A MILE LOAD OF SKELETONS. 181 



guage. The last families of the Atures still existed in 

 1767, in the time of the missionary Grili. At the period 

 of Humboldt's voyage an old parrot was shown at May- 

 pures, of which the inhabitants said, that " they did not 

 understand what it said, because it spoke the language of 

 the Atures." 



The travellers opened, to the great concern of their 

 guides, several baskets, for the purpose of examining 

 attentively the form of the skulls. They were all 

 marked by the characteristics of the American race, with 

 the exception of two or three, which approached to 

 the Caucasian. In the middle of the Cataracts, in the 

 most inaccessible spots, cases were found strengthened 

 with iron bands, and filled with European tools, vestiges 

 of clothes, and glass trinkets. These articles, which had 

 given rise to the most absurd reports of treasures hidden 

 by the Jesuits, probably belonged to Portuguese traders 

 who had penetrated into these savage countries. 



Humboldt and Bonpland took several skulls, the 

 skeleton of a child of six or seven years old, and two 

 full-grown men of the nation of the Atures, from the 

 cavern of Ataruipe. All these bones, partly painted red, 

 partly varnished with odoriferous resins, were placed in 

 the baskets which we have just described. They made 

 almost the whole load of a mule ; and as the travellers 

 knew the superstitious feelings of the Indians in refer- 

 ence to the remains of the dead after burial, they care- 

 fully enveloped the • baskets in mats recently woven. 

 Unfortunately for them, the penetration of the Indians, 

 and the extreme quickness of their sense of smelling, 

 rendered all these precautions useless. Wherever they 

 stopped, in the missions of the Caribees, amid the Llanos 



