Schomburgk was not so fortunate as to rediscover the rock seen by Hortsmann, but he has seen and described others on the banks of the Essequibo, near the cascade of Warraputa. “This cascade,” he says, “is celebrated not only for its height but also for the quantity of figures cut on the rock, which have great resemblance to those which I have seen in the island of St. John, one of the Virgin Islands, and which I consider to be, without doubt, the work of the Caribs, by whom that part of the Antilles was formerly inhabited. I made the utmost efforts to detach portions of the rock which contained the inscription, and which I desired to take with me, but the stone was too hard and fever had taken away my strength. Neither promises nor threats could prevail on the Indians to give a single blow with a hammer to these rocks—the venerable monuments of the superior mental cultivation of their predecessors. They regard them as the work of the Great Spirit, and the different tribes who we met with, though living at a great distance, were nevertheless acquainted with them. Terror was painted on the faces of my Indian companions, who appeared to expect every moment that the fire of heaven would fall on my head. I saw clearly that my endeavors would be fruitless, and I contented myself with bringing away a complete drawing of these memorials.” * * * Even the veneration everywhere testified by the Indians of the present day for these rude sculptures of their predecessors, shews that they have no idea of the execution of similar works. There is another circumstance which should be mentioned: between Encaramada and Caycara, on the banks of the Orinoco, a number of these hieroglyphical figures are sculptured on the face of precipices at a height which could now be reached only by means of extraordinarily high scaffolding. If one asks the natives how these figures have been cut, they answer, laughing, as if it were a fact of which, none but a white man could be ignorant, that “in the days of the great waters their fathers went in canoes at that height.” Thus a geological fancy is made to afford an answer to the problem presented by a civilization which has long passed away.
Mr. A. Pinart has for several years past been engaged in ethnologic researches, in which, as he explained to the present writer, orally, he has discovered a very large number of pictographs in the islands of the Caribbean Sea, in Venezuela, and Nicaragua, with remarkable correspondences between some of them, and strongly demarkating lines in regard to different types. His report will be of inestimable value in the complete discussion of this subject.
Petroglyphs in British Guiana
In particular, a copious extract is given from the recent work Among the Indians of Guiana, by Everard F. im Thurn: London, 1883. His account is so suggestive for comparison with the similar discoveries made in North America that there is a temptation to extract from it even more liberally than has been done.
Fig. 2.—Deep carvings in Guiana.
The following is taken from pages 391, et seq., of that author:
The pictured rocks, which are certainly the most striking and mysterious of the antiquities of Guiana, are—and this has apparently never yet been pointed out—not all of one kind. In all cases various figures are rudely depicted on larger or smaller surfaces of rocks. Sometimes these figures are painted, though such cases are few and, as will be shown, of little moment; more generally they are graven on the rock, and these alone are of great importance. Rock sculptures may, again, be distinguished into two kinds, differing in the depth of incision, the apparent mode of execution, and, most important of all, the character of the figures represented.
Painted rocks in British Guiana are mentioned by Mr. C. Barrington Brown, well known as a traveler in the colony. He says, for instance, that in coming down past Amailah fall (in the same district and range as the Kaieteur), on the Cooriebrong River, he passed ‘a large white sandstone rock ornamented with figures in red paint.’ When in the Pacaraima mountains, on the Brazilian frontier, I heard of the existence of similar paintings in that neighborhood, but was unable to find them. Mr. Wallace, in his account of his ‘Travels on the Amazons,’ mentions the occurrence of similar drawings in more than one place near the Amazons; and from these and other accounts it seems probable that they occur in various parts of South America. If, as seems likely, these figures are painted with either of the red pigments which the Indians use so largely to paint their own bodies as well as their weapons and other implements, or, as is also possible, with some sort of red earth, they must be modern, the work of Indians of the present day; for these red pigments would not long withstand the effects of the weather, especially where, as in the case quoted from Mr. Brown, the drawings are on such an unenduring substance as sandstone. Some further account of these paintings is, however, much to be desired; for, though they are probably modern, it would be very interesting to know whether the designs resemble those depicted on the engraved rocks, or are of the kind with which the Indian at the present time ornaments both his own skin and his household utensils and paddles. It may be mentioned that in the Christy collection there is a stone celt from British Guiana on which are painted lines very closely resembling in character those which the Indian commonly paints on his own body.
The engraved rocks, on the contrary, must be of some antiquity; that is to say, they must certainly date from a time before the influence of Europeans was much felt in Guiana. As has already been said, the engravings