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Show 164 STEPPES AND DESERTS. in paintings as surrounding the heads of Saints and Sacred Persons. I have left my drawings of these figures in tho cJlony, but I hope some day to be able to lay them all before the public. I saw ruder figures on the Cuyuwini, a river which empties itself into the Essequibo in latitude 2° 1G' N., entering it from the north-west j and I have since seen similar figures on the Essequibo itself, in 1 o 40' N. lat. These figures extend, therefore, as ascertained by actual observation, from 7° 10' to 1 o 40' N. lat., and from 57° 30' to 66° 30' W. long. Thus the zone of pictured rocks extends, so far as it has been at present examined, over a space of 192,000 square geographical miles, comprising the basins of the Corentyn, the Essequibo, and the Orinoco j a circumstance from which we may form some inferences respecting the former amount of population in this part of the continent." Other remarkabe remains of a degree of civilization which no longer exists, are the granite vases with graceful labyrinthine ornaments, and the earthen masks resembling Roman ones, which have been discovered on the Mosquito coast, among wild Indians. ( Archreologia Britan. vol. v. 1779, pp. 318-324 j and vol. vi. 1782, p. 107.) I have had them engraved in the" Picturesque Atlas" which accompanies the historical portion of my Travels to the Equinoctial Regions. Antiquaries are astonished at the similarity of these ornaments (resembling a well-known Grecian form) to those of the Palace of Mitla, near Oaxaca, in Mexico. In looking at Peruvian carvings, I have never remarked any figures of the large-nosed race of men, so frequently represented in the bas-reliefs of Palenque in Guatimala, and in the Aztec paintings. Klaproth remembered having seen individuals with similar large noses among the Chalcas, a northern Mogul tribe. It is well known that many tribes of the North American red or copper-colored Indians have fine aquiline noses j and that this is an essential physiognomic distinction between them and the present inhabitants of Mexico, New Granada, Quito, and Peru. Are the large-eyed, comparatively fair-complexioned people, spoken of by Marchand as having been seen in 54° and 58° lat. on the north-west coast of Amer-ica, descended from an AlanoGothic race, the Ustini of the interior of Asia? |