604 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [ETH, ANN. 38 
near by. When they returned from the fray they replaced the 
stones—each man the one he had originally shifted—and thus they 
had a reminder of how many had been slain. [The religious and 
other aspects of such stone heaps have been discussed elsewhere 
(WER, vr, sec. 174).] Brown also supplies a description of stones 
set up in a circle met with on a small open-wooded plain in the neigh- 
borhood of Itabay village, between the Ireng and the western elbow 
of the Rupununi. In the center of this opening there was a circle of 
upright slabs of greenish felstone porphyry, through the center of 
which the path led. The slabs were from 2 to 3 feet in height and 
some 5 to 6 feet apart, placed in a true circle of about 50 feet in diam- 
eter.... They had not been dressed, but their forms resulted 
from the manner in which they split up on weathering, and they were 
portions of the rocks of the neighborhood. On one was a froglike 
figure cut in deeply. . . . The Makusi travelers had bent down and 
broken some of the slabs, thus showing that they do not view them 
with any amount of reverence. The guide said he did not know 
anything about them (BB, 144). 
780. As to rock engravings (pl. 176), it is to be regretted that but 
little information of scientific value will be available until a complete 
survey of them, or certainly of the more important ones, can be com- 
pleted with casts, tracings, or good photographs. In the present 
state of our knowledge it seems idle to discuss any of the questions 
that have arisen as to their representation or meaning if, indeed, 
they have any. All that can be said definitely is that they are met 
with in the vicinity of rapids and falls, where the Indians traveling 
up or down are necessarily compelled to make a shorter or longer 
halt; in the neighborhood of permanent settlements; that instead of 
being the work of one individual each figure is probably the resultant 
labor of hundreds; and that, as on the upper Rio Negro, they are 
apparently being executed up to the present day. [The reader should 
consult Siidamerikanische Felszeichnungen (KGF) in this connec- 
tion. Among other things, the author recognizes certain of the mask- 
dance decorations in some of these engravings, but his general con- 
clusions will not, it seems to me, receive acceptance. He gives a good 
bibliography of the subject.]| The geographical limits along which 
the engravings are found are given by Schomburgk (SR, 1, 225) as 
having been traced by him through 700 miles in longitude and 500 
in latitude, or scattered here and there over an extent of 350,000 
square miles (ScE, 159). 
781. The most that this section can be of service for is to give the 
references only to the better-known examples in the Guianas, accord- 
ing to the rivers, etc., along which they have been found. Less im- 
portant ones, as those on the Mazaruni and Potaro, are omitted. 
