* 



361 



the predominant nation of the Lower Oroonoko, as were the 

 Guaypunabis, enemies of the Manitivitains, between the A- 

 tabapo, the Cassiquiare and the Rio Negro, (Vol. v. 204, 

 208). The idioms of conquering nations have been gene- 

 ralized, and have survived the national preponderance ; 

 where they have not been substituted altogether for the native 

 languages, they have left insulated words on their passage, 

 which have been mixed, incorporated, agglomerated to lan- 

 guages entirely different. Those words, recognized by the 

 dissimilarity of the sounds, are in barbarous countries the 

 sole monuments of the antique revolutions of the human 

 race. They have often a singular form, and in a country 

 destitute of traditions, present themselves to the imagina- 

 tion like the vestiges of the animals of the primitive world, 

 and which buried in the earth, are in contrast with the forms 

 of the animals of our days. 



European civilization, like all foreign and imported civili- 

 zation, aseends the rivers, which native civilization descends, 

 as is proved by the history of the people of Indus, the Gan- 

 ges, the Euphrates, perhaps even the Nile. It cannot be 

 doubted that anterior the barbarous hordes which now inhabit 

 the forests of Guyana, those countries were peopled by 

 another race more advanced in civilization, and who had 

 covered the rocks with symbolic traces. Those painted 

 rocks form a particular zone between the Atabapo and the 

 Cassiquiare, the sources of the Essequebo and the Rio Bran- 

 co, the Uruana and Cabruta, where the Tamanaque traditions 

 on the deluge of Amalivaca are connected with the sculp- 

 tured figures in granite. (Vol. v. 600). In the torrid as well 

 as in the temperate zone, on the east of the Andes, as on the 

 east of the Rocky Mountains, in that long series of nations 

 which have successively inundated the plains, a feeble gleam 

 of civilization had preceded the barbarism that existed 

 when the European colonists passed over the Alleghanies, and 

 along the banks of the Lower Oroonoko. Walls of a pro- 



