314 HISTORICAL FOOTPRINTS IN AMERICA. 



as well as very christian . . . to so distinguished and gallant a 

 soldier, indomitable and famed, we love . . . Joseph Erramos -{- 

 Diego Nuiiez Bellido -f- General and Counsellor, Bartolomeo Narrso. 



Great credit is due to the intelligent zeal of the officers by whom 

 the series of Moro inscriptions were copied, under such disadvantageous 

 circumstances, with so much care ; but a more prolonged visit to the 

 same interesting locality will probably hereafter amply repay the 

 labours of some enterprising explorer, and add perhaps to our 

 present materials, by the discovery of ancient native, as well as early 

 European inscriptions of great value. The Dighton Rock sinks into 

 insignificance amid the numerous devices and hieroglyphics graven by 

 native artists on the Moro CliflFs, from among the lines and mark- 

 ings of which an ingenious fancy need find no difficulty in selecting 

 equivalents for more than all the ancient languages affirmed to be- 

 represented in the polyglot alphabet of the Grave Creek Stone. 



One other authentic memorial of the early presence of the Spaniards 

 in the New World is derived from a different locality. In the year 

 1847 a stone tablet, engraven here with its curious heraldic blazonry, 

 was found on one of the North Chincha islands off the coast of Peru, 

 buried in the accumulated guano of centuries to a depth of eighteen 

 feet. The shield is quartered heraldically, and pierced at the inter- 

 section with a square socket, possibly for the insertion of the beam to 

 which a beacon-light or lantern was attached. In the first quarter is 

 a house, or church, with a belfry-tower and bell ; and over this the 

 abbreviated word DOM. The second compartment is charged with a 

 pelican, of which there are myriads about the guano islands ; and the 

 inscription, running on into the fourth quarter, reads : PEDRO 

 GV^ CHN ISA. The device on the third quarter, is an arm holding 

 a blazing torch, with an inscription of which the only word now 

 decypherable is QVEMA, burns. The fourth quarter bears three 

 Islands, no doubt intended for those of the Chincha group. So far 

 as the whole is decypherable it may read simply : The house of 

 Pedro, Governor of the Chincha Islands ; which the device in the 

 first quarter of the shield probably represents correctly as no palatial 

 edifice. But the use suggested for the socket in the centre of the 

 shield accords with the destination which its blazonry suggests for 

 the tablet, as the decoration of a beacon-tower attached to the resi- 

 dence of the insular Spanish Viceroy. 



