BOTH] THE SPIRITS OF THE MOUNTAIN 237 



172. Another example of this series of cases is the legend rehitive 

 to the cslebrated Kaietcur Fall (pi. 4), which I give here in the words 

 of Barrington Brown (Bro, 214), the discoverer of this wonder-spot: 



Once upon a time there was a large village above the fall, situated on the little 

 savanna, amongst the inhabitants of which was an old Indian, who had arrived at 

 that period of human existence, when his life had become a burden to himself and a 

 troulile to his relatives. Amongst other duties, there devolved upon his near rela- 

 tions the tediotis one of extracting the jiggers from his toes which there accumulated 

 day by day. These duties becoming irksome at last, it was arranged that the old 

 man should be assisted on his way to his long home, that spirit land lying two-days' 

 journey beyond the setting sun. He was accordingly transferred, with his pegall of 

 worldly goods, from his house to a woodskin on tlie river above the head of the great 

 fall, and launclied forth upon the stream. The silent flood bore him to its brink, 

 where the ru.>i)iiiig waters received him in their deadly grasp, bearing his enfeebled 

 body down to its watery grave in the ba.«in below. Not long after, strange to relate, 

 his woodskin appeared in the form of a jwinted rock, which to this day is seen not 

 far from our lower barometer station; while on the sloping mass of talus to the west of 

 the basin, a huge square rock is said to be his petrified pegall or canister. Thus has 

 the fall been named Kaieteur in memory of the victim of this tragic event. 



173. The remarkable petrogh'phs, scattered through the Guianas, 

 to which so many travelers have drawn attention, are in the same 

 way credited with a sup-'rnatural origin. Thus Schomburgk r?lates, 

 when at the Waraputa Rapids: "I was most anxious to carry away 

 part of one of the rocks . . . and neitlier threats nor promises could 

 induce any of our Indians to strike a blow against these* monuments 

 of their ancestors' sldll and superiority. They ascribe them to the 

 Great Spirit, and their existence was known to all the tribes met ^vith. 

 The greatest uneasiness was doj)icted upon the faces of our poor crew; 

 in the very abode of the Spirits, they momentarily expected to see 

 fire descend to punish our temerity" (ScG, 275). The Piapooos of 

 the lower Guaviar River ascribe such rock-gravings to their Mami- 

 naimis, or Water Spirits (Cr, 525, 529) . The amount of intelligence 

 displayed by the expression of such a belief was however, withm com- 

 paratively recent times, paralleled by that of a European Power, for 

 on the Iklontagnc d'Argent on the coast between Cayenne and the 

 River Oyapock, the rock-carvings were claimed by the Portuguese 

 to represent the coat-of-arms of Hiarles Y when they had a dispute 

 with the French over their boundary line (Cr, 145). 



174. The existence has been shown (Sect. 58) of a belief m the 

 origin of human and animal life from rocks or stones and in the trans- 

 formation of such sentient beings into the inorganic material similar to 

 that from which they have sprung. This transformation is regarded 

 not only as a natural departure from the normal course of events, but 

 also in the light of a punishment (Sect. 67). At Aramayka, a settle- 

 ment on the Mazaruni, close to Karamang River, the cliffs of Mara- 

 biacru become visible to the height of about one thousand feet, with 

 perpendicidar faces on the north. A remarkable detached peaked 



