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THE POZO PICTORIAL INSCRIBED STONE. 

 By HENRY CROWTHBR, Curator of the Royal Institution of Cornwall. 



Amongst the gifts in our Journal for the year 1886, is recorded 

 one from Mr. Robert Harvey, of " A large Inscribed Stone, from 

 Iquique, South America, evidently describing the journey of one of 

 the tribes." 



About two years ago this stone, resting uncovered and almost 

 unnoticed on a stand in a corner of the basement of the Museum, 

 began to attract considerable attention. At my request Mr. Harvey 

 agreed to defray the cost of its removal into the Archaeological 

 room upstairs, to provide a table for it to rest on, and protect it with 

 an oak and plate-glass case ; at the suggestion of our then President, 

 Mr. John Tremayne, the table was made to turn, so that the stone, 

 weighing about half-a-ton, might be revolved as wished to the most 

 favourable light. These improvements have naturally made the 

 inscribed stone an object of attraction in the Museum. I am so 

 frequently desired to explain what I know of it, and asked for, or 

 desired to write a guide book on it, that I asked our Honorary- 

 Secretary, Major Parkyn, if he could induce Mr. Harvey to help 

 us in such a matter. Through his influence the same generous 

 response came from Mr. Harvey which he has ever shewn to 

 this Institution, and he expressed his willingness to give ten 

 guineas towards a museum guide-book to the stone. With the 

 hope of making such a guide to this valuable acquisition, I have 

 for some time sought fresh light from other observers ; it will be 

 found in the sequel that I have gone in a great measure against 

 present recognised opinion and more in agreement with older 

 observers. This I cannot help ! Perhaps it arises from my 

 reading the stone pictorially, and reasoning on the incisions by the 

 same methods which one follows in ordinary science. In geology 

 we say rounded stones were formed by water, and that a lime- 

 stone was made by some vital agency. If we find a fossil shell, 

 say of the genus Conus, a kind of mollusc now living in the 

 Indian Ocean ; or a fossil fruit of Nip a, a palm tree, we infer that 

 in a great measure the conditions, which allowed of their growth in 

 geological times, were the same then as now. We reason from the 

 present to the past, from the known to the unknown, and in 



