TRADITIONS OF A DELUGE. 221 
On the 6th, continuing to ascend, they saw the 
southern side of the mountains of Encaramada, 
which stretch along the right bank of the river, 
and are inhabited by Indians of a gentle charac. 
ter, and addicted to agriculture. There is a tradi- 
tion here, and elsewhere on the Orinoco, among the 
natives, “ That at the time of the Great Waters, 
when their fathers were obliged to betake them- 
selves to their canoes in order to escape the general - 
inundation, the waves of the sea beat upon the 
rocks of Encaramada.” When the Tamanacs are 
asked how the human race survived this great de- 
luge, they say, “ That a man and a woman saved 
themselves upon a high mountain called Tamana- 
eu, situated on the bank of the Aseveru, and that, 
throwing behind them, over their heads, the fruits 
of the Mauritia palm, they saw arising from the 
nuts of these fruits the men and women who re- 
peopled the earth.” Thus, among the natives of 
America, a fable similar to that of Pyrrha and Deu- 
calion commemorates the grand catastrophe of a ge- 
neral inundation. Humboldt, in reference to the 
same event, mentions that. hieroglyphic figures are 
often found along the Orinoco sculptured on rocks 
now inaccessible but by scaffolding, and that the 
natives, when asked how these figures could have 
been made, answer with a smile, as relating a fact 
of which a stranger alone could be ignorant, “‘ That 
at the period of the Great Waters their fathers went 
to that height in boats.” 
“These ancient traditions of the human race,” 
says Humboldt, ‘‘ which we find dispersed over the 
surface of the globe, like the fragments of a vast 
shipwreck, are of the greatest interest in the philo- 
