MALLERY.] PETROGLYPHS IN PUERTO RICO. 137 
I will not attempt here to give a formal explanation of these inscriptions, but may 
we not regard the spot in which they are found as having served for a rendezvous 
for the ancient Borrinquenos where they performed their sacrifices or the ceremonies 
of their religion? On the other hand, the appearance of these inscriptions is very 
peculiar. One of them might be considered a representation of those little figurines 
and statuettes of stone found in Mexico, in Mixieca, and in the country to the south. 
In another a head is curiously decorated with a diadem of feathers, and apparently 
represents one presiding at a feast served in the small circular basin set before him. 
The most noticeable thing in this group of inscriptions is the frequency of the grin- 
ning faces in a circle, often alone, often accompanied by two others placed at the 
sides, which are universally met with in every inscription found in the Greater and 
Lesser Antilles. The same may be said of the human figure apparently swaddled 
in cloths like a very young infant, the head and body more or less decorated, which 
is also very frequently found. 
Following these petroglyphs of Islote, we present a list of others discovered at 
* Puerto Rico, hastily describing them and giving a particular description only of those 
which are of the greatest interest. 
In the above-mentioned grotto of Cueva de los Archillas, near the village of 
Ciales, we observed the curious figures bearing traces of a crown and peculiar ear 
ornaments. In la Cueva de los Conejos, some distance from Arecibo, on the road 
from Utauado, we found a figure partly incised and partly painted in a dark red; it 
is very artistically fashioned, and represents the famous ‘‘guaya,” the monster 
spider of the Greater Antilles, of which the natives haveagreat dread. It is proba- 
ble that the ancient Borrinquenos also considered it with a-certain awe, and we find 
images of the same animal in la Cueva del Templo on the coast of Haiti, at Santo 
Domingo. A solitary rock of a reddish color, ina field of the hacienda of Don Pedro 
Pavez at la Carolina, a short distance from the Rio Pedras, bears a series of grima- 
cing faces in circles. Ona granitic rock of large dimensions, superimposed on a heap 
of rocks of the same character, in the midst of a grove of Indian trees and at the en- 
trance of the Cano del Indio into Rio la Ceiba, near Fajardo, on the east side, are 
found three swaddled human figures, the heads decorated with various ornaments. 
On a black rock in the Rio Arriba, one of the branches of the Rio de la Ceiba, is a 
petroglyph which presents but little that is of interest. 
On the Loma Munoz, near the Rio Arriba above mentioned, and on the summit of 
the hill, stands a dark rock with smooth face protected by another mass of rock, 
forming a sort of shelter on which is an inscription composed of a number of incised 
grinning faces. At the confluence of the Rio Blanco and the Rio de la Ceiba, in the 
district of Fajardo, is a series of violent rapids formed by immense rocks of a granitic 
character, on which are cut a large number of other grimacing faces and also some 
swaddled figures, and other incisions which are not of interest. 
BAHAMA ISLANDS. 
Lady Edith Blake, wife of Sir Henry Arthur Blake, formerly governor 
of the Bahama islands, has kindly furnished the following information 
and sketches (Figs. 100, 101, and 102), relating to petroglyphs in the 
Bahama islands. Lady Blake says: 
The carvings are on the walls of an ‘‘ Indian hole,” also called Hartford cave, in 
the northern shore of a small island in Rum Cay, one of the Bahama group. Rum 
Cay measures 5 miles from north to south and about 8 or 9 from east to west. It 
lies 20 miles northwest of Watlings island, the San Salvador of Columbus. 
The cave is situated on the seashore about a mile and a half from the western 
point of the island to the eastward of a bluff, close to which is a ‘puffing hole,” 
through which the waves blow when the seas roll in from the north. The cave is 
