mense a tract of country as the continent of America would have been likely to be brought more into view than it has hitherto been, in an arrangement proceeding on the principles above supposed, so natural an expectation will not be disappointed, in tracing the prototype of this next sign, which exhibits the figure of a young man, drawn sometimes in the act of pouring out water from two vessels, and sometimes only from one. This sign (when considered as bearing one water vessel only) is to be ascribed to the largest river in the world, the Plate, which vast wevos Toтuos might well merit so much notice as to constitute one of the twelve signs; but as in respect of its bearing two water vessels, a larger portion of the continent of South America must be supposed to be taken in, so as to comprize the river Amazon as constituting the second vessel. In respect of the first case, if the map be turned upside down and inspected backwards (and it is observable that the sign in the frontispiece has his back turned to us) there may be seen in the country situate at the mouth of the River Plate the likeness of a young man, as copied in

Fig. 160

pouring out water from an urn over his head; his left hand being at the Lake de los Patos; his eye looking eastward at Lake Merin; the urn formed by the embouchure of the river; and his right hand by the tract of country situate where the Parana coming from Lake Xaraye falls into the Plate, which tract is called Charruas; and in those names of Xaraye and Charruas it is impossible not to perceive the prototype of that of the sign itself Aquarius. The following lines concerning Aquarius copied from Spence's Polymetis, serve further to fix the prototype for him which is above assigned.

Jam levis obliquá subsedit Aquarius urna

Capricorno, Phoebe, relicto

Per Juvenis curres signa regentis aquas.

Ovid. Fast.

Id. ib.

Manilius.

-Juvenis nudo formatus mollior ortu.

Of these the first alludes to the oblique short turn eastward which the river Plate takes, after having flowed due south for two thirds of its course; the third, to the Caribbees (the aborigines of the country) through the Greek word ŋŋ, juventus; the fourth, to the remarkable unmuscular softness of the limbs of the Caribbces: In the fifth line we have again allusion to the name of Caribbee in the term ephebus; as also (by a method which will hereafter appear to have been anciently most common) to the name itself of the Lake Xaraye in the beginning of the line; while the two last lines refer to the enormous quantity and the eter nal duration of the streams of the Plate that flow from that lake.

Pisces. The last of the twelve signs derives its

origin from two seas highly important as channels of communication between the eastern and western parts of the world, the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea and the Persian Gulf: the former, as the prototype of one of the fishes, has indeed a very marked resemblance to a fish, the head being at the straits of Bab el Mandel; the fin at Erkico in Africa, and the forked tail at the Isthmus of Suez. The other of the two seas, called the Persian Gulf, is little less like a fish than the first; the head being at the top of the gulf by the mouth of the Euphrates, and the tail at the strait of Moçandon. Such being their prototypes, they are seen to have their heads and tails situate nearly inversely towards each other as they are commonly drawn, though they are not so drawn in the Egyptian zodiac but are there more conformable to the representation of them given in

Fig. 161.

as

copied from the map. I here quit this subject

for the present, and content myself with the reflection that the very few pages which have been devoted to it, are sufficient of themselves to explain multitudes of passages in all the ancient writers, multitudes of gems and other objects of sculpture, and multitudes of coats of arms which have been hitherto most imperfectly understood. The reader may not be displeased, perhaps, to have an opportunity of exercising his own talent for research in the investigation of the prototypes of the other constellations; and it may be satisfactory to him to have reason to conclude, from the value of the hieroglyphics above explained, that the explanation of the other constellations, and other hieroglyphics in general, would be attended probably with real and practical utility.