155 



are found, and the walls of towns constructed 

 by an unknown nation, now entirely extinct. 

 The paintings on these fragments have a great 

 similitude to those, which are executed in our 

 days on earthen ware by the natives of Louisi- 

 ana and Florida. Thus too the Indians of May- 

 pures often painted before our eyes the same 

 ornaments, as we had observed in the cavern 

 of Ataruipe, on the vases containing human 

 bones. They are real grecques, meandrites, and 

 figures of crocodiles, of monkeys, and of a large 

 quadruped, which I could not recognize, though 

 it has always the same squat form. 1 might 

 remind the reader on this occasion of a head 

 with the trunk of an elephant, which I disco vered 

 in an ancient Mexican painting in the Museum 

 at Veletri* ; and might hazard the hypothesis, 

 that the great quadruped painted on the vases 

 of May pu res belongs to another country, and 

 that the type had been brought thither in the 

 great migration of the American nations from 

 the north-west to the south and south east ; 

 but where can we stop amid such vague and 

 uncertain conjectures? I am rather inclined to 

 believe, that the Indians of the Oroonoko meant 

 to figure a tapir-f, and that the deformed repre- 



* See vol. xiiij p. 211. 



f Danta in the Spanish Colonies, where the name of tapir 

 is totally unknown ; in the Tamanac, uariari; in Maypure, 



