Chap. II.—B. S.J 
CURIOUS IDENTITY. 
29 
was given in my ‘Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. 
Herald/ vol. i. p. 312, London, 8vo, 1853, but the 
drawings illustrating them were unfortunately omitted, 
the publisher objecting to them on account of the 
expense; but some of them were afterwards placed by 
me at the disposal of Mr. Bollaert, and published by 
that gentleman in his ‘ Antiquities, etc., of South 
America/ 8vo, London, 1860, whilst others have been, 
it is feared, entirely lost, especially those which would 
have established the identity of the British and 
Chiriqui inscriptions beyond doubt in the minds of 
others. For my own part, I was so much struck with 
the general resemblance, not to say identity of the 
two, that when the plates of Mr. Tate’s work were 
first shown to me, and I was quite ignorant to what 
country they related, I fully believed them to repre¬ 
sent Chiriqui rock inscriptions. Even from the draw¬ 
ings I still retain of a Chiriqui rock I am able to pick 
out some of the most typical characters found on the 
British rocks, as the accompanying diagrams will show. 
The characters in Chiriqui are, like those of Great 
Britain, incised on large stones, the surface of which 
has not previously undergone any smoothing process. 
The incised stones occur in a district of Yeraguas 
(Chiriqui or Alanje), which is now thinly inhabited, 
but which, judging from the numerous tombs, was 
once densely peopled by a nation which became 
known to Columbus in his fourth voyage of discovery, 
manufactured some elegantly-shaped pottery, wore 
ornaments made of gold of a low standard, called 
quanin (most probably a natural alloy of gold and 
