CAVE OF ATAEUIPE. I49 



ment which inhabitants of frozen regions entertain for 

 their homes, amid inhospitable snows, seems to possess 

 these people of the burning, j^estilential plains of the Ori- 

 noco, fraught with so many causes of annoyances and 

 death. 



On the morning of the 26th of November, after over 

 three days spent in making the passage of the cataracts of 

 Atures, we renewed our voyage, leaving behind one of 

 our natives, sick with the calenture, so prevalent in the 

 malarious districts of the Great Cataracts. The Orinoco, 

 at this point where it enters the Haudales, is two-thirds 

 of a mile in width, or twice that Avhere it issues from the 

 rapids below. Of the several channels into which the 

 stream divides, the western is the largest, and, as we have 

 remarked, the one through which vessels pass in making 

 the descent of the falls. The other channels are, for the 

 most part, beds of granitic rocks, which are covered only 

 during the annual swelling of the river. Black bands and 

 erosions upon the stones indicated that the waters had 

 already fallen twenty feet below their highest level. To 

 our left, at a short distance from the river, were the moun- 

 tains which contain the cave of Ataruipe, the sepulchre 

 of the destroyed nation of the Atures. We regretted 

 that we were unable to visit this cemetery of a departed 

 race, which Humboldt saw and describes as a place of so 

 great interest. That traveller counted nearly six hundred 

 skeletons within the cave, all well preserved, each being 

 placed in a basket wrought of palm-leaves. " A tradition 

 circulates among the Guahibos, that the warlike Atures, 

 pursued by the Caribs, escaped to the rocks that rise in 

 the middle of the Great Cataracts ; and there that nation, 

 heretofore so numerous, became gradually extinct, as well 

 as its language. The last families of the Atures still ex- 

 isted in 1*767, in the time of the missionary Gili. At the 

 period of our voyage an old parrot was shown at May- 



