INDIAN ROCK-PICTURES 487 



stone which the Uaupes Indian wears suspended 

 from his neck, will understand that time is no object 

 to an Indian. I can fancy I see the young men 

 and women sitting in the cool of the morning and 

 evening, but especially in the moonlight nights, and 

 amusing themselves by scratching on the rock any 

 figure suggested by the caprice of the moment. A 

 figure once sketched, any one, even a child, might 

 aid in deepening the outlines. Indeed, the designs 

 are often much in the style of certainly not at all 

 superior to those which a child of five years old 

 in a village school in England will draw for you 

 on its slate ; and the modern inhabitants of the 

 Casiquiari, Guainia, etc., paint the walls of their 

 houses with various coloured earths in far more 

 artistic designs. 



Having carefully examined a good deal of the 

 so-called picture-writing, I am bound to come to 

 the conclusion that it was executed^by the ancestors 

 of Indians who at this day inhabit the region where 

 it is found ; that their utensils, mode of life, etc., 

 were similar to those still in use ; and that their 

 degree of civilisation was certainly not greater 

 probably less than that of their existing de- 

 scendants. The execution of the figures may have 

 ranged through several centuries, a period which 

 in the existence of a savage people is but a year in 

 that of the highly-civilised nations of modern Europe. 

 In vain shall we seek any chronological information 

 from the Indian, who never knows his own age, 

 rarely that of his youngest child, and who refers 

 all that happened before his own birth to a vague 

 antiquity, wherein there are no dates and rarely any 

 epochs to mark the sequence of events. 



