82 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



(12) p. 6 " JVb hewn stone." 



Representations of the sun and figures of animals have cer- 

 tainly been found graven in rocks on the banks of the Orinoco, 

 near Caicara, where the woody region borders on the plain, 

 but in the Llanos themselves not a trace of these rough memo- 

 rials of earlier inhabitants has ever been discovered. It is to 

 be regretted that no accurate account has reached us of a 

 monument which was sent to Count Maurepas, in France, and 

 which, according to Kalm, was discovered in the prairies of 

 Canada, 900 French leagues (about 2700 English miles) west 

 of Montreal, by M. de Verandrier, while engaged on an 

 expedition to the coast of the Pacific Ocean.* This tra- 

 veller met in the plains with huge masses of stone erected by 

 the hand of man, on one of which there was an inscription 

 believed to be in the Tartar languagef. How can so important 

 a monument have remained uninvestigated ? Can it actually 

 have borne an alphabetical inscription, or are we not rather 

 to believe that it must have been an historical picture, like 

 the so-called Phoenician inscription, which has been discovered 

 on the bank of the Taunton river, and whose authenticity has 

 been questioned by Court de Gebelin? I indeed regard it as 

 highly probable that these plains were once traversed by civil- 

 ised nations, and it seems to me that this fact is proved by the 

 existence of pyramidal grave-works or burrows and bulwarks 

 of extraordinary length, between the Rocky Mountains and the 

 Alleghanys, on which Squier and Davis have now thrown new 

 light in their account of the ancient monuments of the Missis- 

 sippi valley . J M. de Verandrier was despatched, about the year 

 1746, on this expedition by the Chevalier de Beauharnois, 

 Governor-General of Canada ; and several Jesuits in Quebec 

 assured Kalm that they had actually had this so-called inscrip- 

 tion in their hands, and that it was graven on a small tablet 

 which was found inlaid in a hewn pillar. I have in vain requested 

 several of my friends in France to make inquiries regarding 

 this monument, in the event of its being in the Collection of 

 Count Maurepas. I have also found equally uncertain ac- 



* See Kalm's Reise, Th. iii. p. 416. 



t ArchcBologia, or Miscellaneous Tracts published by the Society of 

 Antiquarians of London, vol. viii. 1787, p. 304. 

 $ Relat. hist. t. iii. p. 155. 



