593 



and different animals, are traced on the hardest 

 rocks of granite, and attest the anterior existence 

 of a people, very different from those who be- 

 came known to us on the banks of the Oroo- 

 noko. According to the accounts of the natives, 

 and of the most intelligent missionaries, these 

 symbolic signs resemble perfectly the characters 

 we saw a hundred leagues more to the north, 

 near Caycara, opposite the mouth of the Rio 

 Apure. 



We are the more struck with the remains of 

 an ancient civilization, in proportion as they fill 

 a wider space, and form a stronger contrast 

 with the barbarism, in which since the conquest 

 we find the hordes of the hot and oriental regions 

 of South America. In advancing from the 

 plains of the Cassiquiare and the Conorichite, 

 one hundred and forty leagues toward the east, 

 between the sources of the Rio Branco and the 

 Rio Essequibo, we also meet with rocks with 

 symbolical figures. I have lately verified this 

 fact, which appears to me extremely curious, in 

 the journal of the traveller Hortsmann, a copy 

 of which I have before me in the hand-writing 

 of the celebrated d'Anvilie. That traveller, whom 

 I have several times had occasion to mention in 

 this work, went up the Rupunuvini*, one of the 



* This word no doubt signifies water (veni, oueni)of Rupu- 

 nuni, or Rupunuri. (See above, p. 480). Veni is a word o£ 



VOL. V. 2 Q 



