A number of illustrations of the Mexican pictographic writings are given below under various headings.
SECTION 4.
WEST INDIES.
The valuable paper of A. L. Pinart (a), giving a description of the petroglyphs found by him in the Greater and Lesser Antilles, is received too late for reproduction of the illustrations. He explored a number of the groups of the West Indies with varying success, but found that the island of Puerto Rico was the one which now furnishes the greatest amount of evidence of development in the pictographic art. His marks translated with condensation appear below.
PUERTO RICO.
The first petroglyph to be mentioned is found at la Cueva del Islote, on Punta Braba, about 5 leagues east from Arecibo and on the north side of the island of Puerto Rico. The grotto is found in an immense blackish mass of igneous rock, forming a point projecting into the sea, which beats furiously against it; it communicates with the sea at the foot, and the water entering this passage, which is quite narrow, produces a terrific roaring followed soon after by veritable thunder claps. The people of the neighborhood have a superstitious fear of it, and it is only with great difficulty that anyone can be found to accompany one there. The entrance on the land side is toward the east—a yawning crevasse, filled partly with rubbish and partly by the stunted vegetation of the coast. On penetrating to the interior we find, after following a short but wide passage, a pyriform chamber 20 meters in diameter. In the ceiling a very narrow crack admits a ray of light which, reflected in the water of the sea, filling the bottom of the cave, produces a bluish twilight. Notwithstanding this twilight, we are obliged to carry torches to distinguish objects. All around us, but especially over the point where the sea enters in, are to be seen the inscriptions represented here. The incisions are very deep, and the edges are generally dulled by the blows of the hammer; in certain spots, toward the lower part of the grotto, several inscriptions are partially effaced by the action of the sea, but those of the upper part are in a remarkable state of preservation. Beneath certain principal figures of the groups are little circular basin-like depressions cut in the rock with a trench running down toward the bottom.
I will not attempt here to give a formal explanation of these inscriptions, but may we not regard the spot in which they are found as having served for a rendezvous for the ancient Borrinqueños where they performed their sacrifices or the ceremonies of their religion? On the other hand, the appearance of these inscriptions is very peculiar. One of them might be considered a representation of those little figurines and statuettes of stone found in Mexico, in Mixteca, and in the country to the south. In another a head is curiously decorated with a diadem of feathers, and apparently represents one presiding at a feast served in the small circular basin set before him. The most noticeable thing in this group of inscriptions is the frequency of the grinning faces in a circle, often alone, often accompanied by two others placed at the sides, which are universally met with in every inscription found in the Greater and Lesser Antilles. The same may be said of the human figure apparently swaddled in cloths like a very young infant, the head and body more or less decorated, which is also very frequently found.
Following these petroglyphs of Islote, we present a list of others discovered at Puerto Rico, hastily describing them and giving a particular description only of those which are of the greatest interest.
In the above-mentioned grotto of Cueva de los Archillas, near the village of Ciales, we observed the curious figures bearing traces of a crown and peculiar ear ornaments. In la Cueva de los Conejos, some distance from Arecibo, on the road from Utauado, we found a figure partly incised and partly painted in a dark red; it is very artistically fashioned, and represents the famous “guava,” the monster spider of the Greater Antilles, of which the natives have a great dread. It is probable that the ancient Borrinqueños also considered it with a certain awe, and we find images of the same animal in la Cueva del Templo on the coast of Haiti, at Santo Domingo. A solitary rock of a reddish color, in a field of the hacienda of Don Pedro Pavez at la Carolina, a short distance from the Rio Pedras, bears a series of grimacing faces in circles. On a granitic rock of large dimensions, superimposed on a heap of rocks of the same character, in the midst of a grove of Indian trees and at the entrance of the Cano del Indio into Rio la Ceiba, near Fajardo, on the east side, are found three swaddled human figures, the heads decorated with various ornaments. On a black rock in the Rio Arriba, one of the branches of the Rio de la Ceiba, is a petroglyph which presents but little that is of interest.
On the Loma Muñoz, near the Rio Arriba above mentioned, and on the summit of the hill, stands a dark rock with smooth face protected by another mass of rock, forming a sort of shelter on which is an inscription composed of a number of incised grinning faces. At the confluence of the Rio Blanco and the Rio de la Ceiba, in the district of Fajardo, is a series of violent rapids formed by immense rocks of a granitic character, on which are cut a large number of other grimacing faces and also some swaddled figures, and other incisions which are not of interest.