476 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. 



the rock, the granite of that region having often three 

 or more thin coats comparable to those of an onion, 

 as if the cooling down had not been equable. 1 I 

 immediately set to work to copy, and the Indians 

 of their own accord cleared out the earth and lichens 

 which had filled up some of the lines. As it was 

 impossible to copy all, I selected those figures which 

 were most distinct, and those which, by their fre- 

 quent repetition, might be considered typical. That 

 marked A (Fig. 17), for instance, varying only slightly 

 in the details, was repeated several times. It was 

 not possible to draw all by hand to the same scale, 

 but as I measured most of the figures, that defect 

 can easily be remedied in recopying them. 



In all the drawings which illustrate this chapter, 

 the small figures give the dimensions in feet and 

 inches. When underlined they show the entire 

 length of the object copied, as 3/10 in the centre 

 figure of Fig. 17 means that it is 3 feet 10 inches 

 long ; otherwise they indicate the length of the line 

 at which they are written. Thus 2/5 on the right 

 side of A shows that the longer side of the oblong 

 is 2 feet 5 inches long, and the cross line on the 

 right is 4 feet long. 



As I sketched, I asked the Indians, "Who had 

 made those figures, and what they represented ? " but 

 received only the universal reply of the Indian 

 when he cares not to tell or will not take the trouble to 

 recollect, " Quien sabe, patron ? " (" Who knows ? "). 

 Hut I understood enough of Barre to note that in 



1 [For drawings of such onion-like rocks see Plate x. in my Amazon and 

 Rio Negro. It occurs on every scale from tljat of moderate-sized boulders up 

 to \vh>)e m.iuntnins. It is seen on a great scale in the huge domes of the 

 Yosemite valley, and is now believed to be the result of a process of aerial 

 decomposition due to the action of sun and rain. En.] 



