312 HISTORICAL FOOTPRINTS IN AMERICA. 



and, it can scarcely be doubted, include inscriptions of the previous 

 century. 



^ par 



MORO insoriptioh: a.d. 1606. 



The name of the old Spanish explorer who found time to engrave 

 this unfaithful memorial of his visit is no longer decipherable, in con- 

 sequence perhaps of the haste of its recorder, who thus tells us that 

 on the 16th April, (?) 1606, he passed the Moro Rock with despatch. 

 Older records than this, dated as well as undated, may yet reward the 

 research of future explorers ; for Lieutenant Simpson could only de- 

 vote a portion of one day to their transcription ; and the Abbe Dome- 

 nech, who refers to them in his " Seven Tears' Residence in the Great 

 Deserts of North America,^'' as inscriptions that " have never been 

 mentioned in any scientific or geographical work published in Europe," 

 merely reproduces a partial and inaccurate version of Lieutenant 

 Simpson's report. 



Some few of the Moro Inscriptions are in Latin ; but the greater 

 number are in Spanish, and are occasionally accompanied with picto- 

 rial devices, or rebuses, somewhat after the Indian fashion of picture 

 writing. One, for example, reads Pita Vaca ye Jarde, with the 

 accompanying symbol of the Vaca, or cow. Another group, con- 

 sisting of certain initials interwoven into a monogram, accompanied 

 by an open hand with a double thumb, ail enclosed in cartouch-fashion, 

 is supposed by the transcriber to be, even more literally than the pre- 

 vious bit of pictorial symbolism, a pictured pun. " The characters," 

 he remarks, " in the double rectangle seem to be literally a sign- 

 manual, and may possibly be symbolical of Francisco Manuel, though 

 the double thumb would seem to indicate somethin,s; more." The 



