148 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



general deluge, repeopled the earth by converting stones into 

 human beings." This myth, \vhich is the fruit of the lively 

 imagination of these tribes, and which reminds us of that of 

 Deucalion and Pyrrha, shows itself in a somewhat modified 

 form among the Tamanacs of the Orinoco. When these 

 people are asked how the human race survived this great 

 flood, the age of ivaters of the Mexicans, they unhesitatingly 

 reply, " that one man and one woman were saved by taking 

 refuge on the summit of the lofty mountain of Tamanacu, 

 on the banks of the Asiveru, and that they then threw over 

 their heads the fruits of the Mauritia palm, from the kernels 

 of which sprang men and women, who again peopled the 

 earth." Some miles from Encaramada there rises in the 

 midst of the savannah the rock of Tepu-Mereme; i.e., the 

 " painted rock," which exhibits numerous figures of animals 

 and symbolical signs, having much resemblance to those 

 which we observed at some distance above Encaramada, 

 near Caycara, (7 5' to 7 40' north lat., and 66 28' to 

 67 23' west long.) Similarly carved rocks are found be- 

 tween the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo (2 5' to 3 20' lat.) ; 

 and what is most striking, also 560 miles further eastward in 

 the solitudes of the Parime. The last-named fact is proved 

 beyond a doubt, by the journal of Nicolas Hortsmann of 

 Hildesheim, of which I have seen a copy in the handwriting 

 of the celebrated d' Anville. That simple and modest traveller 

 wrote down every day on the spot whatever had struck him. as 

 worthy of notice ; and his narrative deserves perhaps the more 

 confidence from the fact that the great disappointment he ex- 

 perienced in having failed in the object of his researches, 

 which was the discovery of the Lake of Dorado, with its 

 lumps of gold and a diamond mine (which proved to be merely 

 rock crystal of a very pure kind), led him to look with a 

 certain degree of contempt on all that fell in his way. On the 

 bank of the Rupunuri, at the point where the river, winding 

 between the Macaraua mountains, forms several small cascades ; 

 and before reaching the country immediately surrounding 

 the Lake of Amucu, he found, on the 16th of April, 1749, 

 " rocks covered with figures,'' or, as he says in Portuguese, 

 " de v arias letras" (with various letters or characters). We 

 were shown, at the rock of Culimacari, on the banks of the 

 Cassiquiare, signs said to be characters drawn by line and rule : 



