NATIVE LEGENDS OE A DELUGE. 
473 
The nations of the Tamanac race, the ancient inhabitants 
of those countries, have a local mythology, and traditions 
tonnected with these sculptured rocks. Amalivaca, the 
father of the Tamanacs, that is, the creator of the human 
race (for every nation rogards itself as the root of all other 
nations), arrived in a bark, at the time of the great inunda- 
tion, which is called ‘the age of water,’* when the billows 
of the ocean broke against the mountains of Encamarada in 
the interior of the land. All mankind, or, to speak more 
correctly, all the Tamanacs, were drowned, with the exception 
of one man and one woman, who saved themselves on a 
mountain near the hanks of the Asiveru, called Cuchivero 
by the Spaniards. This mountain is the Ararat of the 
Aramean or Semitic nations, and the Tlaloe or Colhuacan of 
the Mexicans. Amalivaca, sailing in his bark, engraved the 
figures of the moon and the sun on the Painted Eock 
{Tepumereme) of Encaramada. Some blocks of granite 
piled upon one another, and forming a kind of cavern, are 
still called the house or dwelling of the great forefather of 
the Tamanacs. The natives show also a large stone near 
this cavern, in the plains of Maita, which they say was an 
instrument of music, the drum of Amalivaca. We must 
here observe, that this heroic personage had a brother, 
Voclii, who helped him to give the surface of the earth its 
present form. The Tamanacs relate, that the two brothers, 
in their system of perfectibility, sought, at first, to arrange 
the Orinoco in such a manner, that the current of the water 
could always be followed either going down or going up the 
river. _ They hoped by this means to spare men trouble 
in navigating rivers ; but, however great the power of these 
regenerators of the world, they could never contrive to give 
a double slope to the Orinoco, and were compelled to 
relinquish this singular plan. Amalivaca had daughters, 
who had a decided taste for travelling. The tradition 
states, doubtless with a figurative meaning, that he broke 
their legs, to render them sedentary, and force them to 
people the land of the Tamanacs. After having regulated 
everything in America, on that side of the ‘great water,’ 
Amalivaca again embarked, and “returned to the other 
t The Atonatiiih of the Mexicans, the fourth ace, the fourth reeeners. 
&on of the world. 
