473 



midst of the savannah. It displays resemblances 

 of animals, and symbolic figures, resembling 

 those we saw in going down the Oroonoko, at a 

 small distanee below Encaramada, near the town 

 Caycara. Similar rocks in Africa are called by 

 travellers Fetish Stones. I shall not make use 

 of this term, because fetishism does not prevail 

 among the natives of the Oroonoko ; and the 

 figures of stars, of the Sun, of tigers, and of cro- 

 codiles, which we found traced upon the rocks in 

 spots now uninhabited, appeared to me in no way 

 to denote the objects of worship of those nations. 

 Between the banks of the Cassiquiare and the 

 Oroonoko; between Encaramada, the Capu- 

 chino, and Caycara, these hieroglyphic figures 

 are often placed at great heights on the walls of 

 rock, that could be accessible only by construct- 

 1 ing very lofty scaffolds. When the natives are 

 asked how those figures could have been sculp- 

 tured, they answer with a smile, as relating a 

 fact of which a stranger, a white man only, cojild 

 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, 

 which we find dispersed over the whole surface 

 of the Globe, like the relics of a vast shipwreck, 

 are highly interesting in the philosophical study 

 of our own species. Like certain families of the 

 vegetable kingdom, which, notwithstanding the 



