160 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



been eaten ; speaking of them under the vague and general name of 

 " mountain meal." It was thus during the Thirty Years' War in 

 Pomerania (at Gamin); in the Lausitz (at Muskau); and in the ter- 

 ritory of Dessau (at Klieken) ; and subsequently, in 1719 and 1733, 

 at the fortress of Wittenberg. (See Ehrenberg iiber das unsichtbar 

 wirkende organisehe Lelben, 1842, s. 41.) 



( 51 ) p. 41. " Figures graven on the rock." 

 In the interior of South America, between the 2d and 4th degrees 

 of North latitude, a forest-covered plain is enclosed by four rivers, the 

 Orinoco, the Atabapo, the' Rio Negro, and the Cassiquiare. In this 

 district are found rocks of granite and of syenite, covered, like those 

 of Caicara and Uruana, with colossal symbolical figures of crocodiles 

 and tigers, and drawings of household utensils, and of the sun and 

 moon. At the present time this remote corner of the earth is en- 

 tirely without human inhabitants, throughout an extent of more than 

 8000 square geographical miles. The tribes nearest to its boundaries 

 are wandering naked savages, in the lowest stage of human existence, 

 and far removed from any thoughts of carving hieroglyphics' on rocks. 

 One may trace in South America an entire zone, extending through 

 more than eight degrees of longitude, of rocks so ornamented ; viz., 

 from the Rupuniri, Essequibo, and the mountains of Pacaraima, to 

 the banks of the Orinoco and of the Yupura. These carvings may 

 belong to very different epochs, for Sir Robert Schomburgk even 

 found on the Rio Negro representations of a Spanish galiot (Reisen 

 in Guiana und am Orinoko, iibersetzt von Otto Schomburgk, 1841, 

 s. 500), which must have been x>f a later date , than the beginning 

 of the 16th century; and this in a wilderness where the natives were 

 probably as rude then as at the present time. But it must not be 

 forgotten that, as I have elsewhere noticed, nations of very different 

 descent, when in a similar uncivilized state, having the same disposi- 

 tion to simplify and generalize outlines, and being impelled by in- 

 herent mental dispositions to form rhythmical repetitions and series, 

 may be led to produce similar signs and symbols. (Compare Rela- 

 tion hist. t. ii. p. 589, and Martius iiber die Physionomie des Pflan- 

 zenreichs in Brasilien, 1824, s. 14.) 

 5 At the Meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of London, on the 



