CHAPTER XXVII 
INDIAN ROCK -PICTURES ! ENGRAVED ROCKS ON THE 
RIO NEGRO AND CASIQUIARI (cOMMONLY CALLED 
INDIAN picture-writing) 
[While residing at Piura on the sea-coast of Peru 
in 1863, and being incapacitated by illness for 
outdoor work, Spruce wrote out a description of 
these curious works of art illustrated by the draw- 
ings he was able to make of some of them, and with 
an explanation of their meaning given him by the 
Indians who were with him and to whom they were 
familiar. He also gives his own view as to their 
probable age, and as to the causes that led to their 
production. In this paper he does not refer to the 
best known of these Picture-writings on the rocks 
of Pedra Island, near the mouth of the Rio Branco, 
which are briefly described in his Journal. (See 
vol. i. p. 260.) This paper refers* solely to the 
examples of which he made drawings on the 
Casiquiari and Uaupes rivers.] 
Indian Picture- Writing ^ 
When I ascended the Casiquiari in December 
1853, I charged my pilot, an intelligent Indian of 
^ In his Journal (1851), when describing the figures on Pedra Island (Lower 
Rio Negro), he protested against the use of the term " picture-writing" as con- 
veying the erroneous idea that they are in any sense writings or hieroglyphics. 
Twelve years later he uses the popular term, though showing that it is an 
incorrect one. 
474 
