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Show ANNOTATIONS A D ADDITIONS. 161 17th of No>e.mber, 1 36, there was read a memoir by Sir Robert Schomburgk "On the Religious Traditions of the l\Iacusi Indians, who inhabit the pper l\Iahu and a part of the Pacaraima Mountains;'' a nation, con equently, who for a century ( ince the journey of the adventurous Hort mann) have not changed their residence. Sir Robert Schorn burgk say : "The l\Iacusis believe that the sole survivor of a general deluge repeopled the earth by changing stones into human beings." This myth (the fruit of the lively imagination of these nations, and which repJ.inds us of Deucalion and Pyrrha) shows itself in a somewhat altered form among the Tamanaks of the Orinoco. When asked how mankind survived the great flood, the "age of waters" of the 1\Iexicans, they reply, without any hesitation, that "one man and one woman took refuge on the high mountain of Tamanacu, on the banks of the Asiveru, and that they then threw over their heads and behind their backs the fruits of the 1\Iauritia-palm, from the kernels of which sprang men and women who repeopled the earth." Some miles from Encaramada, there rises, in the middle of the savannah, the rock Tepu-Mereme, or the painted rock. It shows several figures of animals and symbolical outlines which resemble much those observed by us at some distance above Encaramada, near Caycara, in 7° 5' to 7° 40' lat. and 66° 28' to 67° 23' W. long. from Greenwich. Rocks thus marked are found between the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo (in 2° 5' to 3° 20' lat.), and what is particularly remarkable 560 geographical miles farther to the East in the solitudes of the Pari me. This last fact is placed beyond a doubt by the journal of Nicholas Hortsmann, of which I have seen a copy in the handwriting of the celebrated D' An ville. That simple and modest traveller wrote down every day, on the spot, what had appeared to him most worthy of notice; and he deserves perhaps the more credence because, being full of dissatisfaction at having failed to discover the objects of his researches, the Lake of Dorado, with lumps of gold and a diamond mine, he looked with a certain degree of contempt on whatever fell in his way. He found on the 16th of April, 1749, on the banks of the Rupunuri, at the spot where the river winding between the Macarana mountains forms several small cascades, and before arriving at the district immediately round Lake Amucu1 "rocks covered with 14* |
