REGION or SCULPTURED ROCKS. 
475 
the first monarchs, priest-kings, who are stripped of what is 
human in their nature, to be raised to the rank of national 
divinities. Amalimca was a stranger, like Manco-Capae, 
Bochica, and Quetzalcohuatl ; those extraordinary men, 
who, in the alpine or civilized part of America, on the table- 
lands of Peru, New Grenada, and Anahuac, organized civil 
society, regulated the order of sacrifices, and founded reli- 
gious congregations. The Mexican Quetzalcohuatl, whose 
descendants Montezuma* thought he recognized in the 
companions of Cortez, displays an additional resemblance to 
Amalivaca, the mythologic personage of savage America or 
the plains of the torrid zone. When advanced in age, the 
liigh -priest of Tula left the country of Anahuac, which he 
had filled with his miracles, to return to an unknown region, 
called Tlalpallan. When the monk Bernard de Sahagun 
arrived in Mexico, the same questions were put to him, as 
those which were addressed to Bather Gili two hundred 
years later, in the forests of the Orinoco; he was asked, 
whether he came from ‘the other shore’ (del otro lado), 
from the countries to which Quetzalcohuatl had retired. 
The region of sculptured rocks, or of painted stones, ex- 
tends far beyond the Lower Orinoco, beyond the country 
(latitude 7° 5' to 7° 40', longitude 68° 50' to 09° 45') to 
which belongs what may be called the ‘ local fables ’ of the 
Tamanacs. We again find these same sculptured rocks 
between the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo (lat. 2° 5' to 
3° 20' ; long. 69° to 70°) ; and between the sources of the 
Ifesequibo and the Eio Branco (lat. 3° 50'; long. 62° 32'). 
I do not assert that these figures prove the knowledge of 
the use of iron, or that they denote a very advanced degree 
of culture; but even on the supposition that, instead of 
being symbolical, they are the fruits of the idleness of 
hunting nations, we must still admit an anterior race of 
men, very different from those who now inhabit the banks 
of the Orinoco and the Itupunuri. The more a country is 
destitute of remembrances of generations that are extinct, 
the more important it becomes to follow the least traces 
of what appears to be monumental. The eastern plains of 
North America display only those extraordinary circum- 
* The second king of this name, of the race of Acamepitsin, properly 
called Montezuma-Ilhuicamina. 
