wooden idols covered with gold plates, and some golden bells were collected. Heredia then marched further inland, in search of the place where the gold is found; but the country was very difficult, his provisions were failing him, and he eventually retreated to Carthagena with an immense quantity of gold, in June 1534. Father Simon tells us that all who robbed these tombs died in extreme poverty.
The cemetery of Zenu was composed of thousands of tumuli, some conical, others oblong. When an Indian died, a hole was opened, large enough to contain the body, his arms and ornaments, with some jars of chicha and heaps of maize, a stone for grinding it, and his wives and servants. The latter were first made drunk, and then buried alive. One mound was so large that the Spaniards discerned it at a distance of a league, and they called it the devil's tomb. Gold ornaments were found in almost all these tumuli. They were in the form of all kinds of animals, from a man to an ant, and 30,000 dollars' worth was taken from a single mound. The gold came from a great distance, and was obtained from other Indian tribes, by the men of Zenu, in exchange for hammocks, salt, and dried fish.
In recent times numerous gold ornaments have been dug up in the neighbourhood of the ancient Zenu, which possess considerable merit as works of art. See a description of some of them by Uricoechea. Memoria sobre los Antiguedades Neo-Granadinos por Ezekiel Uricoechea, p. 39. See also Noticias Historiales de Fray Pedro Simon, pte. iii. Not. i. No. 55, and Descubrimiento de la Nueva Granada por El Coronel Joaquim Acosta, cap. vii., p. 120. Cieza de Leon accompanied the expedition of Heredia to Zenu or Cenu, and mentions the immense quantity of gold found in the sepulchres. See my translation, pp. 221–8.
