472 HIEROGLYPHIC RCCK-M.LKKS. 





Conoricliite, one hundred and forty leagues further eastward, 

 between the sources of the Rio Blanco and the Rio Esse- 

 quibo, we also meet with rocks and symbolical figures. I 

 have lately verified this curious fact, which is recorded in 

 the journal of the traveller Hortsman, who went up the 

 Rupunuvini, one of the tributary streams of the Essequibo. 

 Where this river, full of small cascades, winds between the 

 mountains of Macarana, he found, before he reached lake 

 Amucu, " rocks covered with figures," or (as he says in 

 Portuguese) with " varias letras." We must not take this 

 word letters in its real signification. We were also shewn, 

 near the rock Culimacari, on the banks of the Cassiquiare, 

 and at the port of Caycara in the Lower Orinoco, traces 

 which were believed to be regular characters. They were 

 however only misshapen figures, representing the heavenly 

 bodies, together with tigers, crocodiles, boas, and instru- 

 ments used for making the flour of cassava. It was impos- 

 sible to recognize in these ' painted rocks'* (the name by 

 which the natives denote those masses loaded with figures) 

 any symmetrical arrangement, or characters with regular 

 spaces. The traces discovered in the mountains of Uruana, 

 by the missionary Eray Ramon Bueno, approach nearer to 

 alphabetical writing ; but are nevertheless very doubtful. 



Whatever may be the meaning of these figures, and with 

 whatever view they were traced upon granite, they merit 

 the examination 01 those who direct their attention to the 

 philosophic history of our species. In travelling from the 

 coast of Caracas towards the equator, we are at first led to 

 believe that monuments of this kind are peculiar to the 

 mountain-chain of Encaramada ; they are found at the port 

 of Sedefio, near Caycara,f at San Rafael del Capuchino, 

 opposite Cabruta, and in almost every place where the 

 granitic rock pierces the soil, in the savannah which extends 

 from the Cerro Curiquima towards the banks of the Caura. 



* In Tamanac, tepumereme. (Tepu, a stone, rock ; as in Mexican, 

 tetl, a stone, and tepetl, a mountain ; in Turco-Tatarian, tepe.} The 

 Spanish Americans also call the rock covered with sculptured figures, 

 yiedras pintados ; those for instance, which are found on the summit of 

 the Paramo of Guanacas, in New Grenada, and which recall to mind ths 

 tepumereme of the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rupuauvini. 



t In the Mountains of the Tyrant, (Cerros del Tirana.} 



