338 WORSHIP or ROCKS AND STONES 



already observed, that, as it is very rare to find IL America 

 nephrite, jade, or compact feldspar, in its native place, we 

 may well be astonished at the quantity of hatchets which 

 are everywhere discovered in digging the earth, from the 

 banks of the Ohio as far as Chile. We saw in the 

 mountains of Upper Orinoco, or of Parime, only granular 

 granites containing a little hornblende, granites passing into 

 gneiss, and schistoid hornblendes. Has nature repeated on 

 the east of Esmeralda, between the sources of the Carony, 

 the Essequibo, the Orinoco, and the Eio Branco, the tran- 

 sition-formation of Tucutunemo reposing on mica-schist? 

 Does the Amazon-stone come from the rocks of euphotide, 

 which form the last member of the series of primitive rocks? 

 "We find among the inhabitants of both hemispheres, at 

 the first dawn of civilization, a peculiar predilection for cer- 

 tain stones ; not only those which, from their hardness, may 

 be useful to man as cutting instruments, but also for mine- 

 ral substances, which, on account of their colour and their 

 natural form, are believed to bear some relation to the orga- 

 nic functions, and even to the propensities of the soul. 

 This ancient worship of stones, these benign virtues attri- 

 buted to jade and haematite, belong to the savages of Ame- 

 rica as well as to the inhabitants of the forests of Thrace, 

 The human race, when in an uncultivated state, believes itself 

 to have sprung from the ground; and feels as if it were 

 enchained to the earth, and the substances contained in her 

 bosom. The powers of nature, and still more those which 

 destroy than those which preserve, are the first objects of 

 its worship. It is not solely in the tempest, in the sound 

 that precedes the earthquake, in the fire that feeds the vol- 

 cano, that these powers are manifested ; the inanimate rock ; 

 stones, by their lustre and hardness ; mountains, by their 

 mass and their solitude ; act upon the untaught mind with 

 a force which, in a state of advanced civilization, can no 

 longer be conceived. This worship of stones, when once 

 established, is preserved amidst more modern forms of wor- 

 ship ; and what was at first the object of religious homage, 

 becomes a source of superstitious confidence. Divine stones 

 are transformed into amulets, which are believed to preserve 

 the wearer from every ill, mental and corporeal. Although a 

 distance of five hundred leagues separates the banks of tha 



