igoo-i.] Spanish Documents Relative to the Canary Islands. 59 



Inscriptions of Tejeleita. 



" They are sculptured on prisms of basalt which form a steep rock 

 five or six metres high. Some of them have given way. The rock 

 faces the west, being thus protected from rain and the prevailing winds. 

 The characters have been also traced with a stone chisel, like those of 

 La Dehesa, though basalt is much harder than lava : — See Inscriptions 

 VII, VIII, IX., X. 



Inscriptions of the Port of La Caleta. 



" These are also engraved on prisms' of basalt which form a wall 

 about three metres high, as well as on others fallen away from this to 

 the sea-shore. In these sites are vestiges of the habitations of the 

 Bimbapes or aborigines of Hierro, shell-heaps and kitchen-middens, 

 small altars, stew-holes or ' pireos ' for sacrifice. Many of the prisms 

 have fallen away : — See Inscriptions XI to XXVI 



Inscriptions of La Candia. 



" They are engraved in a cave which was formed at a salto or 

 jutting rock at the base of the ravine {barranco)." — See Inscription 

 XX VII 



There are two more in this group, but they are too imperfect to 

 admit of satisfactory decipherment. Such then is the material which 

 Dr. Bethencourt has furnished to shed light upon the ancient history 

 of the Canary Islands. Having studied the Northern Turanian 

 characters as found in many lands and ages, from the Sinaitic of 

 hoar antiquit)^ to the Etruscan and Celt- Iberian of a pre-Christian 

 century or two, and from the Buddhist Indian of the fourth century 

 B.C. and the Siberian of the fifth A.D., to those of the American 

 Mound-Builders as late as the thirteenth century, the writer had no 

 difficulty in identifying the lines of the Virgin of Candelaria, and the 

 ruder outlines of the rock-faces, with what is best known as Etruscan 

 script, although it is morally certain that its writers in the Canaries 

 never saw Etruria. Copies of the interpretations now submitted have 

 been sent not only to Dr. Bethencourt, to whose courtesy the writer is 

 indebted for his knowledge of the inscriptions, but also to Mr. O'Shea, 

 the well-known author of " La Maison Basque," " La Tombe Basque," 

 and many other valuable works in English, French and Spanish, who 

 will submit them to the critical judgment of the best Basque scholars. 



