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A STUDY OF CHIRIQUIAN ANTIQUITIES. 



color and the piece is perfectly translucent, even in its thickest parts, resembling 

 in this respect the familiar commercial rosin, only of a finer quality and different 

 smell when burning. The image came from Divala. 



Sir Walter Raleigh l gives an interesting account of primitive metallurgy as prac- 

 tised by the Indians of Guiana in 1595 : " I after asked the maner how the Epuremei 

 wrought those plates of golde, and howe they could melt it out of the stone ; 

 hee tolde mee that the most of the golde which they made in plates and images, 

 was not severed from the stone, but that on the lake of Manoa, and in a multi- 

 tude of other rivers they gathered it in graines of perfect gold and in peeces as 



Fig. 324. Illustration showing primitive process of casting gold images. (After de Bry.) 



bigge as small stones, and that they put it to a part of copper otherwise they 

 could not worke it, and that they used a great earthern pot with holes round 

 about it, and when they had mingled the gold and copper together, they fastened 

 canes to the holes, and so with the breath of men they increased the fire till the 

 metall ran, & then they cast it into moulds of stone and clay, and so make 

 those plates and images." 



De Bry's illustration showing how the natives of Guiana cast their gold images 

 is reproduced in figure 324. Judging from the text accompanying his figure, 



1 Richard Hakluyt. The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques & discoveries of the 

 English nation, etc. Reprint of 2d ed., X, 414, 415, 1904. 



