180 FUNERAL URNS. 



prepared in three difFercnt manners, either whitened in 

 the air and the sun, dyed red with anoto, or like mummie.' 

 varnished with odoriferous resins, and enveloped in leaves 

 of the heliconia, or the plantain-tree. The Indians in- 

 formed them that the fresh corpse was placed in damp 

 ground, that the flesh might be consumed by degrees ; 

 some months afterwards it was taken out, and the flesh 

 remaining on the bones was scraped off with sharp stones. 

 Earthen vases half-baked were found near the baskets. 

 They appeared to contain the bones of the same family. 

 The largest of these vases, or funeral urns, were five feet 

 high, and three feet three inches long. Their colour was 

 greenish-grey, and their oval form was pleasing to the 

 eye. The handles were made in the shape of crocodiles 

 or serpents ; the edges were bordered with painted mean- 

 ders, labyrinths, and grecques, in rows variously com- 

 bined. Such designs are found in every zone among 

 nations the farthest removed from each other, either with 

 respect to their respective positions on the globe, or to 

 the degree of civilization which they have attained. 

 They still adorn the common pottery made by the 

 inhabitants of the little mission of Maypures ; they 

 ornament the bucklers of the Otaheitans, the fishing- 

 implements of the Esquimaux, the walls of the Mexican 

 palace of Mitla, and the vases of ancient Greece. 



They could not acquire any precise idea of the period to 

 which the origin of tlie baskets and the painted vases, 

 contained in the bone-cavern of Ataruipe, could be traced. 

 A tradition circulated among the Guahibos, that the war- 

 like Atures, pursued by the Caribs, escaped to the rocks 

 that rose in the middle of the Great Cataracts ; and there 

 that nation became gradually extinct, as well as its Ian- 



