INDIAN ROCK-PICTURES 487 
stone which the Uaupes Indian wears suspended 
from his neck, will understand that time is no object 
to an Indian. I can fancy I see the young men 
and women sitting in the cool of the morning and 
evening, but especially in the moonlight nights, and 
amusing themselves by scratching on the rock any 
figure suggested by the caprice of the moment. A 
figure once sketched, any one, even a child, might 
aid in deepening the outlines. Indeed, the designs 
are often much in the style of — certainly not at all 
superior to — those which a child of five years old 
in a village school in England will draw for you 
on its slate ; and the modern inhabitants of the 
Casiquiari, Guainia, etc., paint the walls of their 
houses with various coloured earths in far more 
artistic designs. 
Having carefully examined a good deal of the 
so-called picture-writing, I am bound to come to 
the conclusion that it was executed by the ancestors 
of Indians who at this day inhabit the region where 
it is found ; that their utensils, mode of life, etc., 
were similar to those still in use ; and that their 
degree of civilisation was certainly not greater — 
probably less — than that of their existing de- 
scendants. The execution of the figures may have 
ranged through several centuries, a period which 
in the existence of a savage people is but a year in 
that of the highly-civilised nations of modern Europe. 
In vain shall we seek any chronological information 
from the Indian, who never knows his own age, 
rarely that of his youngest child, and who refers 
all that happened before his own birth to a vague 
antiquity, wherein there are no dates and rarely any 
epochs to mark the sequence of events. 
