Credit: © The Royal Society
Image number: RS.10902
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Picture-writing of a quiver, dolphins and a map
Date
13 December 1853
Creator
Richard Spruce (1817 - 1893, British) , Explorer
Object type
Archive reference number
Material
Dimensions
width (drawing): 220mm
width (drawing): 173mm
width (drawing): 173mm
Subject
Geography
> Exploration
Art & culture
> Archaeology
Politics & Government
> Political doctrines
> British Empire
Politics & Government
> Political doctrines
> British colonialism
> Exploration
Art & culture
> Archaeology
Politics & Government
> Political doctrines
> British Empire
Politics & Government
> Political doctrines
> British colonialism
Content object
Description
Three picture-writing figures or pictograms labelled 'A' through 'C'. Annotated by Spruce ‘Laja de Capibara, Casiquiari. The dimensions are in English feet and inches; when underlined they express the entire length of the figure; otherwise they merely indicate the length of the line near which they are written. The lines are all deeply cut in the hard granite rock’.
Reproduced as Figure 17 in Notes of a botanist on the Amazon & Andes: being records of travel on the Amazon and its tributaries, the Trombetas, Rio Negro, Uaupés, Casiquiari, Pacimoni, Huallaga, and Pastasa; as also to the cataracts of the Orinoco, along the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, and the shores of the Pacific, during the years 1849-1846 edited by Alfred Russel Wallace, volume II (London, 1908).
At this site Spruce records that he found it impossible to copy all the picture-writing he observed and therefore selected those examples which were most distinct or which by their frequent repetition might be considered typical.
Spruce found figure 'A' depicted several times, varying only slightly. His companions thought it a quiver for holding the darts of the blowing cane. The two figures marked 'B' were declared by Spruce's guides as dolphins, of which two species abound in the Amazon and Orinoco. The figures are annotated by Spruce; ‘These two side by side’. Spruce's guides described figure 'C' as a map with 'a' being a town with a road leading from it to a stream (caño) 'c', while 'b' is a track leading through the forest to another tributary stream, expanding here and there into lakes.
Richard Spruce (1817-1893) British botanist was not a Fellow of the Royal Society. He spent some fifteen years studying and collecting in the Amazon of Brazil and the Andes of Peru and Ecuador between 1849 and 1864.
Spruce was already in South America when he was employed by a Kew Gardens-India Office project to secure seeds of the cinchona tree, whose bark yielded the antimalarial drug quinine. In 1860 he shipped around 100,000 dried seeds and over 600 young plants out of Ecuador. A year later, Ecuador adopted laws to protect its cinchona trees from mass exportation.
Reproduced as Figure 17 in Notes of a botanist on the Amazon & Andes: being records of travel on the Amazon and its tributaries, the Trombetas, Rio Negro, Uaupés, Casiquiari, Pacimoni, Huallaga, and Pastasa; as also to the cataracts of the Orinoco, along the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, and the shores of the Pacific, during the years 1849-1846 edited by Alfred Russel Wallace, volume II (London, 1908).
At this site Spruce records that he found it impossible to copy all the picture-writing he observed and therefore selected those examples which were most distinct or which by their frequent repetition might be considered typical.
Spruce found figure 'A' depicted several times, varying only slightly. His companions thought it a quiver for holding the darts of the blowing cane. The two figures marked 'B' were declared by Spruce's guides as dolphins, of which two species abound in the Amazon and Orinoco. The figures are annotated by Spruce; ‘These two side by side’. Spruce's guides described figure 'C' as a map with 'a' being a town with a road leading from it to a stream (caño) 'c', while 'b' is a track leading through the forest to another tributary stream, expanding here and there into lakes.
Richard Spruce (1817-1893) British botanist was not a Fellow of the Royal Society. He spent some fifteen years studying and collecting in the Amazon of Brazil and the Andes of Peru and Ecuador between 1849 and 1864.
Spruce was already in South America when he was employed by a Kew Gardens-India Office project to secure seeds of the cinchona tree, whose bark yielded the antimalarial drug quinine. In 1860 he shipped around 100,000 dried seeds and over 600 young plants out of Ecuador. A year later, Ecuador adopted laws to protect its cinchona trees from mass exportation.
Associated place