ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 199 



doubt by the journal of Nicholas Hortsmau, of which I have 

 seen a copy in the handwriting of the celebrated D'Anville. 

 That simple and modest traveller wrote down every day, on 

 the spot, what had appeared to him most worthy of notice, 

 and he deserves perhaps the more credence because, being 

 full of dissatisfaction at having failed to discover the objects 

 of his researches, the Lake of Dorado, with lumps of gold 

 and a diamond mine, he looked with a certain degree of 

 contempt on whatever fell in his way. He found, on the 

 16th of April, 1749, on the banks of the Rupunuri, at the 

 spot where the river winding between the Macarana moun- 

 tains forms several small cascades, and before arriving in the 

 district immediately round Lake Amucu, " rocks covered 

 with figures/' or as he says in Portuguese, "de varias 

 letras." We were shown at the rock of Culimacari, on the 

 banks of the Cassiquiare, signs which were called characters, 

 arranged in lines, but they were only ill-shaped figures of 

 heavenly bodies, boa-serpents, and the utensils employed in 

 preparing manioc-meal. I have never found among these 

 painted rocks (piedras pintadas) any symmetrical arrange- 

 ment or any regular even-spaced characters. 1 am therefore 

 deposed to think that the word " letras" in Hortsmann's 

 journal must not be taken in the strictest sense. 



Bchomburgk was not so fortunate as to rediscover the 

 rocs: seen by Hortsmann, but he has seen and described 

 others on the banks of the Essequibo, near the cascade of 

 Waraputa. " This cascade," he says, " is celebrated not 

 only :or its height but also for the quantity of figures cut 

 on the rock, which have great resemblance to those which I 

 have seen in the Island of St. John, one of the Yirgin 



