178 
WANDERINGS IN 
THIRD 
JOU UNEY, 
the owl and the goatsucker as familiars of the evil 
spirit, and never destroy them. 
I could find no monuments or marks of antiquity 
amongst these Indians; so that after penetrating to 
the Rio Branco, from the shores of the Western 
Ocean, had any body questioned me on this subject, 
I should have answered, I have seen nothing amongst 
these Indians which tells me that they have existed 
here for a century; though, for aught I know" to 
the contrary, they may have been here before the 
Redemption, but their total want of civilization has 
assimilated them to the forests in which they wander. 
Thus, an aged tree falls and moulders into dust, and 
you cannot tell what w T as its appearance, its beauties, 
or its diseases amongst the neighbouring trees; 
another has shot up in its place, and after nature 
has had her course, it will make way for a successor 
in its turn. So it is with the Indian of Guiana; he 
is now laid low in the dust; he has left no record 
behind him, either on parchment, or on a stone, or 
in earthenware, to say what he has done. Perhaps 
the place where his buried ruins lie was unhealthy, 
and the survivors have left it long ago, and gone far 
av r ay into the wilds. All that you can say is, the 
trees where I stand appear lower and smaller than 
the rest, and from this I conjecture, that some Indians 
may have had a settlement here formerly. Were I 
by chance to meet the son of the father who moulders 
here, he could tell me that his father was famous 
for slaying tigers and serpents and caymen, and 
rioted in the chase of the tapir and wfild boar, 
