338 
WORSHIP OP ROCKS AND STORES 
already observed, that, as it is very rare to find in America 
nephrite, jade, or compact feldspar, in its native place, we 
may well be astonished at the quantity of hatchets which 
are everywhere discovered in digging the earth, from the 
banks of the Ohio as far as Chile. We saw in the 
mountains of TJpper Orinoco, or of Parime, only granular 
granites containing a little hornblende, granites passing into 
gneiss, and schistoid hornblendes. Has nature repeated on 
the east of Esmeralda, between the sources of the Carony, 
the Essequibo, the Orinoco, and the Bio Branco, the tran- 
sition-formation of Tucutimemo reposing on mica-schist ? 
Does the Amazon-stone come from the rocks of euphotidc, 
which form the last member of the series of primitive rocks? 
We find among the inhabitants of both hemispheres, at 
the first dawn ot civilization, a peculiar predilection for cer- 
tain stones ; not only those which, from their hardness, may 
be useful to man as cutting instruments, hut also for mine- 
ral substances, which, on account of their colour and their 
natural form, are believed to bear some relation to the orga- 
nic functions, and even to the propensities of the soul- 
This ancient worship of stones, these benign virtues attri- 
buted to jade and haematite, belong to the savages of Ame- 
rica as well as to the inhabitants of the forests of Thrace. 
The human race, when in an uncultivated state, believes itself 
to have sprung from the ground; and feels as if it were 
enchained to the earth, and the substances contained in her 
bosom. The powers of nature, and still more those which 
destroy than those which preserve, are the first objects of 
its worship. It is not solely in the tempest, in the sound 
that precedes the earthquake, in the fire that feeds the vol- 
cano, that these powers are manifested ; the inanimate rock ; 
stones, by their lustre and hardness ; mountains, by their 
mass and their solitude; act upon the untaught mind with 
a force which, in a state of advanced civilization, can no 
longer be conceived. This worship of stones, when once 
established, is preserved amidst more modem forms of wor- 
ship ; and what was at first the object of religious homage, 
becomes a source of superstitious confidence. Divine stones 
are transformed into amulets, which are believed to preserve 
the wearer from every ill, mental and corporeal. Although a 
distance of five hundred leagues separates the banks cf th« 
