136 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
“Everywhere on the surface of this stone are noticed symbols, birds, quadrupeds, 
fantastic reptiles, signs of the sun, days, months, and a quantity of objects whose 
character is imitated in manuscripts and rituals. There can be no doubt that we are 
in the presence of a monument devoted to the gods and bearing legends relative to 
their worship. M. the minister of Fomento, D. Vicente Rivera Palacio, in 1877 
made several attempts at excavation in the Plaza Mayor of Mexico, to recover this 
important monument, but all search remained unfruitful.” 
This stone is supposed to be buried beneath the Place d’Armes at Mexico. 
Mexican petroglyphs are also discussed and figured by Chavero (q). 
It would seem from these and other descriptions of and allusions to 
petroglyphs in Mexico, that at the time of the Spanish conquest they 
were extant in large numbers, though now seldom found. Perhaps the 
Spaniards destroyed them in the same spirit which led them to burn up 
many of the Mexican pictographs on paper and other substances. 
A number of illustrations of the Mexican pictographice writings are 
given below under various headings. 
SECTION 4. 
WEST INDIES. 
The valuable paper of A. L. Pinart (a), giving a description of the 
petroglyphs found by him in the Greater and Lesser Antilles, is received 
too late for reproduction of the illustrations. He explored a number of 
the groups of the West Indies with varying success, but found that the 
island of Puerto Rico was the one which now furnishes the greatest 
amount of evidence of development in the pictographic art. His 
marks translated with condensation appear below. 
PUERTO RICO. 
The first petroglyph to be mentioned is found at la Cueva del Islote, on Punta 
Braba, about 5 leagues east from Arecibo and on the north side of the island of Puerto 
Rico. The grotto is found in an immense blackish mass of igneous rock, forming a 
point projecting into the sea, which beats furiously against it; it communicates 
with the sea at the foot, and the water entering this passage, which is quite narrow, 
produces a terrific roaring followed soon after by veritable thunder claps. The 
people of the neighborhood have a superstitious fear of it, and it is only with great 
difficulty that anyone can be found to accompany one there. The entranee on 
the land side is toward the east—a yawning crevasse, filled partly with rub- 
bish and partly by the stunted vegetation of the coast. On penetrating to the in- 
terior we find, after following a short but wide passage, a pyriform chamber 20 
meters in diameter. In the ceiling a very narrow crack admits a tay of light which, 
reflected in the water of the sea, filling the bottom of the cave, produces a bluish 
twilight. Notwithstanding this twilight, we are obliged to carry torches to distin- 
guish objects. All around us, but especially over the point where the sea enters in, 
are to be seen the inscriptions represented here. The incisions are very deep, and~ 
the edges are generally dulled by the blows of the hammer; in certain spots, toward 
the lower part of the grotto, several inscriptions are partially effaced by the action 
of the sea, but those of the upper part are in a remarkable state of preservation. 
Beneath certain principal figures of the groups are little circular basin-like depres- 
sions cut in the rock with a trench running down toward the bottom. 
