

ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 103 



forest region joins the plain, we have indeed found repre- 

 sentations of the sun, and figures of animals, cut on 

 the rocks : but in the Llanos themselves no traces of these 

 rude memorials of earlier inhabitants have been discovered. 

 It is to be regretted that we have not received any more 

 complete and certain information respecting a monument 

 which was sent to Prance to Count Maurepas, and which, 

 according to Kalm, had been found by M. de Yerandrier in 

 the Prairies of Canada 900 miles west of Montreal, in the 

 course of an expedition intended to reach the Pacific. 

 (Kalm's Reise, Th. iii. S. 416.) This traveller found in the 

 middle of the plain enormous masses of stone, placed in an 

 upright position by the hand of man, and on one of them 

 was something which was taken to be a Tartar inscription. 

 (Archseologia : or Miscellaneous Tracts, published by the 

 Society of Antiquaries of London, vol. viii., 1787, p. 304.) 

 How is it that so important a monument has remained 

 unexamined? Can it really have contained alphabetical 

 writing ? or is it not far more probably a pictorial history, 

 Hke the supposed Phoenician inscription on the bank of the 

 Taunton River? I consider it, however, very probable 

 that these plains were once traversed by civilised nations : 

 pyramidal sepulchral mounds, and entrenchments of extra- 

 ordinary length, found in various places between the Rocky 

 Mountains and the Alleghanies, and on which Squier and 

 Davis (in the "Ancient Monuments of the Mississipi 

 Valley") are now throwing a new light, appear to confirm this 

 supposition. (Relation Hist., T. iii. p. 155.) Verandrier had 

 been sent on his expedition by the Chevalier de Beauharnois, 



