142 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
GUATEMALA. 
The following extract is taken from the work of Dr. S. Habel (a): 
Santa Lucia is a village in the Republic of Guatemala, in the Department of 
Esquintla, near the base of the Voleano del Fuego, at the commencement of the 
inclined plane which extends from the mountain range to the coast of the Pacific 
Ocean: *"* = s 
The sculptured slabs are in the vicinity of the village. The greater number of 
them form an extended heap, rendering it probable that there are others hidden 
from view that more extended researches would reveal. * * * All the seulp- 
tures, with the exception of three statues, are in low relief, nearly all being in cavo- 
relieyo, that is, surrounded by a raised border, the height of which indicates the 
elevation of the relief. The same kind of- relief was practiced by the ancient 
Assyrians and Egyptians. / 
In seven instances the sculpture represents a person adoring a deity of a different 
theological conception in each case. One of these seems to represent the sun, another 
the moon, while in the remaining five it is impossible to define their character, All 
these deities are represented by a human figure, of which only the head, arms, and 
breast are correctly portrayed, proving that the religious conceptions had risen to 
anthropomorphism, while the idols of the nations of Central America and Mexico, 
which have previously come to our knowledge, are represented by disfigured human 
forms or grotesque images. 
Four of the other sculptures represent allegorical subjects; two of them the myth 
of the griffin, the bird of the sun. 
The slabs on which the low reliefs are sculptured are of various sizes; the greater 
number of these, like those representing the deities, are 12 feet in length, 3 feet in 
width, and 2 feet in thickness. Nine feet of the upper part of these stones are occu- 
pied by the sculptures, while the lower 3 feet’appear to have served as a base. 
Several illustrations of these rock sculptures are presented, infra, as 
Figs. 1235 and 1236. It is evident that these very large slabs received 
their markings when they were in the locality in which they are now 
found so can be classed geographically. 
SECTION 2. 
SOUTH AMERICA. 
Alexander von Humboldt (a) gives general remarks, now condensed, 
upon petroglyphs in South America: 
In the interior of South America, between the second and fourth degrees of north 
latitude, a forest-covered plain is inclosed by four rivers, the Orinoco, the Atabapo, 
the Rio Negro, and the Cassiquiare. In this district are found rocks of granite and 
of syenite, covered with colossal symbolical figures of crocodiles and tigers, and 
drawings of household utensils, and of the sun and moon. The tribes nearest to its 
boundaries are wandering naked savages, in the lowest stages of human existence. 
and far removed from any thoughts of carving hieroglyphics on rocks. One may 
trace in South America an entire zone, extending through more than 8° of long: 
itude, of rocks so ornamented, viz, from the Rupuniri, Essequibo, and the moun- 
tains of Pacaraima, to the banks of the Orinoco and of the Yupura. These carvings 
may belong to very different epochs, for Sir Robert Schomburgk even found on the 
Rio Negro representations of a Spanish galiot, which must have been of a later date 
that the beginning of the sixteenth century; and this in a wilderness where the na- 
tives were probably as rude then as at the present time. Some miles from Encaramada 
J 
x 
A el ae 
