EARLY ROCK CARVINGS 281 



the rock. They consisted, upon the upper flat part 

 of the rock, of four multiple circles with a dot in the 

 middle, very accurately made and about a foot and 

 a half in diameter ; and below them, on the side of the 

 rock, four multiple m's or inverted w's. What these 

 curious symbols represented, or who made them, we 

 could not, of course, form the slightest idea. It may 

 be that in a very remote past some Indian tribes of 

 comparatively advanced culture had penetrated to this 

 lovely river, just as we had now come to it. Before 

 white men came to South America there had already 

 existed therein various semicivilizations, some rude, 

 others fairly advanced, which rose, flourished, and 

 persisted through immemorial ages, and then vanished. 

 The vicissitudes in the history of humanity during its 

 stay on this southern continent have been as strange, 

 varied, and inexplicable as paleontology shows to have 

 been the case, on the same continent, in the history 

 of the higher forms of animal life during the age of 

 mammals. Colonel Rondon stated that such figures 

 as these are not found anywhere else in Matto Grosso 

 where he has been, and therefore it was all the more 

 strange to find them in this one place on the unknown 

 river (never before visited by white men) which we were 

 descending. 



Next morning we went about three kilometres before 

 coming to some steep hiUs, beautiful to look upon, clad 

 as they were in dense, tall, tropical forest, but ominous 

 of new rapids. Sure enough, at their foot we had to 

 haul up and prepare for a long portage. The canoes 

 we ran down empty. Even so, we were within an ace 

 of losing two, the lashed couple in which I ordinarily 

 journeyed. In a sharp bend of the rapids, between two 

 big curls, they were swept among the boulders and 



