RATT.] ROCK-SCULPTURES IN MARYLAND AND ARIZONA. 63 



A similar figure, consisting of two concentric circles with a straight 

 line running out from the larger circle, occurs, among other carvings, on one 

 of the many sculptured boulders seen by Mr. Bartlett in the valley of the 

 Gila River, in Arizona. His representation of this boulder is here copied 

 as Fig. 52. "I found hundreds of these boulders," he says, "covered with 

 rude figures of men, animals, and other objects of grotesque forms, all 

 pecked in with a sharp instrument. Many of them, however, were so much 

 defaced by long exposure to the weather, and by subsequent markings, that 

 it was impossible to make them out. Among these rocks I found several 

 which contained sculptures on the lower side, in such a position that it 

 would be impossible to cut them where they then lay. Some of them 

 weighed many tons, and it would have required immense labor to place 

 them there, and that too without an apparent object. The- natural infer- 

 ence was, that they had fallen down from the summit of the mountain after 

 the sculptures were made on them.* A few only seemed recent; the others 

 bore the marks of great antiquity. 



"Like most of the rude Indian sculptures or markings which I have 

 seen, I do not think these possess any historic value, as many suppose. 

 Where an ingenious Indian, for the want of other employment, cuts a rude 

 figure of a man or an animal on a rock in some prominent place which his 

 people make it a practice to resort to, others, with the example before them, 

 endeavor to compete with their brother artist, and show their skill by sim- 

 ilar peckings. One draws an animal such as he sees ; another makes one 

 according to his own fancy; and a third amuses himself with devising gro- 

 tesque or unmeaning figures of other sorts. Hence we find these sculptured 

 rocks in prominent places." 



Referring to the special assemblage to which the block here figured 

 belongs, he observes: — 



"After crossing a plain for about five miles, we reached the object of 

 our search, which consisted of a pile of large boulders, heaped up some 

 forty or fifty feet above the plain, and standing entirely alone. Such of 

 these rocks as present smooth sides are covered with sculptures, rudely 

 pecked in, of animals and men, as well as of various figures, apparently 



* The boulders were lying at the Lase of a bluff. 



