The Rock of the Spear is a great granite rock on a plateau less than twenty miles from Abeto Rojo, said to be the tip of a colossal spear driven into the earth. It names and governs the region and has a declared lord, the Lord of the Rock of the Spear.
| Type | Place (landmark) |
| Spanish entry | Roca de la Lanza |
Description
The ground rises “very gradually” to the plateau. At sunset the rock stands silhouetted where the sun sets, leaning at sixty degrees, point to the east.
It is “an enormous granite rock that does not belong to that place”: porous gray granite in limestone country, with embedded mineral, sharp cuts, major veins and fine grain, set in stone “that turns gray over black”. Only the spear’s tip shows. A white dust “that is not stone” lies at its sides, perhaps “rib bone of something giant”. Nearby are “graceful rocks of the new world”, semiprecious stones favored by the Aztecs and other peoples.
Crater and entrance
A crater surrounds it, as if from “an embedded meteorite”. Thickets growing in it, piled there by someone, partly hide an entrance dug into the base, marked by a nailed sign. From the cave blow wind, a sweetish smell “that is not nice”, like feces or death, and flies. Measurements of the base’s width disagree.
Terrain
The plateau drops three or four meters to a grassier plain (“if you fall, you hit hard”), so the site is isolated yet visible from afar. The region also has scattered outcrops, the Rocks of Death (“where some have had an accident”) and a dangerous cistern with rocks at the bottom. Of the two roads to the rock, custom says to take neither: “one has to go sort of down the middle”.
Conflicting accounts
- Legends say it fell from the sky; others note it “does not look like a meteoric rock”.
Open questions
- What the sign says, who placed it, and what lies inside.
- What the Lord of the Rock is (office, creature, dead) and what authority he holds.
- Why one must go between the roads.
- Whether the dust is bone; whether the Rocks of Death and the cistern belong to the same formation.