GROWTH AND DECLINE OF CULTURE. 187 



wMcli their possessors had fallen. " But it is not/' lie says, 

 " the Indians of our own day, the dwellers on the Oronoko and 

 the Amazons whom we see in the last degree of brutalization, 

 who have perforated substances of such hardness, giving them 

 the shapes of animals and fruits. Such pieces of work, like 

 the pierced and sculptured emeralds found in the Cordilleras 

 of New Grranada and Quito, indicate a previous civilization. At 

 present the inhabitants of these districts, especially of the hot 

 regions, have so little idea of the possibility of cutting hard 

 stones (emerald, jade, compact felspar, and rock crystal), that 

 they have imagined the green stone to be naturally soft when 

 taken out of the ground, and to harden after it has been 

 fashioned by hand.-"! But while mentioning Humboldt's argu- 

 ment, it must also be said that he had not had an opportunity 

 of learning how these ornaments were made. Mr. Wallace has 

 since found that at least plain cylinders of imperfect rock crys- 

 tal, four to eight inches long, and one inch in diameter, are 

 made and perforated by very low tribes on the Rio Negro. 

 They are not, as Humboldt seems to have supposed, the result 

 of high mechanical skill, but merely of the most simple and 

 savage processes, carried on with that utter disregard of time 

 that lets the Indian spend a month in making an arrow. They 

 are merely ground down into shape by rubbing, and the per- 

 forating of the cylinders, crosswise or even lengthwise, is said 

 to be done thus : — a pointed flexible leaf-shoot of wild plantain 

 is twirled with the hands against the hard stone, till, with the 

 aid of fine sand and water, it bores into and through it, and 

 this is said to take years to do. Such cylinders as the chiefs 

 wear are said sometimes to take two men's lives to perforate.^ 

 The stone is brought from a great distance up the river, and is 

 very highly valued. It is, of course, not necessary to suppose 

 that these rude Indians came of themselves to making such 

 ornaments ; they may have imitated things made by races in a 

 higher state of culture; but the evidence, as it now stands, 

 does not go for much in proving that the tribes of the Rio 

 Negro have themselves fallen from a higher level. 



' Humboldt & Bonpland, vol. ii. p. 481, etc. 

 2 WaUace, p. 278. 



