CHAPTER XXVII 



INDIAN ROCK-PICTURES: ENGRAVED ROCKS ON THE 

 RIO NEGRO AND CASIQUIARI (COMMONLY CALLED 

 INDIAN PICTURE-WRITING) 



[WHILE residing at Piura on the sea-coast of Peru 

 in 1863, and being incapacitated by illness for 

 outdoor work, Spruce wrote out a description of 

 these curious works of art illustrated by the draw- 

 ings he was able to make of some of them, and with 

 an explanation of their meaning given him by the 

 Indians who were with him and to whom they were 

 familiar. He also skives his own view as to their 



O 



probable age, and as to the causes that led to their 

 production. In this paper he does not refer to the 

 best known of these Picture-writings on the rocks 

 of Pedra Island, near the mouth of the Rio Branco, 

 which are briefly described in his Journal. (See 

 vol. i. p. 260.) This paper refers solely to the 

 examples of which he made drawings on the 

 Casiquiari and Uaupes rivers.] 



INDIAN PICTURE-WRITING l 



When I ascended the Casiquiari in December 

 1853, I charged my pilot, an intelligent Indian of 



1 In his Journal (1851), when describing the figures on Pedra Island (Lower 

 Xegro), he protested against the use of the term " picture-writing" as con- 

 veying the erroneous idea that they are in any sense writings or hieroglyphics. 

 T \\L-lve years later he uses the popular term, though showing that it is an 

 incorrect one. 



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