At the meeting of the Society of Antiquaries in London a memoir was read on the 17th of November, 1836, by Sir Robert Schomburgk, “On the religious traditions of the Macusi Indians, who inhabit the Upper Mahu, and a portion of the Pacaraima mountains,” and who have therefore not changed their habitation for a century (since the journey of the intrepid Hortsmann). “The Macusis,” says Sir Robert Schomburgk, “believe that the only being who survived a general deluge, repeopled the earth by converting stones into human beings.” This myth, which is the fruit of the lively imagination of these tribes, and which reminds us of that of Deucalion and Pyrrha, shows itself in a somewhat modified form among the Tamanacs of the Orinoco. When these people are asked how the human race survived this great flood, _the age of waters_ of the Mexicans, they unhesitatingly reply, “that one man and one woman were saved by taking refuge on the summit of the lofty mountain of Tamanacu, on the banks of the Asiveru, and that they then threw over their heads the fruits of the Mauritia palm, from the kernels of which sprang men and women, who again peopled the earth.” Some miles from Encaramada there rises in the midst of the savannah the rock of Tepu-Mereme; _i.e._, the “painted rock,” which exhibits numerous figures of animals and symbolical signs, having much resemblance to those which we observed at some distance above Encaramada, near Caycara. (7° 5′ to 7° 40′ north lat., and 66° 28′ to 67° 23′ west long.) Similarly carved rocks are found between the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo (2° 5′ to 3° 20′ lat.); and what is most striking, also 560 miles further eastward in the solitudes of the Parime. The last-named fact is proved beyond a doubt, by the journal of Nicolas Hortsmann of Hildesheim, of which I have seen a copy in the handwriting of the celebrated d’Anville. That simple and modest traveller wrote down every day on the spot whatever had struck him as worthy of notice; and his narrative deserves perhaps the more confidence from the fact that the great disappointment he experienced in having failed in the object of his researches, which was the discovery of the Lake of Dorado, with its lumps of gold and a diamond mine (which proved to be merely rock crystal of a very pure kind), led him to look with a certain degree of contempt on all that fell in his way. On the bank of the Rupunuri, at the point where the river, winding between the Macarana mountains, forms several small cascades; and before reaching the country immediately surrounding the Lake of Amucu, he found, on the 16th of April, 1749, “rocks covered with figures,” or, as he says in Portuguese, “_de varias letras_” (with various letters or characters). We were shown, at the rock of Culimacari, on the banks of the Cassiquiare, signs said to be characters drawn by line and rule: but they were merely ill-formed figures of the heavenly bodies, crocodiles,